I wish my Sylvester Brown Stephenson had stayed in Limestone Co,Al,so I could read his Civil War experiences. Sylvester Brown Stephenson is on the 1850 census of Giles Co,TN,son of Samuel Stephenson b. 1796 in York Co,S.C. and Mary Shields. He married Mary Holt in Limestone Co,Alabama in 1857. In 1861, He joined Captain John James Ward's Alabama Battery of Light Artillery in Huntsville,Alabama. It served with the Army of Mississippi until the summer of '64 when it was assigned to George S. Storr's Battery in the Army of Tennessee and took part in the Dalton-Atlanta Campaign and the Battle of Kennessaw Mountain. I could only imagine what he went through until I discovered this website on George S. Storr which includes his almost day-to-day correspondence as the army moved through Georgia. http://www.aug.edu/~liblsc/Grant/Storrs/Storrs_description.html John James Ward,mayor of Huntsville, was mortally wounded in 1864 and Ward's Battery was captured at the Battle of Selma in 1865. Sylvester seems to have escaped to fight to the end. Sylvester Brown Stephenson joined Camp Winnie Davis in Waxahachie,TX, Ellis Co. His application for the Southern Cross is at the Giles Co,TN website as well as his picture. He died in the home of his daughter Rosa Stephenson in 1908. She had married William Herschel Smith b. 1860 in Giles Co,TN,son of Charles D. Smith and Julia McCracken. Sylvester B. Stephenson is buried in an unmarked grave in the Waxahachie,TX Cemetery. The daughter of Rosa Stephenson and W.H. Smith,Hattie May Smith 1918-1980, wrote on a sheet of paper that Sylvester had a brother Harvey and a sister Mary Stephenson Goats. There is a Mary Goats,wife of James Bluff Goats buried in the Auburn Cemetery in Maypeal,TX,Ellis Co. I believe James Bluff Goats was from Giles Co,TN. Sylvester Brown Stephenson was probably born in Limestone Co,Al in 1837 as his brother George Alexander Stephenson was born in Limestone in 1822. George Alexander Stephenson married Elizabeth Perry in Giles in 1849. I hope Sylvester got his Southern Cross. From what I have read he earned it.