William M. Maxson

He mustered into service as Private, Company I, 13th Pennsylvania Reserves on 30 May 1861 in Harrisburg.

Age 17, he was killed in action near Turner's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862.

... It looked like a task to storm the mountain for it was very steep and more than one mile to the top of it. In we went. Company I was reserve awhile & the Rebels shelled us, wounding 3 of our men, 2 of which died that night. My right hand man was one to fall. Soon after this we were deployed & 3 with me were posted behind a rock wall. W Brewer & L Bard & Hero Bloom were with me. The Rebels were behind a fence and rocks. Bard was wounded and Brewer helped him away & soon Bloom was shot by my side. He died that night. Northrop fell a few yards to the left. Maxon fell dead within a few feet of him. Well it was close work. I only got my face and eyes full of bark for there was a tree just on the rock. That's all of this ...

He was originally buried near the battlefield but reinterred in the new National Cemetery at Sharpsburg in about 1867.

Burial information from the Antietam Cemetery History1. His service from Bucktails.2 The quote above from a letter home by Private Angelo M. Crapsey, in Dennis Brandt's Pathway to Hell: A Tragedy of the American Civil War (2008). His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his picture, from a McKean County Civil War souvenir playing card posted by Joel Frampton Gilfert.

c. 1845

09/14/1862; Turner's Gap, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD