Elbert Sevier Jemison

Raised in Talladega, AL, he was a lawyer and lived on a farm in Anderson County, Texas at the start of the War. He was commissioned First Lieutenant and mustered in Company G, First Texas Infantry on 23 June 1861 at Palestine, TX. He was wounded in action at Gaines' Mill, VA on 27 June 1862.

He was slightly wounded in the thigh in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was elected Captain on 9 August 1863 after the death of Captain Woodward and was on recruiting duty in the Trans-Mississippi Department in the Spring of 1864. He resigned his commission on 9 August 1864, but may have had later service in the Texas Reserves.

He was a cotton broker and wholesale grocer in Galveston. By about 1875 he was running his company's New York Office and had a seat on the New York Cotton Exchange. In 1892 he was appointed President of the reorganized Houston, East & West Texas Railway (HE&WTR) Company, later sold to be part of the Southern Pacific. He retired to Talladega shortly before his death in 1896 at age 60.

Service information from Davis1 and Simpson.2 Sharpsburg wound detail from a 22 September casualty list by Lt. Col. Work published in the Galveston News of 1 November 1862. Life events from family genealogists and Maxwell's Whistle in the Piney Woods: Paul Bremond and the HE&WTR (1998). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph published in Polley's A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nellie (1908).

He married Louisa Anne McElderry (1842-1939) in Talladega in 1858. There's a lovely photo of the newlyweds on Flickr.

05/30/1835; Talladega, AL

02/07/1896; Talladega, AL; burial in Oak Hill Cemetery, Talladega, AL