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(c. 1842 - 1862)
Home State: Georgia
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 50th Georgia Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
In 1860 he was an 18 year old "ploughman" living with his widowed mother Elisabeth and 2 brothers in William S Peter's hotel at Naylor in Lowndes County, GA. He enlisted and mustered as a Private in Company D, 50th Georgia Infantry on 22 March (or 2 April) 1862 at Valdosta, GA.
On the Campaign
He was mortally wounded by 2 gunshots and was captured in action at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862:
A musket ball struck the frontal [skull] bone near the left frontal eminence, causing fracture and depression; another ball entered the left arm just below the head of the humerus, fractured the bone and escaped at the inferior angle of the scapula.
The rest of the War
He was admitted to US Army General Hospital #1 in Frederick, MD on 22 (or 27) October "in a very low condition" but with no apparent symptoms of brain injury. "Unhealthy discharge" from his wounds continued and he died from "exhaustion" on 25 November 1862. An autopsy found his brain "softened" at the point of injury, part of the skull pushed in. He was buried at nearby Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
References & notes
His service from Henderson,1 who has him as a Corporal (per Federal records), and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3, as R.P. Hughes and R.P. Hughs. Wound, hospital, and death details from the Patient List,3 as A.P. Hughs, and the MSHWR,4 source of the quotes above, as A.P. H---. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860, as Richard P. Hews. His gravesite is on Findagrave; his modern stone has him as R.P. Hughs with his death on 5 November.
Birth
c. 1842 in GA
Death
11/25/1862; Frederick, MD; burial in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Frederick, MD
1 Henderson, Lilian, compiler, Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia, 1861-1865, 6 vols., Hapeville (GA): Longino & Porter, 1959-1964 [AotW citation 3017]
2 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 31245]
3 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #5.241 [AotW citation 31246]
4 Barnes, Joseph K., and US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 6 books, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870-1883, Volume 2, Part 1, p. 171 [AotW citation 31247]