The 11th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861 1865.
A Biographical Roster
Compiled and annotated by
Richard Michael Allen
2018 by Richard Michael Allen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Allen, Richard Michael, author.
Title: The 11th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865:
A Biographical Roster / by Richard Michael Allen.
Description: First edition. | El Dorado Hills, California : Savas Beatie, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008804| ISBN 9781611214277 (hardcover: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781940669878 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Confederate States of America. Army. Georgia Infantry
Regiment, 11th--Registers. | Georgia--History--Civil War,
1861-1865--Registers. | United States--History--Civil War,
1861-1865--Registers. | Soldiers--Georgia--Genealogy. |
Soldiers--Georgia--Biography. | Georgia--Genealogy.
Classification: LCC E559.5 11th .A45 2018 | DDC 973.7/458--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008804
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To my father,
Richard Patrick Allen
Brig. Gen. George T. Anderson
Introduction
The following roster represents my best attempt to recreate the structure and personnel of this regiment as accurately and in as detailed a manner as possible within the limits of existing confederate records. Using the various sources to which I had access, it was my intention to recreate as nearly as I could, a complete list of regimental personnel including every change of rank by promotion or demotion that took place within this regiment chronologically during the period of 1861 1865.
Such an undertaking understandably requires a starting point. For the research of confederate infantry from the state of Georgia, there is only one such point at which to begin, that being Lillian Hendersons landmark work Rosters of Confederate Soldiers of Georgia published by the Georgia State Division of Confederate Pensions and Records in 1959. Hendersons work used information taken from the Georgia pension office in which she worked, as well as using existing rosters and the admittedly vague information from the veterans themselves to compile what remains a truly astonishing body of information. As large and important an effort as this was however, as anyone who has researched Georgia infantry in detail through her work can likely attest, Hendersons work, perhaps inevitably, is sometimes vague, contradictory, or outright incorrect.
Aside from issues of dubious accuracy within Hendersons work, it became clear that to attain the kind of detail wanted in these regimental rosters, it would be necessary to go much deeper. It was decided to research every entry within Hendersons rosters individually through the Compiled Service Records of each member of the regiment and document each members service as completely as the existing records would allow. This method, while time consuming, would not only be a proof to verify or challenge any of Hendersons conclusions, but also opened the door to a vast amount of structural detail that proved far beyond the scope of Hendersons work.
I wanted not only a complete structural breakdown of the regiment, but more specifically that same type of breakdown for the companies within it, including where possible, each noncommissioned rank; something that was not featured in Hendersons roster and appears here to my knowledge, for the first time. A detailed and methodical search of the CSRs provided an amazing amount of information not previously recorded and allowed this effort to entirely restructure and expand Hendersons rosters into the format you will see within these pages.
Anyone familiar with confederate research within the CSRs will understand the many challenges it presents. Only the 7th Georgia regiment, of the four Georgia regiments for which I created rosters, had anything nearing complete company muster rolls within the CSR. For other regiments many period records are completely missing and there are large gaps in available documentation for which one has to make allowances. Where accurate times could not be established within these rosters, an accurate time frame was substituted. By using other sources within the collection of research materials, some of these gaps were narrowed or eliminated altogether, but many do remain.
In the making of a roster, I dont think there is a more cardinal error than improperly filling in a blank. If a chronological or informational discrepancy proved to be beyond resolution, it is footnoted as such. After adding available census information such as age, occupation and residence, and the inclusion of final burial locations where possible, the next stage in the creation of these rosters was my having access to the extensive and professional archive of Henry Persons.
In addition to my fifteen years of research on Andersons brigade, I was lucky enough during the creation of this work to collaborate with and have access to the massive collection of Anderson related materials compiled by Henry Persons. Henry has been studying the brigade for over twenty-five years and is a top-notch researcher. As a former lieutenant colonel and later an archivist for both the U. S. Army and the N.C.I. S., Henrys information is professionally organized, and I have no doubt comprises the largest single collection of information on Andersons brigade that exists anywhere. For lack of a better term, I will call this collection, The Henry Persons Library . This, as you can imagine, was an invaluable resource which added immeasurably to the richness of this work. Thousands of documents, newspaper accounts, information from Ancestry.com, casualty rolls, letters, Historical Society and SCV documents were used to further flesh out these rosters and add an otherwise unattainable level of detail.
There are many ways to make a roster and each has its benefits and omissions. The rosters that have been created here are military rosters that cover only the term of ones period of service within the company or regiment. Other than prewar occupation, they do not address socio-economic issues such as wives, number of children or post war occupations. Transfers are shown, but the individual service history does not continue once a member leaves the company or regiment.
