Rev. John A. Crouder helped to raise and organize Company D of the Nineteenth Regiment. He first belonged to a company commanded by Robert Meriwether, which went against Fort Sumter and then to Virginia. When the time of his enlistment expired he returned home and assisted Ira Cromley to raise Company D. Cromley was elected Captain; Crouder, 1st Lieutenant; E. B. Forrest, 2nd; and Isaac Edwards, 3rd. After a few months, Cromley, Forrest, and Edwan’s, “who were too old for service, resigned and retired, and Crouder was promoted to be Captain. When the regiment was reorganized at Corinth, Mississippi, Crouder was elected Major, which position he held until his death, March 12th, 1863, from the effects of a wound received at the battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His sword is now in the possession of his kinsman, John Crouder Edwards, who also bears his name, “and these,” says Mr. Edwards, “are about all the evidence that any such man ever existed.” I understand that John Crouder Edwards is a bachelor, not personally acquainted with him. He ought to marry and transmit the sword of his dead kinsman, who was a brave and honorable man, to his son, and son’s son of coming; generations, as a precious relic of the heroic, though dark days of the War of Secession.
Source: Chapman, John Abney; History of Edgefield County from the earliest settlement to 1897; Newberry, S.C.: E. H. Aull, 1897.