Lukasz:

With respect to Julius Christian C. Sosnowski, he was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1841. His mother moved to Columbia, S.C., to open Madam Sosnowski's Girls' School, at Barhamsville, near Columbia, and Sosnowski grew to adulthood there. He was initially appointed Assistant Surgeon, PACS, and assigned to duty with the 2 Louisiana Infantry Volunteers on 6 July 1861, although his date of rank as assistant surgeon was 18 Sep 61. On 18 Sep he was reassigned to the 3 Louisiana. On 14 Nov 1861 he resigned his commission for unspecified reasons, and then enlisted as a private in Company B/Holcombe Legion Cavalry Battalion on 20 Nov 1861. The Holcombe Legion was a South Carolina unit. He was detailed as a courier, first to MGEN Gustavus W. Smith, and then to MGEN Arnold Elzey, commanding the Department of Richmond, from December, 1862 through December 1863. On 12 July 1864 he was promtoed to Ordinance Sergeant and assigned to the 19 Virginia Heavy Artillery Battalion, a unit which was assigned to duty in the fortifications surrounding Richmond. A muster roll for Nov-Dec 1864 shows that he was on the staff of LCOL John C. Pemnberton, who was commanding the artillery of the Department of Richmond. He was paroled at Appomattox as Ordinance Sergeant of Martin W. Gary's Cavalry Brigade. The date of his assignment to the cavalry brigade is not given. The Cavalry Brigade was composed of the Hampton legion Mounted Infantry, a few scattered units of the 7th Georgia Cavalry, the 24th Virginia Cavalry, and the 7th South Carolina Cavalry. The Holcombe Legion Cavalry Battalion (in which Sosnowski had enlisted in November, 1861), has been combined with other untis to form the 7 S.C. Cavalry, whioch probably accounts for his assignement to the cavalry brigade.

Although Sosnowski was a physician, I cannot find a record of his graduation from a school of medicine, and he probably studied medicine under the supervision of another physician, a practice quite common at the time. He married in 1867, and settled on Edisto Island, where he died of diptheria on August 21, 1876. He is buried in the churchyard of Trinity Episcopal Church, Edisto Island. (which is located on the Carolina coast about midway between Charleston and Beaufort).

There is a Sosnowski Family Scrapbook located at South Carolina Library, University fo South Carolina, which provides much information on this man. He was unfit for field service, apparently as a result of some unspecified disease. He settled on Edisto Island after his marriage, that being the home of his wife. He was the son of Joseph Stanilaus Sosnowski, who was born in Lithuania of an old Polish noble family. Serving in the Russian army, he joined the Polish revolutionaries in the Revolution of 1830, and was forced to flee when the revolt collapsed. Her arrived in the U. S. in 1833, and settled in Erie, Pennsylvania, where his four children were born. When his father died in 1845, Sosnowski, with his mother and siblings, moved about from place to place while his mother taught for a living, first at Troy, N. Y., then at Charleston, then at Macon, Ga., before founding the Barhamsville Institute near Columbia in the mid-1850's. The school was aptronized by some of the best families in the South, who sent their daughters there for education. An article by Edmund L. Kowalczyk, "A Polish Family in the South," in the Polish American Historical Associatio Archives, provides much of the above family information.

All in all, a very interesting man!