Robert Emory Park

In 1860 he was a 17 year old living with his widowed mother and 2 siblings on their modest farm in Merriwether County, GA. He was a student at East Alabama Male College (later Auburn University) when he enlisted at Tuskegee, AL in July 1861 as a Private in Company F, 12th Alabama Infantry. He was elected 2nd Lieutenant in the army reorganization of April 1862 and promoted to First Lieutenant in June.

He was captured in action near Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 while leading a detail of about 40 skirmishers from his regiment:

... My men slowly fell back, firing from everything which served to screen them from observation. Several of them were wounded and six or eight became completely demoralized by the unbroken front of the rapidly approaching enemy, and despite my commands, entreaties and threats left me, and hastily fled to the rear. Brave Corporal Myers, of Mobile, adopting a suggestion of mine, aimed and fired at an exposed officer, receiving a mortal wound in the breast as he did so. I raised him tenderly, offered him water, and was rising to reluctantly abandon him to his fate, when a dozen muskets were pointed at me, and I was ordered to surrender.

He was exchanged by the end of 1862 and returned to duty. He was wounded and captured at Winchester, VA on 19 September 1864. He was promoted to Captain but remained a prisoner at Fort Delaware to the end of the War.

In 1870 he was a high school teacher and principal, living with wealthy carriage dealer W.H. Huntley and family at La Grange in Troup County, GA. He moved to Macon, GA in 1872 and was agent for the publishers Ivison-Blakeman and American Book there. He was elected Georgia State Treasurer in 1900 and served in that post to his death at age 66 in 1909.

His service from the State of Alabama.1 He was listed as missing on South Mountain in a casualty list for Rodes' Brigade in the Montgomery Weekly Advertiser of 8 October 1862. The quote about his capture on South Mountain is from a sketch of the regiment he wrote for the SHSP.2 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1880, and a bio sketch in Loyless' Georgia's Public Men 1902-1904 (1902). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Stella Swanson (1852-1871) in 1870. He married again, Ella Henrietta Holt (1851-1890) in February 1875 and they had 2 children. He married for the third time, the widow Emily Courtenay Paine Hendree Stewart (1848-1910) in April 1892.

01/13/1843; LaGrange, GA

05/07/1909; Atlanta, GA; burial in Riverside Cemetery, Macon, GA