William Henry Effinger

In 1860 he was living with his parents and siblings on the large family farm in Harrisonburg, VA. He may have had service in Company B of the 7th Virginia Cavalry in 1861 or 1862 and he enlisted as a Private in the 1st Rockbridge Artillery on 5 August 1862 at Gordonsville, VA.

He was "stunned and burned in [the] face by [the] explosion of a shell" in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was commissioned First Lieutenant of Engineers and assigned to the First Virginia Engineers on 9 January 1864. He was captured at New Creek Station, VA on 2 December 1864 and held at Fort Delaware until he took an oath of allegiance and was released on 28 May 1865.

In 1870 he was in Harrisonburg, VA. By 1880 he had gone west and to at least 1900 lived in Portland, OR. He was a lawyer, Oregon Attorney General, and a Brigadier General of militia.

His service and other details from Driver.1 His casualty details from Captain Poague's casualty list for the battery (Confederate States Army Casualty Lists and Narrative Reports, RG 109, NARA); online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from an etching after a photograph in the Dickinson College Archives.

He married Emma Eugenia Henderson (1844-1900) and they had a daughter Mallie in 1867.

The commencement program [pdf] for Effinger's Dickinson College Class of 1857 is online from the College.

11/1840; Harrisonburg, VA

03/20/1907; Portland, OR; burial in Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland, OR