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Confederate (CSV)

Captain

Jonathan Whitehead Williams

(1840 - 1908)

Home State: Alabama

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 5th Alabama Infantry

Before Sharpsburg

In 1860 he was a 20 year old farmer on his parent's large place near Five Mile in Hale County, AL. He enrolled on 13 April 1861 as brevet 2nd Lieutenant in Greensboro and was appointed 2nd Lieutenant of Company I (later D), 5th Alabama Infantry on 28 May 1861. He was promoted to First Lieutenant on 14 October and to Captain on 27 April 1862.

On the Campaign

He commanded his Company in action near Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 and was listed as missing, but had been wounded by a gunshot and captured there.

The rest of the War

He was held at Fort Delaware until paroled on 2 October, then sent to Aiken's Landing, VA for exchange. He was admitted to a Richmond, VA hospital on 7 October and was declared exchanged and eligible to return to duty on 10 November 1862.

He was captured again, on 3 May 1863 at Chancellorsville, VA, briefly at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC, then transferred to Aiken's Landing, VA for exchange. He was absent on a sick furlough to Greensboro, AL or in Richmond hospitals from 6 June 1864 through January 1865. He probably resigned his commission on the basis of a certificate of disability issued on 8 February 1865.

After the War

By 1880 he was working his father-in-law's farm at Greensboro in Hale County, AL. He was Superintendent of the County Poor Farm by 1900 and to his death at age 68 in 1908.

References & notes

His service from the State of Alabama1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3; both as John W. Williams. His command and status on South Mountain from a casualty list for Rodes' Brigade in the Montgomery Weekly Advertiser of 8 October 1862. Personal details from family genealogists, one of whom has his birth in February 1840, and the US Census of 1860, 1880, and 1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Caroline Lee Avery (1844-1933) in January 1864 and they had 7 children.

Birth

03/16/1840; Hale County, AL

Death

04/24/1908; Greensboro, AL; burial in Saint Pauls Cemetery, Hale County, AL

Notes

1   State of Alabama, Dept. of Archives & History, Alabama Civil War Service Database, Published 2004, first accessed 01 January 2010, <https://archives.alabama.gov/research/CivilWarService.aspx>, Source page: /civilwar/soldier.cfm?id=220861, etc.  [AotW citation 25614]

2   US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Former Confederate Soldiers who Served in the 1st Through 6th U.S. Volunteer Infantry Regiments, 1864-1866, Record Group No. 94 (Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927  [AotW citation 28028]