Written by Robin D. Holt; edited and vetted by Cheri Todd Molter
James Archibald Holt, Company G, North Carolina 6th Infantry Regiment, enlisted in the service of the Confederate States of America on May 29, 1861 at Charlotte, NC. He was discharged on September 8, 1862.
This was the only information the family ever knew. Great-granddad came home with a limp and a certain affection for liquor. The family was staunch Lutherans and thus teetotalers. He was considered the “family drunk” and not worth much toward the management of the farm and his household. He died one night on his way home from town, fallen and frozen to death in the snow.
What we NOW know, after finding his military records online, is that he was wounded in battle and honorably discharged from the army by reason of “permanent dislocation of the hip joint.” The man lived in pain the rest of his life and alcohol was his pain medicine. Too proud to admit that he was less than he was before war, he never told anyone the extent of his wounds or of the pain he must have suffered daily.