Sidney Lewis

A recent college graduate from Sparta, Hancock County, he enlisted as Private, Company A, 6th Georgia Infantry on 17 June 1861.

He was wounded in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. Major Gould of the 10th Maine Infantry later wrote of the battle:

... I got a letter from Mr. Sidney Lewis, editor of The Ishmaelite, of Sparta, Ga., who was a private in the 6th Ga., of Colquitt's Brigade. He writes that very early in the morning the companies A of all five of Colquitt's regiments were sent out and fought independently of the brigade, and, I judge, unknown to its commander and staff, since they failed to mention it in their several letters to me and in the official report. Capt. Morgan [it was Capt. Arnold], of the 6th Ga., afterward killed at Petersburg, led this battalion and they fought in [the] East Woods, on the right of an Alabama regiment of some other command ...

He was surrendered at Greensboro, NC on 26 April 1865.

He worked as an editor at the Macon Telegraph, Augusta Chronicle, and other Georgia papers. In 1878 he was founder with R.H. Lewis of the Sparta Ishmaelite, and was its editor to 1905.

Basic information from Henderson's Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia, 1861-1865 via Fincham.1 The quote above from Major J. Gould, 11th Maine, in the National Tribune (Washington, DC) of 25 August 1892 online from the Library of Congress. Personal details in his death notice in the Macon Weekly Telegraph of 30 December 1914 and local historians and family genealogists. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

12/29/1914; Sparta, GA; burial in Sparta Cemetery, Sparta, GA