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(1841 - 1921)
Home State: North Carolina
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
Son of a mechanic, in 1860 he was a 19 year old laborer living with his father, step-mother, and 4 siblings at Foust's Mill in Randolph County, NC. He was conscripted in Raleigh, NC on 16 August 1862 and mustered as a Private in Company G of the 46th Infantry.
On the Campaign
Barely a month later he was wounded in the knee, his tibia broken, in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and captured there.
The rest of the War
He was admitted to US Army General Hospital #5 in Frederick, MD on 15 October and sent on to Fort McHenry in Baltimore the next day. On 18 October he was paroled and sent to Fortress Monroe, VA for exchange. He was admitted to Chimborazo Hospital #4 in Richmond, VA on 24 October and furloughed on 20 December 1862. He was home on wounded furlough, disabled for field service, until 1 August (or 24 September) 1864 when he returned to his company.
He was captured again, as a deserter, near Petersburg, VA in February 1865 and sent to Washington, DC on 1 March. He took an oath of allegiance to the United States and was provided transportation to Richmond, date not given, and there is no later military record.
After the War
By 1900 he was a farmer in Monticello Township, Johnson County, KS and in 1910 was retired and living with his stone mason son William and family in Lawrence, KS.
References & notes
His service from Moore1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3, as William H. Whitney. Hospital details also from the Patient List.3 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860, 1900, & 1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave. Thanks to Heather Zwiener for the poke to look further into her great-great-grandfather.
He married Ruth Belles (-1895) and they had 4 children: Elijah (1871-1885), Sadie (1873-1953), Louisa (1876-1890), and William (1878-1962) all born in (Chicago?) Illinois.
His half-cousin (!) Daniel H Cox was also wounded and captured at Sharpsburg. Cox's half-sister Ruth Ann was Whitney's step-mother. William and Daniel were next-door neighbors before the war. Family lore says they lay wounded on opposite sides of a haystack on the battlefield, not knowing the other was there.
Birth
07/21/1841; Randolph County, NC
Death
02/07/1921; Lawrence, KS; burial in Oak Hill Cemetery, Lawrence, KS
1 Moore, John Wheeler (compiler), and State of North Carolina, Roster of North Carolina Troops in the War Between the States, 4 volumes, Raleigh: Ashe & Gatling, State Printers and Publishers, 1882, Vol. 3, p. 315 [AotW citation 12810]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 34296]
3 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #1.091 [AotW citation 34297]