“Impetuous Gallantry” - William Jones in the Civil War

Orientation: Starting with Raymond Blackford, son of Minnie Lee Jones Blackford, daughter of Jeptha Lorenzo Dow Jones, son of William Joseph Jones (January 17, 1820-November 23, 1894)

William Jones, Jonathan Jones’ son, fought in the Civil War. On Ancestry.com there is a William J. Jones listed in Company I of the 57th Unit of the Georgia Infantry. It shows his rank at both induction and discharge as private and his allegiance as Confederate. At another spot on the internet I found Jones, William enlisted as a private on March 4, 1862 on the “Muster Roll of: Company I, 41st Regiment Georgia Volunteer Infantry Army of Tennessee, Confederate States of America, Heard County, Georgia, Heard County Rangers.”

As a side note: I wondered why William, from Georgia, would have been fighting in the “Army of Tennessee”. A genealogy librarian explained to me that different sections of both the Union and the Confederacy called their troops by different names. Here is quote from an interesting link that describes it further.

“To the non-military buff, the organization and terminology used for Civil War armies can be very confusing. The "Army of the Potomac" was the main Union army in the eastern theater of the war and the "Army of Northern Virginia" was the main Confederate force. Remarkably, both of the armies that fought the Battle of Gettysburg were organized in a similar fashion including a structure of corps, divisions, and brigades.”

The link goes on to describe the differences between terms such as regiments, brigades, divisions, etc. in an Army organization chart. Understanding these terms will help you better understand the entries about the 41st Regiment further in this section. http://www.nps.gov/gett/getttour/armorg.htm

I visited the San Antonio Public Library and spent the better part of one day researching the 41st Regiment of Georgia. The most helpful source to which the librarian directed me was the War of the Rebellion – Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies – Series I . The index of this set of reference books led me to a number of different volumes that spanned April 1862 to March 1864. Here are several entries found that specifically regard the activities of that 41st Regiment.