Alan & Linda - Here's my take on it for what it's worth. I believe that T N Lipscomb and Thomas Newton Lipham are one and the same. Records are sketchy for Company K, where his records are found, but records of Company H detail movement and duty away from the area for most of the 6 months of their enlistment. They state that the company left LaGrange (where T N enlisted) on 8 Sep '63 and arrived at camp outside Atlanta on 10 Sep. Then on 28 Sep they "took up our line of march" for Rome and arrived at camp 1 1/2 miles south of town on the 30th. From there they marched to Dirt Town in Chattooga County on 3 Oct. There they reported that they served picket duty in several gaps in Taylor's Ridge and scouted on both sides of the Ga/Ala line, and as far away as "the Lookout Mountain", and that they established a courier line connecting with Gen. Bragg's line. They left Dirt Town on 16 Dec. and established camp 7 1/2 miles north of Rome, and continued picket and scout duty around Taylor's Ridge from there. They were mustered out at the end of their enlistment 31 Jan '64.

I find the widow's pension application interesting on account of two errors. The first might have prevented her from receiving a pension if it had been caught. The form states that the applicant is a "citizen of _____ (Randolph is written in here) County .... and was such on the 1st day of January 1899," as was required by the law authorizing the pension. However, whoever helped her fill out the form struck through 1899 and wrote in 1900, probably thinking that was necessary since the application was being made in May of 1900. The other error is, of course, the misidentification of her husband's unit. This error helped assure that she would, in fact, get the pension, although by law she was not entitled to it. The application form itself, in the instruction section, states that, "All persons who served in the 'Militia' 'State Reserves' or 'Home Guards of the State of Alabama,' during the War Between the States are eligible to relief under this act. But service in the military organizations of other states does not qualify them." The form lends itself to such misidentification as it does not specifically ask, in the portion to be filled out, if service was in a non-qualifying unit, or even to identify the branch of service. If one only filled in the blanks and did not add additional information not called for, every application would appear to be for service in a regular infantry regiment.