 |
William Lee Apthorp
William Apthorp was born August 31, 1837 in Lee County, Georgia. When a child, Apthorp moved with his family to Iowa, where his father became Iowa’s first minister of a Congregational Church. An anonymous transcriber of the document that follows wrote that “Apthorp’s mother was of New England Puritan-Pilgrim stock, noted for piety.” By the time this document was written, in June 1864, Apthorp had graduated from Dartmouth College (1859), joined the Union Army as captain of Co. B, Second South Carolina Loyal Volunteers (a black regiment), and been promoted to Lt. Colonel of the regiment. The 2nd South Carolina became the 34th Regiment of United States Colored Infantry in 1863. Apthorp mustered out of the army with his regiment in 1866 and remained in Florida. In 1867 he was appointed Register of Deeds for Hillsborough County, Florida, and was commissioned as a county judge the following year. From 1869 until 1875 he was chief clerk in the U.S. Surveyor General’s office. He served as Surveyor General of Florida from 1876-1878. In 1878, he moved to Springfield, New Jersey, where he operated a dairy farm until his death on January 24, 1879. Descendants of William Lee Apthorp donated a transcription of his Civil War manuscript, “Montgomery’s Raids in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina,” to the Historical Museum of Southern Florida at 101 West Flagler Street, Miami, Florida 33130. The document is filed as Apthorp Family Papers, 1741-1964, 2 Boxes, M89F, William Lee Apthorp, 34th USCT. An anonymous transcriber created a typescript of the manuscript in May 1965 that contained obvious errors. The 1965 transcription, not the original, is at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. In an attempt to correct the errors, the version of “Montgomery’s Raids” that follows was prepared in September 2007 by Daniel L. Schafer, Professor of History at the University of North Florida.
|
