Colonel Joseph A. Wasden was a native of Glascock County, Georgia being born there in 1828. He was a practicing attorney in Warrenton, Georgia prior to his 31 August 1861 enlistment. Commissioned a Major in the 22nd Georgia Infantry, he was promoted to lieutenant Colonel on 2 June 1862, and repetitively proved himself a competent field officer in the skirmishes, battles and campaigns that the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia engaged. His promotion to Colonel is dated 22 April 1863. Involved in General Robert E. Lee's northward offensive in the summer of 1863, Colonel Wasden's Georgians formed Wright's Brigade, Anderson's Division, and Longstreet’s 1st Corps. This campaign cumulated at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with three desperate days of fighting on July 1-3. Colonel Wasden was "killed at the head of his command [on 2 July] near the Emmetsburg turnpike" during an unsuccessful charge against the Federal position on Cemetery Ridge. His body was left on the battlefield, and a poignant moment occurred after his remains were collected for burial by Union soldiers. Colonel Horatio Rogers of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry recalled the moment "Many dead lay on the Emmetsburg Road in front of us, and just opposite the right of the regiment, stretched at full length, was the lifeless form of a Confederate Colonel. His was a manly figure and he was smitten down in the prime of life. It was ascertained from a Masonic Certificate in his pocket that his name was Joseph Wasden ... and it was determined that this deceased brother, an enemy in life, that had been stricken down far from home and loved ones, should be buried by fraternal hands, and the Blue uniforms gathered around the gray ... raised the inanimate form in their arms ... and reverently buried it [with] opposing picket shots serving as minute guns."

After the war, the Colonel’s family was able to retrieve his body and have it buried back in Georgia. The photograph is that of his marker in the Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia. There is no known photograph of Colonel Wasden.

Respectfully submitted:
Alvin J. Wasdin MOS&B #7953
Great grandnephew of Joseph A. Wasden