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

Edmund Noah Joyner, a gallant Confederate veteran who is now prominent in the work of the Protestant Episcopal church, was born in Rockingham county, North Carolina, in 1847, and was reared and educated in Pitt county of that State. His father was Dr. Noah Joyner, born in Pitt county in 1816, who served as volunteer surgeon when occasion permitted, in the hospitals at Raleigh and Goldsboro during the war; his grandfather, John Joyner, was a member of the North Carolina legislature for many years; and his maternal grandfather, Dr. Robert Williams, served as a surgeon in the war of the Revolution from 1775, and afterward was a member of the legislature. In October, 1864, Mr. Joyner, being seventeen years of age, enlisted in Company D, Thirteenth battalion, North Carolina light artillery, as a private, and was stationed at Fort Fisher, where was sustained the Federal attack of December 24 and 25, 1864, and the combined attack of fleet and army on January 13, 14 and 15, 1865. In the latter engagement he received a frightful wound in the left temple, from a minie ball, and narrowly escaped death. The wound did not heal for a year, and during a portion of this time, until July 26, 1865, he was a prisoner-of-war at Point Lookout, Md. On his return home, after raising the crop which was the duty to which so many Confederate soldiers first turned their attention, he engaged in teaching school; afterward studied at Homer's school, Oxford, N. C., at a similar institution at Louisburg, and at Trinity college, Hartford, Conn., but was prevented from remaining long at college, by the effect of his wound upon his eyesight. He entered upon study in preparation for the ministry in 1870, maintaining himself meanwhile by teaching school, and in 1873 was ordained deacon at Morganton, by Bishop Atkinson, and priest in 1877. Having been engaged in teaching school at Hickory he remained there in charge of the church of the Ascension, and of Trinity church at Statesville, until 1879, when he was assigned to St. Bartholomew's church, Pittsboro. In 1881 the church at Chapel Hill was added to his charge. In 1884 he removed to South Carolina and became rector of the churches at Rock Hill and Yorkville, and in 1889, making his home at Columbia, he was put in charge, by Bishop Howe, of a mission among the negroes. From this he was promoted,