Published in the Georgia Historical
Quarterly, December 1941 and March 1942, contributed by with notes by Edmund
Cody Burnett
Part I:
December 1941, Pages 371 - 400 (letters from Jan. 12, 1861 - Oct. 10, 1861)
Part II:
March 1942, Pages 65 - 90 (letters from Oct. 13, 1861 - Oct. 15, 1864)
(I have scanned
these 2 articles into Adobe PDF format. The quality is not the best,
but are searchable.)
These are letters
from James Newell, Thomas Reese, and William Edwin Lightfoot. The
letters were researched and extensive notes added by Edmund Cody Burnett (his
mother Henrietta Sarah Cody Burnett was first cousin of James Newell
Lightfoot) and published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly. The notes
include much detail and research concerning the
6th Alabama Infantry
of Rode's Brigade
in Confederate Army of Civil War, especially the Henry Grey's
company and includes many names of soldiers of this company.
I am gg
granddaughter of James Newell Lightfoot. The three brothers and their sister(s?)
had been "adopted" by their uncle Rev. Edmund Cody (their mother's brother)
and his wife Sarah Henderson Cody, after their parents died. He became
their guardian and had 7 children of his own. Their home at the time the
Civil War started was in Henry County Alabama.
"James Newel1 Lightfoot, the eldest of the brothers, was approaching
the age of twenty-two when the war came on, having been born on August
14,1839, and immediately joined up with the first company organized in his
home county, the "Henry Greys," a company raised by Alexander C. Gordon of
Abbeville, who became its captain. The organization was perfected on
May 11, 1861, and James N. Lightfoot was made second lieutenant."
"On May 16 the company was mustered into service as Company
A of the Sixth
Alabama Infantry regiment, although the designation was later changed
to B. On May 7; 1863, James N. Lightfoot became colonel of the sixth Alabama
Infantry regiment."
This regiment was part of what was known as the
Rodes Brigade.
The majority of the
letters were written by the middle brother Thomas Reese Lightfoot, who
was 17 years old as the Civil War started. He also served in the Henry
Greys, and eventually became Captain of the unit. He died in the battle
of Winchester, September 19, 1864. "...,his letters suggest that, for a
boy of seventeen, he was above the average in mental maturity and seriousness
of purpose. From a private he had attained the captaincy of his company in a
little more than a year, and lacked
some four months of being twenty-one years of
age when he fell."
"The youngest of the three
brothers, William Edwin Lightfoot, enlisted in the company of his
brother,
Captain Thomas Lightfoot, November
3, 1863. In the preceding summer, as shown by his letters of August 5
and 6, printed in this series, he was in attendance at a military school at
Glennville, Alabama, and even then, it would seem, restrained from enlisting
chiefly by the admonitions of his brothers. In the end, however, so speaks the
family tradition, substantiated no doubt by himself in after years, he "ran
away" from school and made his way to the front. There is preserved but
an imperfect official record of his service, but the letters of Dr. A. E.
McGarity..." (Letters of A Confederate Surgeon: Dr. Abner Embry McGarity,
1862 - 1866, published by The Georgia History Quarterly, June, September,
December 1945, March 1946, contributed with notes by Edmund Cody Burnett) give
us some information. "He is recorded as having surrendered at
Appomattox, April 9, 1865, being then sergeant major. After the war he
established his residence a t Fort Gaines, Georgia, where he married Miss
Betty Farmer. He died there October 27, 1896."
