William Francis Schwing

In 1860 he was a 22 year old living on his parents' large plantation in Iberville Parish, LA. He was briefly master of the Phoenix Academy in Fayette County, MS in 1861, then enlisted there and mustered on 28 May 1861 as First Sergeant of Company D, 19th Mississippi Infantry. He was appointed 3rd Lieutenant by June 1862 and was wounded near Richmond, VA on 30 June 1862.

He was wounded in the head in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He was promoted to First Lieutenant and was acting Adjutant of the regiment to December 1862. He was promoted to Captain on 14 February 1863 and was wounded yet again, severely, at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May 1863. He was back with his Company about November 1863 and was surrendered and paroled with them at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.

He returned to the Phoenix Academy in Lafayette County, MS and also studied the law. He moved to New Iberia, LA and practice law there. He moved again, to St. Landry Parish in 1881 and

established an oil mill, which was burned down in 1882, but rebuilt the same year. By an accident in his mill, in 1885, Mr. Schwing lost an arm. He retired from the oil mill in 1887 and removed to Lake Charles, where he resumed resumed his profession.

His service from his Compiled Military Service Records (CSRs),1 online from fold3. His Sharpsburg wound also on a casualty list in the New Orleans Times-Picayune of 29 October 1862. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 and 1880-1910, a bio sketch in William Henry Perrin's Southwest Louisiana Historical and Biographical (1891), source of the quote above, and the Catalogue of Centenary College of Louisiana (1901). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Alma Camila Knight (1855-1889) in 1876 and they had 6 children.

There's a fine c. 1890 photograph of him online in the Louisiana Digital Library.

12/20/1837; Boeuf, LA

07/10/1919; Lake Charles, LA; burial in Orange Grove Cemetery, Lake Charles, LA