3597 - Caldwell, North Carolina, United States of America

A great card from Louisiana. The sender used to live here, but moved to North Carolina. In her note, she's says she is also into genealogy and has discovered she is related to many people involved in the War of
Independence, the American Civil War, and many of the other wars the United States has been involved in. Her most notable find is she is related to Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith of the American Civil War. 

General Smith was born in St. Augustine, Florida in 1924. His parents were actually from Connecticut. His father was appointed a Superior Court Judge in Florida shortly after the United States took over the Florida Territory from Spain. Smith enrolled in the United States Military Academy and then to West Point in 1841. He graduated in 1845 and ranked 25th out of 41 cadets. 

He served in the Mexican-American War under future president, General Zachary Taylor, and under General Winfield Scott. Smith and his brother, Captain Ephraim Smith, both served with the 5th U.S. Infantry during the war. Captain Smith was killed at the Battle of Molino del Rey. 

Smith taught at West Point for a time, teaching mathematics until 1852. In 1859 he was wounded while fighting the Comanche in the Nescutunga Valley of Kansas.

On April 6, 1861, he resigned his commission in the US Army to join the Confederacy. He was made a major in the regular artillery. He went on to command a division of the Army of Tennessee and the Trans-Mississippi Department,  He fought in the First Battle of Bull Run (where he was wounded), the Battle of Richmond, the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Mansfield, and the Battle of Pleasant Hill. 

General Smith negotiated the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department on 26 May 1865. He became the last of the seven remaining generals to sign the terms of surrender at Galveston, Texas, on June 2. He signed it a full 8 weeks after General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Smith fled to Mexico and then to Cuba to avoid prosecution for treason. He returned in November to take an oath of amnesty at Lynchburg, Virginia. 

After the war he spent some time in the telegraph business. He was the president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. In 1868 he left and started a prepatory school in Kentucky until in burned down in 1870. From 1870-75, he was the chancellor of the University of Nashville. Finally he became a professor of mathematics and botany at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, where he taught until passing away of pneumonia in 1893. He was the last surviving full general from the Civil War.