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J.L. Corley
(1829 - 1883)
Home State: South Carolina
Education: US Military Academy, West Point, NY, Class of 1850;Class Rank: 40th
Command Billet: Staff Officer
Branch of Service: Staff
Before Sharpsburg
After graduating from West Point in July 1850 he was appointed brevet 2nd Lieutenant of Infantry and was sent to Fort Riley, KS. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, 6th United States Infantry on 6 May 1851 and First Lieutenant on 3 March 1855. He was on the Utah Expedition and march to California with the regiment. He was at Benicia, CA by 1860, but resigned his commission on 4 May 1861 at the start of the war.
He was appointed Captain of Infantry, CSA on 7 June 1861 and assigned to General R.S. Garnett's staff and was promoted to Major and Assistant Quartermaster, PACS on 1 August 1861. He was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 60th Virginia Infantry to date from 12 October 1861 and reported to the regiment on 25 December, but resigned on 20 March 1862 to accept the commission of Lieutenant Colonel and Quartermaster, CSA. He was posted as Chief Quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia on 20 June.
On the Campaign
He was Chief Quartermaster of the Army on the Maryland Campaign.
The rest of the War
He remained Chief Quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, VA in April 1865.
After the War
In 1870 he was a prosperous life insurance agent in Raleigh, NC and by 1880 was in that business in Norfolk, VA. He died in Hampton, VA at age 53 some hours after attempting suicide by cutting his own throat.
References & notes
His service from Cullum1 (his Cullum #1489), Krick,2 and his Compiled Service Records,3 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860-1870, and a notice about his death in the Weekly Virginian and Carolinian of 29 March 1883. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a collection of the faces of General Lee and his staff compiled by Rockwell & Cowell of Petersburg, VA in 1866, also in Miller.4 Heritage Auctions sold a pair of nice copies in 2019. Thanks to David Murray for correcting the gravesite link and for the nudge to look further into Corley.
David also kindly provided a sample of Corley's signature, on an October 1861 quartermaster's voucher and receipt issued to David's great-great-grandfather Nicholas Alexander Whitelaw (1832-1921) for providing coffins and doing other work for the army at his home in Monterey, VA. Whitelaw had later service in the 31st Virginia Infantry.
Corley married Mary Coffin Riddell (1841-1934) in January 1861 in Benicia, CA and they had 4 children.
Birth
10/05/1829 in SC
Death
03/28/1883; Hampton, VA; burial in Elmwood Cemetery, Norfolk, VA
1 Cullum, George Washington, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy, 2nd Edition, 3 vols., New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868-79, Vol. II, pp. 433-434 [AotW citation 29370]
2 Krick, Robert E.L., Staff Officers in Gray; A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pg. 103 [AotW citation 29371]
3 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 34913]
4 Miller, Francis Trevelyan, editor in chief, Photographic History of the Civil War, 10 vols., New York: The Review of Reviews Co., 1911-12, Vol. 10, pg. 71 [AotW citation 29372]
