I am co-editing a book of letters written by William Wallace Beard. He mustered in to the Miss 18th Co G Camden Rifles and at the end of the war was one of the few from that regiment still alive--only about 100 officers and men. Beard was a native of Mecklenburg County, NC, but emigrated to Alabama and then Mississippi sometime in the late 1850s. for work. My book with William R. Trotter is So Much Blood: the Civil War Letters of CSA Private William Wallace Beard 1861-1865. We are nearing publication end of March. From one letter it is clear that he was captured and jailed in the Old Capital Prison in DC. He seems to have been captured another time, but I am not clear when or where. He was sick many times,shell burst between his legs once and still he survived.

His last letter April 2 and 3 details the retreat from Richmond on the New Market Rd. He does not appear in the Appomattox records. so I am guessing he was captured at Sayler's Creek. No doubt he walked home to NC and then made his way back to Miss where he married, farmed and had a passel of kids. He is buried in Miss. Died 1900.

Can someone help with the numbers of times he was in infirmary, captured, what happened after 4.2 and 3.1865?

Thanks so much,

Virginia Cornue, PhD