Corporal Augustus L. Short came from a house divided—his father, Augustus D. Short, was from Bristol County, Massachusetts, while his mother, Jane G. Smith, was from Clarke County, Georgia. The older Augustus and Jane married in 1842 in Clarke County. The oldest boy in their family, James, may have come from a previous marriage: he was born in 1837 in Georgia, while Augustus D. was likely still living in Massachusetts. After the couple married, they moved frequently. Augustus L. was born in Connecticut, while his younger sister Sarah was born in 1848 in Columbus, Georgia.

Augustus D. was an overseer and not wealthy—in the 1860 Census, their total estate was worth a mere $200. The job of overseer in the North was starkly different from the job in the South. It’s likely that Augustus D. did different jobs in different places. In the North, overseers typically worked for poor houses or alms houses where they managed the labor of the indigent. Or they worked for manufacturers where they oversaw the low-priced labor of working men in factories. In the South, an overseer managed the enslaved labor of a plantation. It was a job made for failure—the enslaved had very little reason to work hard, while the plantation owner wanted to maximize outputs. The owner frequently left harsh “motivation” to the overseer, and while violence kept the enslaved moving, it did little to drive loyalty and higher production. Accordingly, overseers usually did not last on plantations longer than two or three years. In 1860, Augustus D. was listed as a manufacturer, suggesting that he was working in a factory where he was likely also overseeing the labor of enslaved people as well as low-paid white people.

The outcomes of the Short family were nothing short of disastrous. They had three children: James, Augustus L., and Sarah. By the 1860 Census, the family was in Columbus, Georgia, but Sarah was no longer with them, meaning that she had most likely died. Because the family had little money, they may not have been able to mark her grave permanently. James Short joined the Confederate army and then became difficult to trace thereafter. Augustus L. Short joined the 17th Georgia Infantry; he was captured at the Battle of Malvern Hill, interned for a time in a Union POW camp, then exchanged. He went back to his unit where he was promoted to commissary sergeant. He was serving in that position when he joined with is unit in fighting across the Rose farm and in and around Devil’s Den. He was mortally wounded during this fighting and taken back to the John Edward Plank farm where he died later that day.

The whereabouts of his remains are still a mystery. Find-a-Grave shows a headstone for him in Linwood Cemetery, which may or may not be his final resting place. The dead from his area of the Plank farm were gathered as unknowns and taken to Hollywood Cemetery, so the Linwood stone may be a cenotaph placed by his parents. A funeral was held for him August 9, 1863, though his grave at the Plank farm was still marked in 1866.

The next few years were similarly difficult for the Shorts. In 1867, Augustus D. died of “congestion,” which may have meant anything from pneumonia to congestive heart failure to an intestinal blockage. He was buried in the Linwood Cemetery in the “public” section—his grave was unmarked, and his burial was barely above that of an almshouse resident.

Jane Short was now a widow and had lost two out of three children, if not all of them, which helps to explain a tragic article that appeared in 1874 in Columbus, Georgia.

No other record exists of Jane, which may mean that she too wound up at a poor house or almshouse and been buried in an unmarked grave.