William Kunhardt Bachman

He was son of the prominent pastor of Charleston's St John's Lutheran Church, Dr. John Bachman. The Rev. Dr Bachman was also a scientist and an associate of naturalist John James Audubon.

After graduating from the College of Charleston, William went to the University of Gottingen in Germany and was there for 3 years. He returned to Charleston, studied the law, and practiced briefly there, then moved to Columbia, SC in 1858.

He recruited and trained a company of mostly German-speakers in Charleston in 1861 and they became Bachman's German Battery - Company A, Artillery Battalion, Hampton Legion; he enrolled and mustered as Captain on 22 August 1861. As late as August 1862 they were reorganized as an independent battery - Bachman's Company, South Carolina Artillery.

He commanded his battery in Maryland.

He commanded the battery to at least October 1864 and may have been promoted to battalion command near the end of the war.

He practiced law in Columbia, SC and was assistant Attorney General of South Carolina (1876-1888).

His service from the Roll,1 his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3, and an October 1862 muster roll for the battery, now at the University of Alabama. His late-war promotion from James Simon's brief history of the battery in U.R. Brooks' Stories of the Confederacy (1912). His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of memorial announcements in The State of 30 and 31 October 1901.

He married Julia Rush Fisher (1834-1915) in November 1855.

11/23/1830; Charleston, SC

10/29/1901; Columbia, SC; burial in Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Cemetery, Columbia, SC