John B. Williams served in Company E 12^th South Carolina and was captured April 2, 1865 at Petersburg. This professionally matted and framed display preserves his “Certificate of Release” dated June 21, 1865, from the US Provost Marshal’s Office at Point Lookout, and his Oath of Allegiance, signed the same day. The frame is glassed on the back as well as the front to show the text of the “Oath and Parole” printed on the reverse of the “Certificate of Release of Prisoner of War.”

Company E organized in Lancaster District, South Carolina, the location provided on his Oath of Allegiance. He seems to be the John B. Williams in the 1860 census of Lancaster listed as 27 (or 29) years old, a farmer with a Flint Ridge post office address.

The 12^th South Carolina organized in the summer of 1861, serving first on the South Carolina coast and then moving to Virginia in April 1862 where it joined the Army of Northern Virginia, with whom it served for the rest of the war. It was a fighting regiment. They saw action starting with the Seven Days' Battles, losing 17 killed and 121 wounded at Gaines Mill. At 2^nd Manassas they lost 54 percent of their men, 20 killed and 82 wounded at Antietam, 36 percent casualties at Gettysburg, 102 at Wilderness, 118 at Spotsylvania, and others at Deep Bottom, Fussel’s Mill, and Poplar Springs Church. At Appomattox 10 officers and 149 remained to surrender.

Confederate service records can be spotty. Williams is listed as mustering in March 29, 1862, for the war, but may just be taken from the date the regiment officially joined the CS service and he may have been with them from September 1861, if not earlier. He had a couple of stays in the hospital and furloughs home. He seems to have been hospitalized for typhoid fever from April 1862 through October, but is reported present with the company from the November/December 1862 muster rolls through April 1864, though there is mention of a hospital stay again from late June to mid-July 1863 for debility. In May 1864 he was again in hospital in Richmond and received a 60-day furlough in June, but is listed as discharged from the hospital in August, after which he apparently rejoined the regiment and was serving with them when captured at the fall of Petersburg on April 2, 1865.

A tombstone in the Union Baptist Church Cemetery of Lancaster gives his birthdate as 23 March 1832 and his date of death as 15 July 1909 at age 77, which agrees with the 1860 census. A Roseanna Williams of Lancaster made application for his pension from South Carolina on September 13, 1919, though her relationship to him was not stated.

There is plenty of genealogical and historical research that could yet to be done on these. Both documents are in excellent condition, showing just minor folds and a couple of light stains on the certificate. One can easily imagine them carried folded in his pocket for his trip home. They make an impressive display.  [sr]

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