Captain Nicholas Bayard Clinch (CSA)

Profile photo: Clinch family vault at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Bayard_Clinch

Captain Nicholas Bayard Clinch (1832 to 15 March 1888) was a commander in the army of Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, as well as a planter and inventor.

Clinch was born in Louisiana in 1832, the seventh of eight children of Brevet General Duncan Lamont Clinch, Sr., highly regarded veteran of the Seminole Wars, planter, and public servant, and professional soldier, after whom Clinch County, GA was named and Eliza Bayard McIntosh of Camden County, Georgia, Clinch’s second wife, and the younger brother of Duncan L. Clinch, Jr, colonel of 4th Georgia Volunteer Cavalry, Provisional Army of the Confederate States. His sister, Eliza Bayard Clinch was the wife of General Robert Anderson (Civil War), the Union commander who defended Fort Sumter in April 1861. At the outset of the war, Mrs. Anderson left Washington DC and made her way through enemy lines to assist her husband in defense of the fort.

He graduated from South Carolina College, now University of South Carolina, in 1849, the same year his father died.

Clinch mustered into the Confederate army as a private in December 1862 and within a year was promoted to 1st lieutenant and regimental adjutant for the 4th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Cavalry, commanded by his older brother Duncan, and rose to captain and commander of Clinch’s Artillery Company, or "Clinch’s Light Battery," which was named for him, in the fall of 1863. http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUn...

Among other battles, Captain Clinch’s Light Battery fought to defend Fort McAllister near Savannah, GA, during the Second Battle of Fort McAllister (1864) where it was stationed to provide support and to occupy field works along the route from the railroad and river to the fort during the attack by Sherman’s forces on December 13, 1864.

During the siege, he was wounded at least 11 times, slashed by a sword in the face, bayoneted in the neck and arms and shot through the shoulder, continuing to fight after the fall of the fort until his wounds were so severe he could no longer stand. He was taken to a nearby plantation. His wounds were considered mortal, but he was eventually taken to a hospital at Beaufort, SC, where he recovered.

While serving in the Confederate Army stationed at Green Cove Springs, near Jacksonville, FL in 1863, Clinch applied to the US Patent Office for a patent on a new mounting system for a passenger vehicle called a sulkie which featured a mechanism to isolate the movement of the horses from the passenger seat for a smoother ride.

Nicholas Bayard Clinch’s burial place is not marked, but Savannah Burial Extract records indicate he was interred in the family vault at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah

He never married and left no children.

He was a descendant of Robert the Bruce and shared an ancestor with President George W. Bush.