You wrote: >>> This 'thread' is fascinating. Are you related? <<<<

No. My interest is in documenting Confederate POWs who were held at Fort Delaware.

You wrote: >>> Also, lately I have heard that he was a prisoner of war, although Mr. Chapla's book does not mention that in his service record, a recently found cousin says she remembers her mother talking about James Wesley being a prisoner of war, do you know where he was held? <<<

Captured at Gettysburg, he would have been transferred to Fort Delaware from Fort McHenry. Point Lookout did not begin operations as a POW camp until September 1863.

According to John's research, JWT's pension claim was that he was wounded in the right arm by a Minnie ball which fractured the radius near the elbow joint on 2 JUL 1863 and that he was captured during the evacuation at South Mountain on 4 JUL 1863. If he were then treated in a field hospital at Gettysburg, he could have been forwarded to the West Building General Hospital in Baltimore and released on parole to Confederate authorities from there before the end of 1863.

I responded to John: >>> From NARA Tape 40, Society researchers had collected the name of Private A. W. THOMAS, Co. H, 42nd Virginia Infantry as having been captured at South Mountain on 4 JUL 1863. Nothing on his arrival at or departure from Fort Delaware. Nothing on his stay at Fort Delaware. NARA Tape 40 (a microfilm roll) contains records specific to Fort Delaware that rarely appear in the Compiled Military Service Records. This "A. W. THOMAS" was the only record in our database under the surname THOMAS associated with the 42nd VA Infantry. <<<

The point of my response was that we do not have a clear record of him being at Fort Delaware, nor is such record to be found in the Compiled Military Service Records. We have the single entry for a Private A. W. Thomas, Co. H, 42nd Virginia Infantry and there is no CMSR supporting that name either. So far, there are no records showing that JWT was released from Point Lookout.

John wrote: >>> James Wesley Thomas, H/42Va, has no compiled service record in the National Archives. The information about him is principally drawn from muster rolls of the 42nd Virginia at the University of Virginia, which were not available to the compilers of the service records; his pension applications, which provide the date and nature of his Gettysburg wound; and Selected Records of the War Department Relating to Confederate Prisoners of War, 1861-1865; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M598, 145 rolls); War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109; National Archives, Washington, D.C., which is where I found the reference to his capture at South Mountain and transfer to Ft. Delaware. The link is through Ancestry.com to the page in M598 that lists him. <<<

I still don’t clearly understand where John got the information referencing JWT’s capture at South Mountain and transfer to Fort Delaware. If this is from a digital image of an actual document, I can buy into it. If this is an third party transcript, the challenge still stands.

What John is missing from the UVA muster rolls and other documents he found is any release date from Fort Delaware and/or from Point Lookout. I think we are both assuming the “A. W. THOMAS” in the Society database and “James Wesley THOMAS” are the same man. He could have been transferred from Fort Delaware in September or October 1863 to Point Lookout. From Point Lookout he could have been paroled and delivered to Confederate authorities in March 1864. But why are there no records of this?

This mystery is not yet resolved!

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society
Website: www.fortdelaware.org
E-mail: society@fortdelaware.org