Major General Gustavus W. Smith - New London, CT - Out of Place Graves on Waymarking.com

The grave of Major General Gustavus Woodson Smith is marked by a small rectangular granite marker which is inscribed:

Gustavus Woodson was born in Georgetown, KY on November 30, 1821. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1842 and commissiones as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. After he served in the Mexican American War, he left the army to become a civil engineer working in New York City.

When the Civil War began he volunteered to join the Confederate Army as a Major General. He took commanded of the Army of Northern Virginia after Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. The next day Jefferson Davis replaced him with General Robert E. Lee. He then fought in the the Peninsula Campaign and headed the Department of Richmond until January, 1863. In June 1864, he was appointed Major General of the Georgia State Militia where he commanded its First Division until the end of the war. After the war he served as the Kentucky Insurance Commissioner.

In 1876 he moved to New York City and become the author of: Noted on Insurance in 1870, Confederate War Papers in 1884, The Battle of Seven Pines in 1891, Generals J. E. Johnston and G. T. Beauregard at the Battle of Manassas, July 1861 in 1892, and Company "A," Corps of Engineers, U.S.A., 1846–48, in the Mexican War, was published in 1896 after his death.

He died on June 24, 1896 at age 74 and is buried in the family plot of his wife Lucretia S. Basset Smith in Cedar Grove Cemetery in New London, CT.