Captain
D. B. Sanford
From: The Confederate Veteran, Vol XX,
1912; p. 337:
Daniel B. Sanford. Daniel Benjamin Sanford was born in the old family homestead, near Greensboro, Ga., on April 11, 1839; and died at his home, in Milledgeville, Ga., on April 11, 1912. The slender thread of life was permitted, as by a divine providence, to hold until one minute past the turn of the night of April 10, and his freed spirit winged its everlasting flight from earth on his seventy-third birthday, beloved by all who knew him.
D. B. Sanford witnessed the tumultuous proceedings that marked the great secession convention in Milledgeville, Ga., early in 1861. He resigned a deputy clerkship to the Supreme Court of Georgia and shouldered his musket as a Georgia volunteer. In April, 1861, at the age of twenty-two years, he returned to Greensboro and enlisted as a private in the "Green Rifles," which became Company A, Phillips's Georgia Legion of Infantry, DuBose's Brigade, Kershaw's Division, Longstreet's Corp, of General Lee's army. Those who served with him in the ranks and under him when promoted to the rank of captain bear fond testimony to his soldierly conduct and undaunted valor. "Captain Dan," as his men affectionately called him, never shirked a duty nor quailed in the face of the enemy.
Ever afterwards the "old boys" sought "Captain Dan" in coming to Milledgeville. Each survivor left of the grand old company will shed tears of sorrow and gratitude for his noble life when he reads in the public print that his old captain has "crossed the river" to be with Lee and his men to "rest under the shade of the trees."
Captain Sanford was twice wounded in battle, seriously at Sailors' Creek, April 6, 1865, just three days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox. His left leg was shattered by a Minie ball. In the awful confusion everything seemed to be going to pieces. Lee's army had been marching and fighting for days with nothing to eat except parched corn; they were starving. There was no time to look after the wounded. They lay where they fell, with no surgeon to dress their bleeding wounds and no food or water. That any lived was due to the mercy of Him who feeds the sparrows. Captain Sanford lay in that condition of the battle field where he fell, surrounded with the dead and dying, and would have succumbed had not a Union soldier passing by see his distress and given him a raw codfish and a canteen of water. All through the night he ate and drank that the Yankee canteen.
The next day he was taken to the Lincoln Hospital at Washington, D. C. Captain Sanford was one of many wounded Confederate soldiers carried in ambulances through the streets of Washington when President Lincoln's remains lay in state, and the ambulances had to be guarded by regiments of Union soldiers to prevent their being stoned.
Captain Sanford was paroled in June, 1865, and he returned to Georgia with only his tattered gray uniform and his untarnished record. His gray jacket is preserved and cherished.
Judge Sanford was married to Miss Elizabeth Stetson, of Milledgeville, Ga. in 1868. His wife died in 1886, and two children, Daniel S. and Elizabeth Sanford, survive him. He held many positions of trust and honor. He was Ordinary of Baldwin County, Chairman of County Commissioners, President of Milledgeville Banking Company, President of Board of Trustees Georgia Military College, and Commander of Robert E. Lee Camp, U. C. V.
Judge Sanford was admitted to the practice of law in 1870, and was a member of the law firm of D. B. and D. S. Sanford when he died. He was a man of superior courage. In matters of conviction when principle was at stake he was immovable. Flattery could not seduce nor threats intimidate him. He preferred death to the sacrifice of truth.
