Ezekiel Bray

In 1850 he was a farm overseer at Danielsville in Madison County, GA and in 1860 he was a 45 year old farmer there. He enlisted in Danielsville on 13 July 1861 with Captain Gholston as a Private in the Madison County Greys - Company A, 16th Georgia Infantry. By June 1862 he'd been at least temporarily assigned to the regimental band, but on 1 July 1862 he was wounded by a gunshot or grapeshot to his thigh in action near Richmond, VA (probably at Malvern Hill). He was in the CSA General Hospital in Danville, VA from 2 to 16 July then returned to duty.

He was wounded again, at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

In November he was home on furlough due to his Sharpsburg wound, but returned to his company, date not given. He was in a hospital again, at Camp Winder in Richmond, from 17 August to 18 September 1863, ill with ascites - fluid buildup in the abdomen, often from liver disease. He was discharged at the end of his term of enlistment on 1 August 1864 at Petersburg, VA.

By 1870 and to at least 1880 he was again a farmer, on his own modest place at Danielsville.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. Henderson2 says he was born in 1828, enlisted as 4th Corporal, and was wounded 1 June at Seven Pines, VA and "disabled" there. Personal details from family genealogists, at least one of whom has his middle initial as M, and the US Census of 1850-1880, the last of which notes he could neither read nor write. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture is from a a c. 1861 1/6 plate ambrotype in the collection of David Wynn Vaughan, published in a feature called At One Moment in Time in Georgia Backroads magazine, Winter 2011 and also in Jeff L. Rosenheim's Photography and the American Civil War (2013).

He's sometimes identified as Ezekiel Taylor Bray: that was the name of his son (1847-1919).

He married Elizabeth Patterson (c. 1822-c. 1862) in November 1840 and they had 5 children. He married again, the widow Edith Margaret "Edy" Echols (1828-1892) and they had 2 daughters, born in 1864 and 1867; her first husband Seaborn Fleming Echols, briefly a Private in the 16th Georgia and near neighbor of Ezekiel's before the war, died of typhoid fever in Richmond, VA on 29 July 1862.

10/22/1816; Madison County, GA

05/29/1896; Madison County, GA; burial in Old Danielsville Presbyterian Cemetery, Danielsville, GA