Jesse Page and his two brothers from Carthage, Texas, enlisted in the Civil War and fought for the Confederacy.
Page was a first lieutenant with Company E of the 11th Texas Infantry near the close of the Civil War, when he was wounded April 8 or April 9, 1864, during battle in the Red River Campaign in Louisiana, as Confederates fought to keep Union troops from occupying the Louisiana capital of Shreveport.
“He was wounded at either Mansfield or Pleasant Hill in Louisiana and died a year later from difficulties from the wound,” said Chuck Hand IV, a charter member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for 1st Lt. Jesse Page Camp No. 2351 in Boerne.
“He was the last soldier from the 11th Texas who died during the war,” Hand said of the relative he found after long hours of ancestry research.
“He died 18 days before his 21st birthday, and he died the day before his unit was sent home to disband.”
This is the first SCV camp in Boerne, joining camps in Fredericksburg and New Braunfels.
“Most of our members are former members of other camps,” Hand said. “We’re all descendants of confederate veterans, from the rank of private to general, even politicians who served during the Civil War.”
The 1st Lt. Jesse Page Camp was established in February 2024 and held its charter organizational meeting July 27. The camp opened with 22 charter members and has added one new member a month since that February meeting.
Hand was looking for a Boerne area veteran to name the Hill Country’s newest Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) chapter after. Further searching turned up Page, in his own lineage.
When it was decided to form the Boerne camp, Hand said he started doing research to find a Boerne veteran.
“But because there was such a huge German influence in the Hill Country at that time, they were in a dilemma: ‘We came to the United States, do we really want to get into the middle of a war?’” Hand said.
That’s when he began to dig deeper into his own background and found the young Page, who did not survive the war.
“That’s the kind of legacy we want people to realize. He never even made it to 21,” Hand said. “He never had a girlfriend; he never had a wife and children. He was the son of a farmer; he lived at home and worked on his dad’s farm.
“He went to war, didn’t make it back,” Hand added.
Hand joined SCV under Confederate Private George Washington Bell, who served in the 23rd Alabama Co. F, his third great-grandfather on his mother’s side. “I have numerous ancestors who served throughout the South, from Texas to Virginia.”
Hand said the Page camp of SCV wants to get more involved in the community now that it has its charter. “We have some big plans that we hope come to fruition, including a scholarship fund,” he said.
“We are not political, we are not sectional, we just want to teach history,” Hand said. The camp participates in living history events and been invited to schools — “all we do is present a day in the life of a Confederate soldier.”
The camp also plans to travel to the Carthage area to renovate and restore the Page Family Cemetery where Page is buried, as it has fallen into disrepair.
“We’re going to go up there and recover the cemetery and get it back into presentable condition,” he said.
“We are going to do a gravesite dedication there because the three brothers, Jesse, Allen and Stephen, none of them have confederate headstones,” he added.
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