What causes a man like William Maurey, born and raised in Gettysburg, to take up arms against his neighbors and, in many cases, his family? Each case is different, and so the answer is likely different for each person. Certainly, we’ve explored this in the case of Wesley Culp. As it would happen, the case of William E. Maurey may have more than a tangential tie to Wesley Culp and his broader family.

Growing Up in Gettysburg 1828-1860

William E. Maurey was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 22, 1828 to Adam Maurey and Susan Culp (yep, those Culps). He grew up in a small but vibrant community: by 1860 Gettysburg was a bustling county seat with roughly 450 buildings housing trades like carriage-making, shoemaking, and tanning. The Maurey family fit into this industrious town life. In the 1840s–50s, young William learned a skilled trade in the local carriage manufacturing business, where he worked as a lace weaver, crafting the decorative trim and upholstery for carriages. (Recall that the Skellys, Culps, and Wades were all involved in this industry as well—Wesley and William Culp were apprentices to carriage maker Charles Hoffman, and the Wades and Skellys were involved in tailoring). Various of his family’s religious and social life likely revolved around Gettysburg’s churches and workshops – a typical upbringing in a town where hard work, faith, and community were deeply valued.

Politically, Adams County leaned Whig and later Republican, but the Maureys did not. Adam Maurey was aligned with Governor George Wolf, a Democrat, and he was active in local Democratic causes, as this article from an 1835 Adams County Sentinel notes.

This political association is at least a partial clue–Democrats were split on the issue of slavery, largely based on whether one lived North or South, but they were generally aligned against Whig and Republican initiatives against the peculiar institution.

Like many Gettysburg residents, William’s roots ran deep in the area. In fact, when William married Sarah Jane Clippinger on September 26, 1854, the young couple made their home at 302 Baltimore Street, right in the heart of town. William was 26 and eager to start a family. Sarah was from a local family herself, and their marriage wove the Maureys into the tight social tapestry of 1850s Gettysburg. Neighbors might have seen William walking to work at a carriage-maker’s shop or sitting with Sarah in a church pew on Sundays, exemplifying the hopeful spirit of a new family in mid-19th century Gettysburg.

Heartbreak and a New Home in Tennessee

That hope turned to tragedy in the summer of 1855. Sarah gave birth to a baby girl, Sallie Jane, on July 4, 1855 – a child born on Independence Day in the most Unionist of towns. But within weeks, joy gave way to sorrow. Sarah fell gravely ill and died on July 20, 1855, and baby Sallie Jane died the very next day. In the span of 48 hours, William lost his entire young family. He buried his 25-year-old wife and infant daughter in Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery, laying them to rest on a hill just south of town.

During the Battle of Gettysburg years later, that same cemetery would be overrun by soldiers; incredibly, the Maurey headstone itself suffered battle damage amidst the 1863 fighting. William could not have imagined it at the time, but the Civil War would scar even the gravestone of his loved ones – a tragic echo of how war touched every corner of his life.

Grief-stricken and seeking a fresh start, William made a difficult decision: he would leave Gettysburg. In 1858, he sold the Baltimore Street house where he had lived with Sarah. By 1859, with little left to tie him to Gettysburg, the 30-year-old widower headed south to Tennessee. Family lore suggests he chose Tennessee for its opportunities in skilled labor – and perhaps to escape the painful memories in Gettysburg. He settled in Springfield, Tennessee, a small town in Robertson County about 30 miles north of Nashville. There, William put his hands to work as a brick mason, reinventing himself in a new trade. The move from Pennsylvania to the agrarian South was dramatic: Gettysburg’s rolling Adams County farms gave way to the rural plantations and towns of Middle Tennessee. Culturally too, William was now in a state that, unlike Pennsylvania, would soon secede from the Union.

In Springfield, William found new love. In February 1860 he married Susan “Sue” D. Persise, a 23-year-old local woman. The following December, Susan gave birth to a son, James Maurey – giving William a chance at the family life he had lost. One can imagine William’s heart filling with cautious joy as he held baby James. By early 1861, he was a husband and father again, making a modest living with trowel and brick. Yet even as William tried to rebuild his life, the nation around him was cracking apart. In April 1861, the Civil War erupted. Tennessee would soon join the Confederacy. William Maurey, a native Pennsylvanian (but a Democrat) from a Union-loyal town, now faced an agonizing crossroads. Would he stay neutral and protect his new family, or join his adopted state’s cause in war?

Enlisting in the 49th Tennessee Infantry

In the autumn of 1861, William made his choice. On November 25, 1861, he enlisted in Company C, 49th Tennessee Infantry, siding with the Confederate Army. Perhaps loyalty to his new neighbors and home swayed him; perhaps a sense of duty or adventure stirred the carriage-maker’s son. Whatever his motives, the decision was profound. William swapped his bricklayer’s apron for a soldier’s uniform of Confederate gray. In truth, “uniform” was a generous term – Southern soldiers’ clothing varied widely. Confederate enlisted men often wore a mix of homespun cloth and whatever equipment they could find, resulting in butternut brown and gray coats with mismatched buttons. One surviving Tennessee soldier’s frock coat, for example, was made of coarse wool and even had repurposed U.S. Army eagle buttons on it. William’s own kit would have been similarly hodgepodge but serviceable. With musket in hand, the 33-year-old private joined other Tennessee volunteers drilling under raw bonfire-lit skies, many of them farmers’ sons and tradesmen like himself.

William’s unit, the 49th Tennessee, was organized at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. By February 1862, he saw his first major action when Union forces attacked Fort Donelson. Surrounded after days of fighting and a brutal winter storm, the Confederate garrison capitulated. Sgt. Maurey was among the thousands surrendered on February 16, 1862 at Fort Donelson. It was a bitter defeat and the first of many trials for William. He became a prisoner of war and was shipped north to Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, one of the Union’s notorious prison camps. There, in the summer of 1862, he endured confinement far from both Gettysburg and Tennessee. Camp Douglas was infamous for its harsh conditions – exposure, disease, and hunger plagued the inmates. William’s thoughts must have often turned to Susan and baby James back in Springfield, living under Union occupation in Tennessee, uncertain of his fate.

After about nine months in Union hands, William was exchanged and returned to Confederate service in late 1862. War had hardened him, but he also proved himself a capable soldier. By December 1862, he had been promoted to the rank of First Sergeant – a testament to his reliability and leadership. Reunited with the reorganized 49th Tennessee, William and his comrades were assigned to the defense of the Mississippi River bastions. They served at Port Hudson, Louisiana, a critical Confederate stronghold besieged in mid-1863. When Port Hudson fell in July 1863 (days after the fall of Vicksburg), many men of the 49th were paroled rather than sent to prison again. Sgt. Maurey, whether by luck or timing, remained with those who avoided capture. Later that summer, his regiment was posted to the Gulf Coast. By the autumn of 1863, William was stationed in Mobile, Alabama with the 49th, helping guard the port city and its defenses. He had been a soldier for two grueling years by this point, witnessing more than enough of war’s carnage.

Trials of War and Waning Morale (1864)

As 1864 dawned, the Confederate cause was faltering. News of defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg (July 1863) and Chattanooga (November 1863) weighed heavily on Southern soldiers’ minds. Men like William Maurey pressed on, but their letters and journals from this period reveal fatigue, homesickness, and a sober understanding that the war might be unwinnable.

After three years in uniform, William was nearly 36 years old – far from the youthful new recruit he once was. He had missed seeing his son’s toddler years. He had been absent from Gettysburg during the great 1863 battle that ravaged his hometown, only to hear later that his neighbors endured unimaginable horrors. And he had watched close friends and comrades fall in battle or waste away in prison camps.

Morale in the Army of Tennessee, to which the 49th Tennessee Infantry now belonged, seesawed between grim determination and despair in 1864. That spring, General Joseph E. Johnston led them in retreat against Sherman’s campaigns; by fall, General John Bell Hood drove them on a desperate offensive to reclaim Tennessee. William’s own feelings likely mirrored those of many Confederate soldiers – pride in duty, anger at the devastation of their homes, longing for peace and family. In his diary he may have recorded hopes that a bold move might turn the tide, or perhaps he confessed private doubts as rations grew scarce and uniforms turned to rags. Certainly by autumn 1864, letters from Confederate ranks spoke of exhaustion. “Our army is dwindling… but we shall fight to the end,” one Tennessee soldier wrote.

The Battle of Franklin and a Life Cut Short

In November 1864, the Army of Tennessee embarked on what would be its final, fateful campaign. General John Bell Hood led roughly 30,000 Confederates on a march toward Nashville, hoping to deal a blow to Union forces under General John Schofield. Outside the town of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, Hood ordered a frontal assault against entrenched Union troops. Sgt. William Maurey, having just turned 36 eight days earlier, found himself charging into one of the Civil War’s most ferocious battles. The Battle of Franklin that evening was later called the “Pickett’s Charge of the West” for its futile courage. In a span of only five hours, the Confederate Army of Tennessee was shattered. Eighteen brigades – nearly 20,000 men – rushed across open fields into a storm of Federal artillery and rifle fire. The result was catastrophic. Schofield’s Union line held, and Confederate soldiers were mowed down in staggering numbers right up against the Union earthworks.

Sgt. Maurey was in the thick of that fight with the 49th Tennessee, likely part of the brigades attacking near the Columbia Pike south of Franklin. As darkness fell and the gunfire finally subsided, William E. Maurey lay dead on the field of battle, just a few miles from his Springfield home, in the state that had become his second home, but far from the Gettysburg of his youth. The Battle of Franklin proved one of the Confederacy’s most lopsided tragedies: fourteen Confederate generals were casualties (six killed, including one just yards from where William fell), and the Army of Tennessee lost perhaps 6,000–7,000 men killed, wounded, or captured. The Army was effectively broken, and Hood’s remaining forces would be routed at Nashville two weeks later. For William’s comrades, there was no time for proper burials amid the chaos. He was likely laid to rest in a hastily-dug grave or trench on the Franklin battlefield, though his wife Susan retrieved his body and brought him home to the Elmwood Cemetery.

William’s fate was sealed in that fiery charge, but his name and story live on as part of Gettysburg and Franklin lore. He holds the poignant distinction of being connected to three iconic Civil War places: his hometown Gettysburg, where he had spent his first three decades; Fort Donelson, where he was captured in 1862; and Franklin, where he made the ultimate sacrifice.

Aftermath and Legacy: A Family’s Cost of War

News of William E. Maurey’s death must have traveled slowly back to his loved ones. In Gettysburg, the Maurey relatives and old neighbors likely learned of it only after the war’s end. One imagines the sorrow of his aging parents or siblings reading a terse notice that “Sgt. Wm. E. Maurey, 49th Tenn. Infantry, killed Nov. 30, 1864” – perhaps printed in a local paper or relayed by letter. For Gettysburg, which had seen so much death in 1863, William’s story was another tragic thread: a native son who had survived Gettysburg’s battle by being hundreds of miles away, only to die in another terrible fight far to the south. In Evergreen Cemetery, the grave of Sarah and little Sallie Jane still bore the scars of the 1863 battle – mute testimony that war spared nothing, not even the headstones of the innocent. We can imagine a surviving Maurey placing flowers at that chipped stone in the late 1860s, mourning not only a daughter-in-law and grandchild but now also a son lost to the war.

In Tennessee, Susan Persise Maurey faced rebuilding life as a young war widow. She was only in her late twenties when William died. During the Battle of Franklin, Susan and four-year-old James were still in Robertson County, which had been under Union control for much of the war. They may not even have known a battle was raging that night – until casualty lists emerged. What is certain is that Susan suddenly had to raise their son alone in the tumultuous Reconstruction era. The post-war South was economically ruined; Confederate widows often struggled to survive. Susan did have extended family in Tennessee, which probably provided support. Records indicate that years later, she applied for a Confederate widow’s pension, a small stipend Tennessee offered to destitute survivors of its soldiers. She never remarried. James Maurey grew up never knowing his father, save for the stories and a faded diary his mother kept.

Today, William E. Maurey’s story bridges Gettysburg and the Western Theater of the Civil War – a human link between two distant battlefields. His life illuminates the era’s complex loyalties: a man born in the Union north who fought and died for the Confederacy in the south. It speaks to the personal toll of the war: in one lifetime, William experienced youthful love and loss in Gettysburg, the camaraderie and suffering of a soldier’s life, and a violent death in battle. His surviving family, both in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, had to pick up the pieces in a nation reunited but scarred.

In Gettysburg, the civilian community remembered William as one of their own who “went south.” His first marriage to Sarah Clippinger was reprinted in a retrospective article in the 1920s. In Tennessee, his name is listed among the fallen at Elmwood Cemetery in Springfield, Tennessee. Standing at that cemetery or in Gettysburg’s Evergreen today, one can feel the deeply human cost of the Civil War. Sgt. William E. Maurey’s journey – from a carriage-maker’s apprentice on Baltimore Street to a first sergeant in the Army of Tennessee – reminds us that the war’s legacy is not just in generals and speeches, but in the individual lives it forever changed.