The city of Sharpsburg and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Sharpsburg Sharpshooters, Camp 1729, conducted an unveiling Monday night for a plaque honoring William Thomas Overby.

Overby was born in 1837 in Dinwoodie County, Va. and his family moved to Newnan in 1839. He entered the Confederate States Army in May, 1861, fought in a number of battles and was wounded Aug. 31, 1862 at Second Manassas.

Taken to a hospital six miles away, he remained there for 29 days when the Union forces took the town over and he was paroled.

The next year was spent working as a nurse in Confederate hospitals and eventually becoming a member of “Mosby's Rangers,” a guerrilla division of the Confederate Army, operating in northern Virginia.

On Sept. 23, 1864 he and five others were captured at Front Royal, Va.; four were shot and two were hanged, with Overby being one of those two.

He was buried in the Anderson cemetery (Anderson was one of those shot) until December 1996. Members of the Sharpsburg Sharpshooters, after many years and many people asking the Commonwealth of Virginia for permission to bring him back home, were finally given that permission and they re-interred him in Oak Hill Cemetery, Newnan.

The city of Sharpsburg erected a flag pole in his honor last year and this past Monday evening, the Sharpshooters unveiled a plaque erected at the flagpole.

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