Elbert Womack

In 1860 he was a 46 year old farmer near Pittsboro in Chatham County, NC. He enlisted on 4 March 1862 and mustered at Camp Magnum as a Private in Captain William H Jones' Company - the Chatham Light Infantry - on 17 April. They were later designated Company G of the 48th North Carolina Infantry.

He was mortally wounded by a gunshot to the hip joint in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and was captured there.

He was treated at a field hospital near the battlefield, probably on the nearby Albert Poffenberger farm, and was probably captured there when Confederate forces departed on 18/19 September. He was admitted to US Army General Hospital #5 in Frederick, MD on 10 October and died there of wounds on 14 October 1862. He was originally buried "along the west side and in [Mt. Olivet] cemetery at Frederick."

He may have been reinterred in Washington Confederate Cemetery at Rose Hill in Hagerstown, MD in about 1874.

Possible Hagerstown burial information from Pruett,1 who has him as Albert. His service from the Roster 2 and his Compiled Service Records,3 online from fold3, which has his age as 46 at enlistment; both have him as Elbert. Wound and hospital details from Otis,4 as Albert Wormack, and the Patient List,5 as Elbert Wommack or Wornmack. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1850 & 1860, both of which list him as Elbert and estimate his birth in 1817 and 1814, respectively. He has gravestones at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Frederick, MD, and he may still be there.

He married Matilda Judd (c. 1825-1892) and they had at least 6 children between 1842 and 1857.

Rick Richter owns an 1862 Richmond rifle with the initials "A W" carved into the stock. His study of the documented provenance of the weapon - from Alfred Poffenberger, who got it from a wounded North Carolina soldier, to local resident Charles Turner, to collector Fred Remsburg - leads him to conclude it was Private Womack's weapon, and therefore Womack's correct first name, or the one he used, was Albert. Additionally, his study of 39 North Carolina men with initials "AW" present on that part of the field at Sharpsburg found no other matches for the circumstances of the gun-owner's wounding and capture as seen in Womack's case.

c. 1814; Chatham County, NC

10/14/1862; Frederick, MD; burial in Washington Confederate Cemetery, Hagerstown, MD