(1842 - 1902)
Home State: Georgia
Education: University of Georgia, Class of 1861
Branch of Service: Artillery
Unit: Troup (GA) Artillery
Before Sharpsburg
Son of a blacksmith, in 1860 he was an 18 year old student living with his parents in Athens, GA. On 24 April 1861, by then a recent (or near) graduate in engineering at the University of Georgia, he enlisted in Athens as a Private in the Troup Artillery. He was promoted to Corporal on 20 June 1862.
On the Campaign
He was with his battery in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was wounded in the lower jaw, the bone broken by a gunshot or case shot in action at Gettysburg, PA and captured on 5 July 1863. He was sent from a field hospital there to the DeCamp General Hospital on David's Island in New York Harbor on 21 July. He was paroled and admitted to the CS hospital in Petersburg, VA on 8 September and home on furlough to at least February 1864. In early 1864 he applied for and obtained good references (including 1st Lt. Motes) for a position in the CS Engineering Corps, but there was no appointment, and that's the last record of him with the Troup Artillery.
By 15 July 1864 he was First Lieutenant of Captain R.D. Moore's Battery, a local defense unit in Athens.
After the War
He went to Atlanta in 1867 and was a teacher there, but the next year became founding partner, with his father-in-law James H. Anderson, and general manager of the new Atlanta Constitution newspaper, a position he held until he sold his share in December 1901. He was city Alderman in 1888 and Mayor of Atlanta 1891-92. He was also a bank executive, though perhaps with less success than with his newspaper, and a director of the Cotton States International Exposition of 1895, which was his brainchild.
He was widely known as Colonel Hemphill, though I found no organization in which he achieved that rank.
References & notes
His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. His presence at Sharpsburg from a letter he wrote home published in the Athens Southern Banner of 1 October 1862; thanks to Laura Elliott for transcribing that. Personal details from family genealogists, the Catalogue,2 and the US Census of 1860-1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Annie Elizabeth Wood (1847-1866) in March 1865 and they had a daughter Sarah (1866-1870), but Annie died soon after Sarah was born. He married again, Mary Anderson (1847-1870) and they had a daughter Mamie (1869-1898). He married for the third time, Emma Batts Sanders Luckie (1844-1900) in March 1871 and they had 7 children; he first husband Lorenzo was a Captain in the 3rd Georgia Infantry when he was mortally wounded at Petersburg, VA in July 1864. William married, lastly, the widow Mabel Field Hillyer Willcox (1860-1909) in 1901.
Birth
03/05/1842; Athens, GA
Death
08/17/1902; Atlanta, GA; burial in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA
1 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 30534]
2 University of Georgia, Board of Trustees, Catalogue of the Trustees, Officers, Alumni and Matriculates of the University of Georgia at Athens, Georgia, 1785-1906, Athens: E.D. Stone Press, 1906, p. 79 [AotW citation 30535]