William Elisha Arnold, a native of Shady Grove, Franklin County, Virginia, entered the Virginia Military Academy in July 1849 at the age of nineteen; he graduated on July 4, 1853, and married Susan Meriwether Taliaferro sixteen days later.

In 1860, William Arnold was working as a school teacher in Lexington, Lafayette County, Missouri. When the Civil War began, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Missouri State Guard, and served as inspector-general for the Eighth Division. He fought at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington, but resigned his Missouri State Guard commission soon after. Arnold later served as an assistant surgeon in the Army of Tennessee.

After the war, Arnold became a “noted medical doctor” in Springfield, Missouri, where he died in August 1902, and is buried in the Confederate Section of the Springfield National Cemetery. Susan Arnold died in 1906.

Daguerreotype by Unknown Photographer

Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30687