Ron:
My research indicatesx that RCB initially enlisted in E/7 MISS as 1 SGT 4 May 61, and was subsequently promoted to 1 LT (not to CAPT). At the reorganization of the army in April 1862 he was not reelected and was dropped from the rolls.
He first appears on the rolls of Company C/Hampton Legion Infantry on the Mar-Apr 1863 roll as present enlisted at Columbia 1 Apr 63. Except for one company of the Legion, the rolls do not indicate who enlisted and who was conscripted; but as of 1 Apr 63 the Legion was on the Blackwater River in southeast Virginia, and men who apparently volunteered are shown to havew enlisted there. I strongly supect he was conscripted at Columbia, the location of the State Conscript Camp, and assigned to the Legion, as were a number of other men from the Pee Dee region during this time.
I am not looking at the entries in the Compiled Service Records (CSR) at this time, but my recolleciton is that the enlistee was described on by his first initial, "R. Bethea." He apprears on the subsequent rolls of the Legion as present through Oct 63, the last existant roll for the company until Aug-Sep 64. The Sep-Oct roll was apprarently prepared sometime in January 1864, after Jan 17, and in all probability reflects his status at that time, not the end of October.
The Legion was sent back to S.C. in late March 1864 to obtain mounts, and was reclassified as mounted infantry. He does not appear on the rolls from Sep through Dec 1864; many men were transferred when the regiment was reorganized.
In the early 1890's, the State, to verify the status of men to qualify for State pensions, called on the old veterans to prepare rolls of their companies, and these, often made from memory, were recorded in three bound volumes, entitled, "South Carolina Volunteers in Confederate Service" (SCV), now located at our State Archives and commonly called the "Memory Rolls." Company C is found in Volume I; the Company C roll is sparce with supplemental data, but lists him as either "Robert C. Bethea" or "R.C. Bethea." Again, this is from memory, but I re-verifed the data in 2007. It has a notation that he was "transferred."
By elimination, I canot acocunt for any person other than Robert Cochran Bethea as the man in Company C.
Although SCV states he was transferred, there is a strong possibility that he obtained as writ of habeus corpus and obtained a discharge on the grounds of either his status as a physician, or the fact that he was a legal resident of Mississippi. His absence from the rolls of any Mississippi (or other) unit after April 1862 certainly allows for his service in a unit of his native South Carolina during 1863 and probably into 1864.
R. C. Bethea is listed as a graduate of the South Carolina Medical College in the class of 1858; the medical college was, and is, located in Charleston; I am not aware of any other medical school in the State at that time. That obviously does not include or exclude him from service in the Legion. I strongly suspect that he
returned to S.C. on a visit, and got caught up in the net of conscription.
I have other personal information on him, including his attendance at Wake Forest College in 1851-52. I'm not sure what a good Methodist was doing hob-nobbing with the Baptists, but his name does appear in a roll of the class in the college catalogue, which gives his address as Marion District, S.C. Wake Forest's records are somewhat fragmentary during this period, so he may have attended in other years as well.
Ron, contact me direct at Sturkey@wctel.net and I will be glad to try to dig up the material I have. My sketch of him with sources is included among the roster and history of the Hampton Legion Infantry published by Broadfoot Publishing in December 2008.
Of course I cannot be 100% certain that the R. C. Bethea of Company C is Robert Cochran Bethea, but I feel very strongly confident that he is one and the same man. I look forward to hearing from you.