Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

---

[917] lawyer in New York city. He joined this battery as a private and served as such with it until the close of the war, at the time of the surrender being at home on furlough. He participated in the following engagements: Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Wilderness and Spottsylvania. At the battle of Sharpsburg he was wounded in two places by the fragments of a shell, and remained in hospital about two weeks. After the war Mr. Wilder became a teacher and has been successful in his vocation. He was school commissioner of Sumter county four years, and in 1896 he was elected auditor of Sumter county, being re-elected in 1898. He was married in 1879 to Miss Sarah M. Roach, of Sumter, and they have five sons: Richard K., James G. R., Arthur H., R Eugene and Julien Diggs. Mr. Wilder is a member of Camp Dick Anderson, U. C. V., at Sumter.

---

William W. Wilkinson

William W. Wilkinson, of Charleston, formerly of the Confederate States navy, was born at Charleston in 1844, and in 1859 was appointed to the United States naval academy. He left Annapolis in December, 1860, upon the secession of his State, and returning to Charleston at once entered the State service. He was upon the staff of Col. J. J. Pettigrew for three or four months at Castle Pinckney and Morris island, and was then assigned to guard duty in Charleston harbor, with the rank of midshipman. In the summer of 1861 he was transferred to the Confederate States navy, and until the latter part of the year was on duty with the gunboat Huntress between Charleston and Savannah. He was then for several months with a river battery near Savannah, after which he was transferred to the Sampson of Commodore Tattnall's fleet, and later to the Huntress. Just before the capture of New Orleans he was ordered there to serve upon an ironclad, but was unable to reach the city, and went to Richmond. In that vicinity he participated in the famous repulse of Ericsson's monitor by the Drewry's Bluff battery, and remained at that station on the James river until early in 1864, when he was ordered abroad for duty on the vessels building in Europe. He sailed to Nassau, Havana, Southampton and London, and thence crossed to Paris, but found that the international complications were likely to prevent active service.