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Home Town Washington County, Maryland
Last Address Los Angeles, California
Date of Passing Feb 01, 1905
Location of Interment Angelus Rosedale Cemetery - Los Angeles, California
Wall/Plot Coordinates Section N, Lot 110, Grave 2NE
Birth name: Welford Chapman Bridwell (also spelled Wellford or Willford)
Census records state that he was born in Virginia (Bridwell), but military records state Maryland (Beauford).
Indian Campaigns Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient.
On 18 Feb 1862, at the age of 15 years 4 months, he enlisted as a Private in the Confederate States Army for a period of 3 years. He served with B-Company, 30th Virginia Infantry, Corse's Brigade, Pickett's Division, First Corps commanded by General James Longstreet. He was wounded in battle at Sharpsburg. He was mustered out of the C.S.A. on April 27, 1865.
According to the Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Virginia found on Fold3.com, he was taken as a Prisoner of War in Virginia on 23 Apr 1865 and commited to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC on 24 Apr 1865 and was released on 27 Apr 1865 in Alexandria, Virginia. https://www.fold3.com/image/11373067 https://www.fold3.com/image/11373066
He eventually joined the United States Army under the name Clay Beauford and served bravely in the Indian Campaigns in the West.
He is buried at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, California
Description The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history.
Among the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the U.S. to form the Confederate States of America. War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U.S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to include eleven states; it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona and New Mexico (called Confederate Arizona). The Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North. The war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865.
The war had its origin in the factious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Four years of intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers dead, a higher number than the number of American military deaths in World War I and World War II combined, and much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed (most of them by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation). The Reconstruction Era (1863–1877) overlapped and followed the war, with the process of restoring national unity, strengthening the national government, and granting civil rights to freed slaves throughout the country.