Very special thanks go out to Andrea Erwin for sending me this photo of her ancestor, James Davey on the left and his friend Henry B. Fordyce, my 2nd cousin (3x)on the right. Andrea continues:

My parents have researched James Davy’s Civil War history and read his diaries. Perhaps you know this already, but we learned that it was military practice at the time to put all the men of a given region (in this case, Decatur and Pleasant Mills) into the same company. For example, Henry, Jasper, and John Fordyce all probably served with James Davy under Captain Ira Blossom, who later became a relation to the Davy family by marriage.

What that military organization meant practically was that if a unit saw heavy action and casualties were high, such as Company C at the Battle of Champion Hill, the men of the town were wiped out. Looking at the website for the graveyard in Pleasant Mills, only four men from Company C are buried there. Some may have moved away or been buried elsewhere, but it strikes me that many of the young men of that generation are buried on a Southern battlefield like Henry Fordyce. Imagine seeing your childhood friends and neighbors die next to you in battle.

James Davy said of that day in his diary: (I am correcting some poor spelling):
Saturday, May 16, 1863: Battle of Champion Hill
Another desperate struggle for our glorious cause which laid thousands of our good boys in their grave and my comrades fell on my right and on my left but the God of Heaven brought me through…
Sunday, May 17, 1863: This morning my heart bled with sorrow to view the horrible scenes of a hard-tested battlefield which was strewed with our dead and the enemy was laying with our dead full as thick.

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U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles
about Henry B Fordyce
Name: Henry B Fordyce
Residence: Pleasant Mills, Indiana
Enlistment Date: 29 Nov 1861
Rank at enlistment: Private
State Served: Indiana
Survived the War?: No
Service Record: Enlisted in Company C, Indiana 47th Infantry Regiment on 29 Nov 1861.
Mustered out on 16 May 1863 at Champion's Hill, MS.

Sources: Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana

American Civil War Soldiers
about Henry Fordyce
Name: Henry Fordyce
Residence: Pleasant Mills, Indiana
Enlistment Date: 29 Nov 1861
Side Served: Union
State Served: Indiana
Service Record: Enlisted as a Private on 29 November 1861.
Enlisted in Company C, 47th Infantry Regiment Indiana on 29 Nov 1861.
Killed Company C, 47th Infantry Regiment Indiana on 16 May 1863 at Champion's Hill, MS.

Sources: 76

Unknown burial location but most likely Vicksburg, Mississippi National Cemetery, although not proven.