Today may be much like many another day in camp as soldiers mill around, settle into place, or follow orders from an officer. Some come, some go, some cook, some wash, some write letters. Some, like 23-year-old William Ira Ariail of Georgia, die without fanfare and without a grasp of what the war they had enlisted to fight would entail.
Born May 23, 1838 to William Harrison and Mary Adelaide (Barr) Ariail, William Ira, having joined the 15th Georgia Volunteer Infantry on July 14, is among the earnest youngsters ready to defend his newly-established nation for the duration of a war with an indefinite end. What his weeks were like in the intervening days we can only guess: training, moving north via rail, eating whatever was provided, living in close quarters not always sanitary, and missing home. Like multitudes who became ill before gaining much idea what soldiering was all about, he probably came down with a headache and abdominal distress and then began generally to not feel so well. Maybe he had medicine. Being early in the war, Ariail was given a hospital bed at Camp Pickens, the major encampment established by the Confederates prior to First Manassas. As days went on, Ariail’s young body resisted the lethargy and the distended, painful abdomen, the dehydration, the delirium, and the diarrhea accompanying the high fever of typhoid. Death by typhoid was not pretty, and he was not alone in the ugly battle against the prevalent bacterium.
More than five hundred miles distant, in a comfortable home on Federal Road in Banks County, concerned parents had been praying for this eldest of their six sons and one daughter. Members of Nail’s Creek Baptist Church and a respected family, both parents hearken from a long line of believers, a number of whom had served as ministers. The older William Ariail, in fact, is a licensed preacher and trusted church clerk. Despite the prayers, they are numbered among the first grieving parents of this war. Son William’s soldiering career is so short he is never paid while alive and his name doesn’t show up on lists of the Tugalo Blues. Evidence does exist that at the time of his death he was due $47.83 for services and $25 towards apparel, a sum of $72.83 that should have been sent home — not much compensation in exchange for the life of a first-born son. How did the family learn of his death? Did they get the money? Did it feel like tainted dollars?
William Ira’s younger brother, James Leland—born in 1849—was too young to ever join up. James eventually becomes the father of Omer Mason Ariail who becomes the father of Omer Gilbert Ariail who becomes the father of Daniel Gilbert Ariail. And who was he? “Dan” Ariail gains fame after becoming pastor of Maranatha Bapist Church in 1982, a position that made him minister to former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn. When they went back home to Plains, GA, from Washington, D.C. following Carter’s presidential years, the couple joined the Maranatha church, and the former president began teaching a Sunday School class. Ariail in 1996 performed the wedding for the their daughter Amy and co-authored The Carpenter’s Apprentice: The Spiritual Biography of Jimmy Carter.
Source: Daniel Gilbert Ariail biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
Story written by Arlette Copeland, Special Collections Assistant, Jack Tarver Library Special Collections, Mercer University, Macon, GA
