"Fill"
(1833 - 1913)
Home State: Alabama
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 26th Alabama Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
He enlisted as 3rd Sergeant, Company C, 26th Alabama Infantry on 7 December 1861. He was commissioned 2nd and First Lieutenant by 3 July 1862.
On the Campaign
He commanded his Company in action near Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Captain, date not given. He was wounded at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May 1863 and again at Ezra Church, GA on 28 July 1864, and furloughed home. He took the oath of allegiance at New Madrid, MO on 14 May 1865.
After the War
He was the Republican Sheriff of Fayette County, Alabama during Reconstruction "who courageously battled the Ku Klux Klan and upheld the rule of law when the Fourteenth Amendment was young." He was farming there by 1880.
References & notes
His service from Fincham's roster,1 sourced from Tod L. Molsworth's O'Neal's 26th Alabama: the Little Regiment that Did (2000). The quote above from Bryan Wildenthal's The Lost Compromise: Reassessing the Early Understanding in Court and Congress on Incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the Fourteenth Amendment (2000). Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1880. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
Birth
09/16/1833; Union County, NC
Death
05/03/1913; Carbon Hill, AL; burial in Pisgah Cemetery, Carbon Hill, AL
1 Fincham, Jr., Ray, Artillery, Cavalry, Infantry Regimental Histories - Alabama, Published 2005, first accessed 23 August 2020, <https://ranger95.com/civil_war/alabama/index.html>, Source page: /infantry/26ala_inf/26th_ala_inf_roster_c.htm [AotW citation 25508]