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What happened to the bodies of Confederates killed at Sharpsburg?
In 1869 Oden Bowie, the Governor of Maryland, requested that Thomas Boullt of Hagerstown, one of the Trustees for Maryland at the Antietam National Cemetery where the Union dead were buried, employ agents to go over the battlefield and mound up the trenches and graves of the Confederate dead, to make careful notes of the locations and, as far as possible, to identify the dead. Link to More Info Bowie was a Mexican War veteran.
Boullt hired Moses Poffinberger and Aaron Good. They listed 758 identifiable remains, and 2,481 unknown. The location of the burials were recorded on the "Bowie List" cataloged by location with descriptions of the burials. Heres a link to an index of the identified remains. Unfortunately, William E Newlin is not included; it is possible that he is listed under a misspelled name.
Ten years after the battle, Henry Mumma was hired to begin removing the remains of the Confederate soldiers - both identified and unknown - to the newly established Washington Confederate Cemetery in Hagerstown.
Mumma identified those he could, but as the Hagerstown Herald Weekly of June 1874 reported:
The 16th Georgia fought on September 14 1862 at Crampton's Gap. These men were all listed on page 81 of the Bowie List. Their burials were described as “Buried close along the fence on west side of woods back of graveyard in Burkettsville.” The graves in the Washington Confederate Cemetery are laid out in an arc with sections for each state. There are no markers within the burial area.122 were brought to the Cemetery on Saturday, of whom only the eight following were recognized: M. Grubne, Co. C, 16th Georgia; Benj. Mathews, Co. F, 16th Georgia; E. H. A., Georgia; Capt. N. Reeder, Co. H, 16th Georgia; Wm. Smith, Co. B, 16th Georgia; Thomas Hobbs, Co. K, 16th Georgia; Thomas Sander, Co. G, 10th Georgia; Dr. Braddock, S. C.
A bronze tablet shows the names of those who were identified and large sections of unknowns. Burials are in sections by state and include some from South Mountain and Antietam.
The Hillsborough Recorder. (Hillsborough, NC), October 22, 1862, page 3.
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