May 18
On this day in 1864, Private George D. Weatherly of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry was admitted to the General Hospital at Camp Winder in Richmond, Virginia, with a gunshot wound. Just 15 when the war began, Weatherly worked on his widowed mother’s modest, prosperous farm near Greensboro. Soon after he turned 18 in June 1863, Weatherly enlisted in a local unit, Company F, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, and traveled to Winchester, Virginia, where he mustered in on June 26. He remained with a detachment under Captain Pinkney A. Tatum, who was recovering from wounds suffered at Brandy Station earlier that month, while the bulk of the regiment was already in Maryland as part of the Gettysburg campaign. Upon their return, Weatherly joined them and remained with the cavalry through nearly a year of constant movement and combat. In mid-May 1864, during the regiment’s constant skirmishing with General Philip Sheridan’s Union cavalry, Weatherly was wounded. Though the exact date is uncertain, it likely occurred during the May 12 skirmish at Meadow Bridge, northeast of Richmond, where their brigade commander, James Byron Gordon, was fatally wounded. This was also the same day that Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart died of wounds received at Yellow Tavern. Weatherly was admitted to the Richmond hospital on this day and was treated for three weeks before being granted a 60-day furlough to recover at home. While recuperating, he married Mary Webb on August 24, 1864, just before he returned to his unit. He was captured at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, 1865, and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland, until he took the oath of allegiance on June 21, 1865. Weatherly returned home to his wife and together they had four children before George died young, sometime between 1875 and 1880, from unknown causes.
Photo: Edwin Forbes illustration of a Union Cavalry charge
Sources:
Louis H. Manarin, comp., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 2:149; George D. Weatherly, Compiled Military Service Records; 1860 U.S. Census: Guilford County, NC; North Carolina, U.S., Index to Marriage Bonds, 1741-1868; “North Carolina in the American Civil War: 19th North Carolina Regiment (2nd Cavalry)
