This crutch belonged to Joseph W. Weatherly of the 13th Regiment’s Minutemen of Attala, a private from his 1861 enlistment, according to independent historian Grady Howell, to when one of his legs was amputated after the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862.

Independent historian Jess McLean found that Weatherly  was 17 when he enlisted at Camp Barksdale, near Union City, Tennessee, in June, 1861. He was a native of Attala County.

Many returning veterans were amputees. Confederate casualties in the war were at least 28% of military age men (though most of them died from disease rather than in battle), and historians are revising the casualty numbers upward every year.

The crutch is in the Museum of Mississippi History collection at the Mississippi Archives in Jackson, Mississippi whose Web site is here.