Joseph Benjamin Polley

After graduating, he enlisted as Private in Company F, 4th Texas Infantry at Camp Clark in Guadalupe County, TX on 11 July 1861 and was detailed as the Quartermaster's clerk by June 1862. He was slightly wounded in the head at Gaines' Mill, VA on 27 June 1862.

He was with his regiment on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, still Quartermaster's clerk.

He was promoted to Quartermaster Sergeant of the regiment on 1 November 1862. He was reduced to Corporal by February 1864 and was wounded by a gunshot in action at Darbytown Road near Richmond on 7 October 1864. He lost his right foot to amputation by Surgeon J.C. Jones the same day, and was furloughed on 26 November for 60 days, probably to Botetourt County, VA. He was retired for disability on 25 January 1865 near Richmond, VA and was paroled on 12 August 1865 in San Antonio, TX, then living in Guadalupe County.

He returned to Texas, studied law and passed the bar in 1868. He went into practice in 1876, when he moved to Floresville, Texas. He was County Attorney (1877-78) and in the State Legislature (1879). He wrote extensively on the War, most notably in Hood's Texas Brigade (1910), and A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nellie (1908). He was elected commander of the Texas Division of the United Confederate Veterans, and contributed often to the Confederate Veteran magazine.

Basic biography from the Handbook1 with service from his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. Personal details from the finding aid to an 1862 letter of his in the collection of the Pearce Museum at Navarro College. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

10/27/1840; near Bailey's Prairie, TX

02/02/1918; Floresville, TX; burial in Floresville City Cemetery, Floresville, TX