Professor T. Dwight Nutting, a Vermont native and Ohio college graduate who was teaching music in Mississippi when he organized the regimental brass band in 1861. In the spring of 1862 the ensemble performed to acclaim from the Army of Northern Virginia on the Virginia Peninsula. Two years later, with the army and the Confederacy in serious decline, Nutting apparently was demoralized.

The 38-year-old professor was then a federal prisoner at Memphis, where he took “the Oath of Amnesty” on March 22. The oath was a pardon issued in exchange for the signee swearing to faithfully defend the constitution of the United States and support and abide by all proclamations of the government.

He wasn’t a soldier, after all, and Memphis was so close to Mississippi where he had lived before the war. Later in 1864 he moved to Illinois where he taught in several institutions, including the Illinois Conservatory of Music. He died there in 1889 and is buried in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Via Find-A-Grave.