Brothers in Arms: Edgar and William Abbott at Stones River – In Their Own Words

By Thomas M. Cooper
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2025, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2025.


This is a story of discovery, of happenstance, of survival, of collaboration – and of gratitude.

Directly after Dan Masters’ March 13, 2024 presentation to our Cleveland Civil War Roundtable on the Battle of Stones River, I approached him about my having had two great-great grandfathers involved in that engagement – one from Ohio and one from Indiana. He asked which Indiana unit, and I recalled the 4th Battery, Light Artillery. Dan said in fact he had posted information about Capt. Asahel Bush’s 4th Indiana Battery on his website just the day before his CCWRT presentation. (See reference and website: “Reminders of the 4th Indiana Battery’s Fight along the Wilkinson Pike,” March 12, 2024.)

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An Angel from Richmond, the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the Long Path of Discovery

By Thomas M. Cooper
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2024.


The biographical details of our ancestors emerge slowly, and perhaps this is a good thing. History needs to marinate some events over time so that their meaning can be understood by the living, in deeper, broader contexts. This is especially true for wartime histories involving trauma and the years required to remember-and-resolve. This is one of the reasons we study these periods and come together to talk about them.

Continue reading “An Angel from Richmond, the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the Long Path of Discovery”