Samuel Cosmo Lowry was killed July 30th, 1864 at Petersburg, Virginia during the Battle of the Crater.1 The engagement that followed the explosion lasted all day and Sam fell four or five hours after the mine was sprung while leading and spurring his men to action. He was acting Captain, his higher officers having been either killed or wounded at the time. Thus, at the tender age of nineteen and one half years, with that lofty courage and absolute absence of fear and disregard for self, he laid down his life for his beloved South and for the cause he had defended with such devotion and loyalty.
His diary is a continuous record of his war experiences up to five days before his death. It is a marvel of literary style for so young a boy, and how it was kept at all under the hardships of the camp life, constant shifting back and forth on long marches, thru skirmishes and battles down in the ditches and, above all, that it should have been rescued after the battle and brought back with his remains, is a wonder almost incredible, if the diary itself did not testify to its truth.
The poems and essays, etc. attached were written by him during the period of war and are evidences of a versatile and splendid mentality, a budding genius, whom, if he had been spared, would have illumined the fields of literature and poetry.
His faithful servant, Henry Avery, a young negro boy, found his body after the battle and performed the almost miraculous feat (in those days of slow transit and general confusion) of getting thru the lines and bringing his master’s remains back to his old home in Yorkville, South Carolina where he was buried from the Episcopal Church in the family burying ground.
On the day that Sam’s body arrived, the family was accompanied to the depot by a beautiful dog named Major that had belonged to and been a beloved pet of his. The dog seemed to sense the tragedy and showed every evidence of grief and understanding. The next morning the dog was found dead before the door of the room where his master’s body had lain for the night.
1 Battle of the Crater - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater(link is external)
Other resources:
Civil War Service of John McCully Gilfillan who also served with the 17th SCV through the Battle of the Crater and on into 1865 when he and the 17th surrender at Appomattox Court House
http://www.gilfillanfamily.com/civilwar.htm
