Re: George W. Thomas, Co D, 4th AL Inf
The ADAH website indicates George W. Thomas was present at Gettysburg; 29 members of the company were identified as being present for that battle, including Captain James Taylor Jones. Also, Major George W. Cary was a former captain of Company D. In that battle, Second Lieutenant Thomas "Tom" L. Christian was serving as "A.I.G." to General Law and was captured while posting scouts. In the Memorial Record of Alabama, under Marengo County, the remark is made that this company, "being a rifle company, was always employed as skirmishers." The ADAH site also notes that Private/Sergeant P. K. McMeller was a sergeant in the corps of sharpshooters beginning in 1863. In Alabama Historical Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 1 and 2, spring issue, 1961, p. 139, mention is made of an account entitled, "A Story of Company D, 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment, C.S.A." by James G. Hudson, "chaplain and treasurer." In October 2006, a website of Cowan's Auctions described a tintype of Corporal Samuel Francis Bondurant, who was a member of the Canebrake Rifle Guards (Company D). It stated that Bondurant was wounded at Little Round Top on 2 July 1863 and that he died in Uniontown, Alabama in 1889 and was buried "only a few feet from a U.D.C. memorial to the men of the Canebrake Rifle Guards." The ADAH database adds that Bondurant was still suffering from his Gettysburg wound (in right leg) as of 20 December 1864. The database notes that a number of privates in the company were "gallant soldiers," among them Edward Franklin Gouldman, Ed. P. Harris, Frank N. Kitchell, Samuel Y. Lee, Ben N. Lockett, A. J. Monaghan, Walton Perlee, and William M. Turner -- also Second Lieutenant Lewis Allen Morgan. Kitchell listed his pre-war occupation as dentist. Lee was a member of the ambulance corps. Private Thomas J. Norton, an Irish-born grocer, served on detail as a division provost guard.