Edwin Ruthven White

From Charleston, he enrolled as 3rd Lieutenant of Company D, 23rd South Carolina Infantry on 30 September 1861.

Captain S.A. Durham, in his report, stated -

"Having been wounded in the fight of Sunday, the 14th, I was not able to command the regiment the whole of Wednesday, and left it in charge of Lieutenant E. R. White."

He was home on wounded furlough into February 1863. He was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant on 15 April 1863 and First Lieutenant on 9 May, and was on detached duty at Fort Moultrie in October 1863. He was promoted to Captain by April 1864. By 30 July 1864 he was in command of the Regiment again after the explosion in what became the Crater, at Petersburg, VA, but was wounded in a hospital in Petersburg, VA in August and furloughed home. He was captured at Dinwiddie Courthouse, VA in April 1865, at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC, then held at Johnson's Island, OH. He was released after taking the oath of allegiance on 20 June 1865.

He and his older brothers William T. and Robert D. White were 3rd or 4th generation stonecutters in Charleston, noted for their gravestones and funerary sculpture. William died in 1870 and Edwin may have split from his brother Robert about 1875, and so was operating the family's White Marble Works on Meeting Street in Charleston by then. He was active as a carver into the 1880s.

His service from his Compiled Service Records and the Sharpsburg casualty list for the 23rd South Carolina (Confederate States Army Casualty Lists and Narrative Reports, RG 109, NARA), both online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Clara Matheison (1849-1877) in about 1868; they had as many as 5 children but perhaps only one of them survived infancy.

See more about the Walker and White stonecutting tradition in 19th century Charleston in A Stonecutter's Tale (2012) from Tom Taylor on Random Connections.

Their work is found all over Charleston, South Carolina, and the world. A historical marker [via HMDB] at Long Cane Cemetery in Abbeville, SC makes particular note of it.

See some lovely examples of Walker and White stones in Charleston from Traci Rylands on her blog Adventures in Cemetery Hopping.

09/26/1836; Charleston, SC

03/16/1891; Charleston, SC; burial in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, SC