Robert William Pinckney Tompkins

After college he studied the law, was admitted to the bar in Columbia in 1858, and was in practice in Edgefield to the start of the war. He mustered as the First Lieutenant of Company B - the Watson Guards - of the Hampton Legion Infantry in 1861. He was reelected in the reorganization of April 1862, slightly wounded at Seven Pines, VA on 31 May, and promoted to Captain on 12 June.

He was killed in action along the Hagerstown Pike near Miller's Cornfield at Sharpsburg early in the morning of 17 September 1862.

He was originally buried on the battlefield by his men "in the S.W corner of Col. Miller's woods, name cut on tree." His remains were returned home by 1869.

His service from the Rolls,1 as Robert W. Tompkins. Further details from McArthur & Burton's A Gentleman and an Officer: A Military and Social History of James B. Griffin's Civil War (1996), the Abbeville Banner of 13 May 1858, and his obituary in the Edgefield Advertiser of 22 October 1862. His burial on the field from Pruitt2 and a letter of Colonel Martin Gary to the Edgefield Advertiser of 21 April 1881, in McBride, Owen & Allport's Texas at Antietam (2017). His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his obituary.

His older brother Gus was Sergeant, Lieutenant, and later Captain in Company B. They were two of the 6 Tompkins brothers who served in Confederate uniform.

His first law partner was Matthew C. Butler, later commander of the Hampton Legion Cavalry/2nd South Carolina Cavalry.

12/09/1834; Edgefield County, SC

09/17/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Tompkins Homestead Plantation Cemetery, Parksville, SC