Three Days in Maryland, 1862

Captain Chalmers Lanier Glenn of Rockingham County served in Company I, Third North Carolina Regiment. (William Dorsey Pender was his 1st Colonel.) Glenn was killed in the bloodbath at South Mountain on Sept. 14, 1862. Brigadier General Lawrence O’Bryan Branch of Halifax County fought under General AP Hill. He was killed instantaneously three days later, on September 17, at the greater bloodbath of Sharpsburg (Antietam). Purely by accident of birth, Glenn is my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side, and Branch is my great-great-grandfather on my father’s side. I doubt that the two men ever knew each other. On a side note, but a very important one, Glenn carried a very special man servant and devoted friend, Matt, into battle with him on that ill- fated day at South Mountain. Such was Matt’s pain of his loss that his own health declined rapidly and he died a few months later.