Soldier deaths during the Civil War were common however, the October 14, 1862 edition of the Charlotte Democrat describes the unfortunate events that lead to the death of a soldier from North Carolina. When you hear of a soldier dying during the Civil War you probably think of dying in battle or perhaps by some disease. Well, one Confederate soldier actually died from a spider bite while encamped in Virginia. Reading the obituary of Capt. B.R. Williams of Co. C, 2nd North Carolina, we see that the soldier died from a spider bite while surrounded by all the typical implements of war.
“How uncertain the tenure of man; how varied the causes of death. Man may escape the desolating cannon, the fire of musketry, the thrust and cut of the sword, and yet fall a victim to the bite of a tiny insect!Whilst putting on his boots, (at Drury’s Bluff, where he was stationed) Captain W. unfortunately shut up a spider in one of them, which by frequent stings, infused sufficient poison into his system to produce death within eighteen hours, despite all the efforts of surgeons to counteract it.”
Illustration: “The Spider’s Web,” from “The Playbook of Metals…” by John Henry Pepper, 1862
Post Credit: National Museum of Civil War Medicine
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