Andrew H. Ramsay

He had moved to Georgia as a young man but returned to Pickens County, SC by July 1861 to enlist as First Sergeant - soon elected First Lieutenant - of the Oconee Rifles/Riflemen, who became Company E of the First South Carolina "Orr's" Rifles when they mustered into Confederate service on 20 July. He was promoted to Captain after Captain Miles M. Norton was killed at 2nd Manassas on 30 August 1862.

He led the Company on the Maryland Campaign.

He returned late from a 30 day furlough in March 1864 and was changed with being absent without leave. He resigned his commission but remained on the Company rolls for 4 months while he was treated in a Richmond, VA hospital for debility. He was discharged about July 1864. Family lore says he returned to service later and was part of President Davis' bodyguard to the end of the war.

He returned to Habersham County, GA and established a store at Jarrett's Bridge on the Tugalo (now Tugaloo) River on the GA-SC border, and married Jarrett's daughter in 1867. He surveyed and was the first landowner in the new town of Toccoa, built a new store and stable there about 1873, and was living on his farm nearby by 1900.

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records via the Historical Data Systems database with details from Ron Coddington's Faces of the Confederacy (2008), citing his records in the National Archives. Mr. Coddington notes that Ramsay was not well thought of as a military leader, and that senior officers of the regiment had at least once attempted to have him cashiered prior to his being AWOL in 1864.

Personal details from family genealogists, the 1880 & 1900 US Census, and his death notice in the Atlanta Constitution of 20 December 1909. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture is from a full-length CDV found in the Heyward Album in the Library of the University of South Carolina.

He married Sallie Azalia "Zadie/Zaidee" Jarrett (1846-1933) in 1867 and they had 7 children.

The Ramsay Family Papers, 1827-1974, largely those of his daughter Lizzie, are in the collection of Emory University in Atlanta [finding aid].

03/13/1832; Pickens County, SC

12/15/1909; Toccoa, GA; burial in Toccoa Cemetery, Toccoa, GA