As I reported here, I’ve recently found records related to James A. McEntire in two new Ancestry.com databases: U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles and Confederate Pension Applications from Georgia. Here is a summary of the information found in these two records.
James was born in McDowell County, North Carolina. He and his family moved to Murray County, Georgia in about 1837.
He enlisted as a private in Company A, Georgia 39th Infantry Regiment on 10 Mar 1862. He served for four months after enlisting, then furnished a substitute. Apparently it was the practice among the wealthy (on both sides) to hire a substitute to fight. The Confederate Army disallowed substitutes in 1864. James later enlisted in Edmundson’s Battalion, in which he served until the surrender. He mustered out at Kingston, Georgia on 12 May 1865.
James was part of a group of men who were convicted in federal court of conspiracy in 1885. He spent eight years in federal prison in Ohio.
He was back in Murray County in 1902, at which time, he filed for an Indigent Soldier’s pension for his service in the Civil War. He describes his occupation since the end of the war as farming. He filed his pension on the grounds of “age and poverty,” and “infirmity and poverty.” He owned no property and had no source of income. He says he has a wife, “but no family.” A. K Ramsey and R. E. Wilson were witnesses on his behalf.
His mailing address is recorded in each year from 1902 to 1907 for the purpose of mailing his pension check. The address was usually in Murray County, but occasionally Gordon County (where he was later enumerated on the 1910 census).
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