THE CIVIL WAR KIRKMANS
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Records show 69 Kirkmans served in 37 Confederate infantry, cavalry, artillery or home guard regiments from eight states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. It’s no surprise that two-thirds of Them, 45, were from the Tarheel State. Eight Kirkmans wore blue. One was wounded in action and five are listed on the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps Roll of Honor in Washington, DC. |
| EIGHTEEN REBEL KIRKMANS WERE KILLED IN ACTION, DIED OF WOUNDS, SUCCUMBED TO DISEASE, WERE CRIPPLED OR CAPTURED. The family’s first Confederate casualty was Pvt. Thomas Kirkman, Jr. of Company H, 4th Alabama Infantry, wounded on July 21, 1861 during the first battle Manassas, VA (Bull Run).
GETTYSBURG The Kirkmans’ bloodiest disaster was Gettysburg where eight family members were killed, mortally wounded, captured or maimed when Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia suffered its worst defeat. The Kirkmans’ most ghastly loss occurred on July 1, 1863 (the first day of the three-day battle) when the 26th North Carolina Infantry ran into the 24th Michigan, a regiment of one of the Union army’s most celebrated units, the Iron Brigade. In the war’s deadliest regiment vs. regiment duel, the 26th North Carolina and 24th Michigan shot each other to shreds, both sides suffering more than 80 percent casualties. Four Kirkman brothers, sons of Dr. George Kirkman of St. Lawrence, Chatham County, NC, (south of Chapel Hill) were in Company G of the 26th North Carolina: Sgt. William Preston Kirkman, 25; Pvt. Wiley Prentiss Kirkman, 22; and Pvts. George Badger Kirkman and Henry Clay Kirkman, 19-year-old twins. Sgt. William and the twins George and Henry were killed or mortally wounded during the fighting west of the town. The U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA has a sad letter from Henry to his father, dated Aug 6, 1863, in which Henry reports being badly wounded in his left foot by a "minny (minie) ball." Henry also said he was "improving steady and I am in very good health." He wasn’t. The Institute has a tragic second letter from a Mississippi regimental chaplain that says Henry contracted pneumonia and died in a Gettysburg hospital on Sept. 1, 1863. The fourth brother, Wiley, was wounded, captured and sent to the federal prison camp at Point Lookout, MD where he died of scurvy a month before Appomattox. Other Kirkman casualties at Gettysburg included Pvts. William D. Kirkman and William W. Kirkman of the 45th North Carolina Infantry. William D. also was killed on July 1. William W. was captured, sent to Fort Delaware prison camp near Wilmington, DE, and succumbed to typhoid fever on Oct. 25, 1863. Pvt. John H. Kirkman of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry was severely wounded on July 2nd and must have suffered agonies while jouncing from Gettysburg to Richmond in a springless hospital wagon. After 17 months in Richmond’s Chimborazo hospital, John was discharged as unfit for further duty. Corp. Eli C. Kirkman of the 45th North Carolina also was captured at Gettysburg, exchanged in December 1863 and captured again at the battle of Cedar Creek, VA in October 1864. He was again exchanged in February 1865 and survived the war.
OTHER KIRKMAN CIVIL WAR CASUALTIES Another Kirkman who had a tough and fatal war was Sgt. M. Kirkman of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry who suffered a saber slash on the head during Jeb Stuart’s cavalry skirmish at Upperville, VA (part of Gettysburg’s preliminaries) on June 21, 1863. He survived the wound but died of typhoid in Chimborazo on Feb. 5, 1864. Also killed was Sgt. John W. Kirkman of the 2nd North Carolina Infantry who was shot in the chest and side during the bloody battle of Spotsylvania Court House, VA in May, 1864 and died in Chimborazo on June 5, 1864. Pvt. Elisha W. Kirkman of the 45th North Carolina was captured at Spotsylvania, imprisoned at Elmira, NY and exchanged in November 1864. Pvt. N.W. Kirkman of the 22nd North Carolina was killed at Petersburg, VA and two family members were captured during the Yankees’ final victorious Petersburg breakthrough. Pvt. Andrew Kirkman of the 53rd North Carolina Infantry was collared on April 2, 1865, and Pvt. A.C. Kirkman of the 14th North Carolina Infantry was taken on April 3, 1865. Typhoid claimed Pvt. Orlando Kirkman of the 2nd North Carolina Infantry who died in Lynchburg, VA on Nov. 24, 1862. Records also show several Tarheel Kirkmans deserted.
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One of the most fascinating rebel Kirkmans was First Lieutenant Alexander Jackson Kirkman of the 4th Alabama Cavalry who was attending Heidelberg University in Germany when the war erupted. Alex returned home on a blockade runner, joined the 4th Alabama, apparently escaped the mass surrender at Fort Donelson, TN (1862) and participated in the battles of Shiloh, TN (1862) and Chickamauga, GA (1863). Alex was captured during a daring raid on Florence, AL (which may have been his home town) on Oct. 30, 1863 and imprisoned in Fort Delaware. |
| During the summer of 1864, Alex became a victim of one of war’s most asinine stupidities. In August, the Confederate commander at Charleston, SC ordered 600 Union prisoners to be held in an area of the city that was being bombarded by Yankee cannon fire. In angry retaliation, the Yankees transferred 600 Confederate officers from Fort Delaware to a mosquito-infested island near Charleston and housed them in a rude stockade that was being harried by rebel artillery. Alex was one of the unfortunate 600 who had to dodge their fellow Confederates’ gunfire. Alex and his comrades were guarded by the famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the blacks who gained fame when they attempted to storm Battery Wagner in the summer of 1863, an event documented in the movie "Glory." The 54th’s blacks did not treat the 600 with kid gloves. The 600's idiotic exposure to Confederate fire continued for 45 days until the rebels transferred their prisoners out of Charleston and the Yankees sent their prisoners to Ft. Pulaski, GA and Hilton Head, SC. Alex and other survivors of the 600 were returned to Fort Delaware in March 1865. After the Confederacy collapsed, Alex and his fellow prisoners were required to take the oath of allegiance before they were freed in June 1865. Alex and the others who endured the Charleston atrocity later were called "The Immortal 600," but there wasn’t anything immortal about their disgraceful treatment. Family members who want to learn more about the miserable imprisonment of Alex and the 600 should read the book "Captives Immortal" by Mauriel Phillips Joslyn.
YANKEE KIRKMANS On the Union side, Sgt. John Kirkman of the 14th Illinois Infantry picked up a flag from a fallen comrade during the terrible April, 1862 battle at Shiloh, TN. A few minutes later, a Confederate bullet ripped through the flag, cut the flagstaff in two, went through John’s hat and wounded him in the head.
Capt. Joel T. Kirkman (1838-1901) of Illinois, a grandson of Tarheel pioneer George Kirkman Jr., served in the Regular Army’s 10th Infantry Regiment from 1863 until the Confederacy’s demise. In 1866 he was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the scaled down regular army’s 17th Infantry regiment and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1901.
Another John Kirkman served in Company K of the 56th Massachusetts Infantry. The Union Army Quartermaster Corps’ Role of Honor in Washington, DC also lists James, John, Madison, L.S. and S. Kirkman |
