The caregiver who handled the young soldier's message apparently did not know how to spell the name and only that he lived somewhere near Atlanta, so he sent the telegram to the city's leading newspaper, the Daily Intelligencer.
Editor John Steele published the plea July 26, prefaced by a notice to readers: "The following dispatch has been received at this office. We do not know the residence of Mr. J.W. Neisbit, to whom it is directed, under our care, and therefore publish it. hoping some one will convey to him the information it imparts. --ED. INT."
Apparently, no one knew where the elder Neisbit (Nesbit) lived, but the case of the wounded lieutenant, who turned 22 just ten days after his Gettysburg wound, worked out well.
On August 3, he was granted a 60-day furlough to return home. He resigned from the Confederate Army in November 1863.
After the war, he started farming, married and raised a family north of Atlanta. He died at the age of 83 in 1925, one of approximately 60,000 Civil War amputees.
--Old Secesh
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