Friday, February 14, 2014

This is so wrong in so many places.


This is so wrong .  Find-a grave can be very useful, but this is a good example of how misleading open-sourced web sources can be. I don't know Russ Dodge, but he does not know very much about the life of Col. Charles C. Lee, and there is no telling how many individuals have been confused by his mistakes. In addition, there is no picture of Lee's actual grave marker, though it would be easy to acquire one. The moral of the story: be very careful what sources you trust! My comments are in red.

Birth:   unknown [Feb. 2, 1834]

Death: Jul. 30, 1862 [June 30, 1862]

Civil War Union Army Officer. [Civil War Confederate Army Officer.] He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1856, and was assigned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Ordnance Department. Serving in that branch for the next three years, he resigned from the Army on July 31, 1859. When the Civil war started, he was residing in his native North Carolina [Lee was born in Charleston, South Carolina], and offered his services to the new Confederacy. Mustered into the 1st North Carolina Infantry regiment, he participated in the conflict's first land battle at Big Bethel, Virginia on June 10, 1861. [Lee was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the 1st North Carolina Volunteers, May 11, 1861. He was promoted to colonel of the 1st North Carolina Volunteers on September 1, 1861. Lee was mustered out of service on November 12 or 13, 1861, and elected colonel of the 37th North Carolina Troops on November 20, 1861] In November 1861 he was promoted to Colonel and assigned to command the 37th North Carolina Infantry regiment. He led his men in the March 1862 New Berne Campaign and the May-June 1862 Peninsular Campaign, commanding a demi-brigade at the Battle of New Berne on March 14 and at the Battle of Hanover Court House on May 27. He was in command of his regiment during the Seven Days Battles in the last week of June 1862, and was mortally wounded on June 30, 1862 at the Battle of Glendale [Frasier's Farm, technically] when he was struck by an artillery shell while leading his men in a charge on Union positions. His father, Stephen Lee, commanded the 16th North Carolina Infantry during the war, and his cousin, Stephen Dill Lee, would finish out the war as a Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army. Interred in Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte, North Carolina, his family erected a cenotaph for him in Riverside Cemetery, Ashville, North Carolina. [The "cenotaph" in Riverside Cemetery is actually the gravemarker for his father, Stephen Lee. It has the names of his sons on it.]

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