Thomas Lyons McCarty

Of Irish parents, his father a clerk, in 1860 he was an 18 year old clerk living with his parents and 3 siblings in Galveston, TX. He enlisted when the Company was organized on 12 April 1861 in Galveston County, TX, and (probably) mustered with them for Confederate service as a Private in Company L, First Texas Infantry on 30 August 1861 near Manassas, VA.

He was with his company in action on the Maryland Campaign. He recorded his experience at Sharpsburg in his diary:

On the night of the 15th [September 1862] we had quite an argument with the Federals and on the 16th maneuvered all day through wheat and stubble and woods near the Dunker Church to its left. Half nearly of the company were barefooted. That night ... [t]he barefooted detail and others with General Hood started to look for the commissary wagons which had not come up. Between 12 and 2 a.m. they were found and by 3 a.m. they had got into the woods and by 4 rations were issued.

We soon started cooking but before half of the rations were cooked the brigade was hurriedly ordered to Trimble's support; only part of the rations were distributed. The barefooted squad remained to cook up the balance. The Yankees attacked with tremendous vigor with line after line. Trimble was about to give way when Hood's men advanced, driving back the Feds. A fresh line came on only to be hurled back the same way. By 10 o'clock, our brigade was cut to pieces. Our regiment lost 82 1/3% of its men and officers. The hardest fight was in the cornfield where we had 13 color bearers shot, several of them from our company ...

Except for two periods of illness, in late 1862 and early 1863, he was with his company through the war to be surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.

He was an early resident of Ennis, Ellis County, TX, on the Houston & Central Texas Railroad, establishing Blakey & McCarty's Grocery there in 1872. By 1880 he was a fire insurance agent in Ennis, and in 1900 was a real estate broker there. In 1911 he was living in Oklahoma City, then a part owner of a real estate firm.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. The quote above from his diary now at the University of Texas, Austin [finding aid]; thanks to Dan Masters for transcribing relevant sections. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860, 1880-1910, some of which have his birth in Virginia, and Lewis Publishing's Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas (1892). His gravesite is on Findagrave; his stone has his birth in 1838.

He married Nancy Beckham (1854-1927) in November 1874 and they had 5 children.

c. 1842 in PA

1914; Ennis, TX; burial in Myrtle Cemetery, Ennis, TX