Well, never met him personally...

According to Robert Krick, Lee's Colonels, Branch was colonel of the 1st SC Militia Rifles.

There is a webpage which talks of the "Star of the West", with a drawing, at http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/StarOfTheWest.html

In Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v.1., p.46, Abner Doubleday recounted that "soon after daylight on the 9th of January, with my glass I saw a large steamer pass the bar and enter the Morris Island Channel. It was the Star of the West, with reenforcements and supplies for us. When she came near the upper part of the island the secessionists fired a shot at her." E. B. Long, The Civil War Day By Day, p.24, says "the first shots had been fired in Charleston Harbor and many considered them the first serious shots of the war, though there was actually no war yet."

The information you relate is found on the Union Springs, AL, website,