Site Visit Saturday: Lt. Col. Frank A. Reynolds, 39th NC, Egypt, and Philadelphia

 

   In June 2015, we were on one of those classic “see America” road trips. Our son had been competing at National History Day in Maryland, and after the contest ended, we headed north to Philadelphia for a couple of days, then west to Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry. One of our stops was Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Laurel Hill is one of the classic Victorian Cemeteries, and with more than 33,000 graves, it is huge. There are graves of many important historical people at Laurel Hill: novelist Owen Wister; Titanic survivor Eleanor Widener; Constitutional Congress secretary Charles Thomson; Union general George Gordon Meade; and Confederate general John C. Pemberton, just to name a few. As we were stumbling through this cemetery, I found the grave of another interesting Confederate soldier: Lt. Col. Frank A. Reynolds. 

Frank A. Reynolds (findagrave)

   Frank A. Reynolds was born in the current state of Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia) on August 10, 1841. His father was Alexander W. Reynolds (Yep, the Confederate general) and his mother was Mary Reeves Ash Reynolds. Like his father, Frank Reynolds attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. The younger Reynolds graduated[MCH1]  in June 1861. Some of his classmates included Alonzo Cushing, Patrick H. O’Rorke, and George A. Custer. Reynolds, however, did not follow his classmates into the Federal army. Instead, he returned to Virginia. He served as a cavalry officer under Gen. John B. Floyd in 1861, then was appointed captain and assistant adjutant general to Gen. Samuel G. French. On May 19, 1862, Reynolds was appointed major and assigned to the 39^th North Carolina Troops. He was appointed lieutenant colonel on December 29, 1862.

The 39^th North Carolina Troops was one of four North Carolina infantry regiments that served in the Western Theater of the war (the 29^th, 58^th, and 60^th NC regiments are the others). The 39^th Regiment saw action at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Resaca, New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, Ezra Church, Franklin, Nashville, Mobile, Fort Blakely, and Spanish Fort. It appears that Reynolds was present for most of those actions. On May 9, 1865, the lieutenant colonel was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi.

   After the war, Reynolds served for a brief amount of time as a street inspector in New York City, before accepting a commission as an artillery colonel on the staff of Gen. William W. Loring, in the Egyptian Army. Frank Reynolds was in Ilion, New York, when he passed in July 1875. A brief obituary in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), simply read: Col. Frank Reynolds, one of the American officers in the service of the Egyptian Khedive, was found dead in his bed Tuesday at Ilion, N.Y. He was on leave of absence.” Writing in 1901, Lt. Theodore F. Davidson regretted that there was little “data of his subsequent career,” but believed that Reynolds was “an accomplished soldier.”