[7-311] LULA XEMENA DETTOR, b Aug. 11, 1866; dau William F. and Martha A. (Carter) Dettor [7-168]; m Feb. 26, 1895, DR. A. CUSTIS SMITH,-b July 6, 1844; d June 5, 1915; s Dr. Edwin Lee and Mary Ann (Walton) Smith. Dentist; Gordonsville, Va. (1919.)
Children (2):
At Gettysburg Dr. A. C. Smith, of Gordonsville, Va., remarked to some comrades that he would like to find the Federal soldier, if alive and there, who gave him, when wounded desperately at the Bloody Angle, lying over the stone wall, a drink of water out of his canteen. One who listened to him heard later of a Federal soldier who was looking for a Confederate, if there, to whom he had given a drink of water at the Angle.
When Dr. Smith marched with his comrades of Pickett’s Division, on the fiftieth anniversary to the hour of the great Pickett charge and climbed over the fence near the top of Cemetery Ridge, he stood again at the Angle, and soon both men were descried and brought together. It was hard for the men of ripened years to recognize the young soldier features of fifty years ago. They talked over the circumstances and became satisfied that they were the two who met thus on the battlefield. The Federal was Mr. Hamilton, of Philadelphia, a fine man, a Mason, and a man of cordial brotherly heart. -He bears the long scar on his cheek of a bad wound. They remained together for some time, took each other’s address, clinked together glasses of lemonade, and in parting repeated with manly firmness and without affectation, the words simply spoken so many times on that historic ground, ‘‘Well, if we never meet again on earth, I hope we shall meet in Heaven.’’ [From Newspaper clipping furnished by Margaret Lee Dettor Johnson, Louisa, Va.]
One of the many battles in the Civil War in which Dr. Smith fought was that of Gettysburg. He participated in Pickett’s charge in the battle of Gettysburg, in the 56th Regiment, Garnett’s Brigade, Pickett’s Division. While marching forward, a bullet struck his gun barrel, splitting his thumb. Powder got into the wound, making it quite painful for him to fire the gun. He was among those who captured the stone wall at the Bloody Angle. They fired there one or two rounds, and then orders were given to advance over the wall to seize the cannon. He climbed the wall and was shot, seemingly by a flanking force below him on the left. One bullet entered his shoulder, passed through his body and out about the collar bone, and another the back of his knee, going through so that, being just beneath the skin in front, it popped out when the surgeon cut. He fell over on the upper side of the wall, and lay on the field several days. General Armstead jumped over his body when he climbed the wall. [Charles C. Anderson].
Dr. Smith said the wound in the thumb gave him more trouble and he suffered more from. that wound than from his other wounds. He lay on or near the battlefield twenty-one days: no attention was given him at first as they were sure he would die in a few moments, but finally they fed him and took him up and put him in a wagon and carried him away for treatment. The shaking was agony, I have heard him say. ([Mrs. Frank Johnson.]