I need to correct one misstatement in my earlier post. Robert A. Turner left Richmond on February 3 to go home to Edgefield District, S. C. on furlough to mount. He wrote in his pocket diary, "I started home on furlough -- arrived home on the 8th. The enemy were in such close proximity to the Rail Road [from Branchville to Aiken] it was impracticable to run trains through to Augusta. Consequently I had to walk from Branchville." I suppose they stopped running the trains about 5 February. Your ancestor leaving Petersburg a day earlier may have caught the last train!

Turner's diary is among the many excellent Civil War sources at South Caroliniana Library, Columbia.