Background
Alexander Welch Reynolds was born in April 1816 in Clarke County, Virginia.
Alexander Welch Reynolds was born in April 1816 in Clarke County, Virginia.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1838
He served in the Seminole War until 1840. From 1841 until 1846 he was on frontier duty in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
On August 5, 1847, he was appointed assistant quartermaster, with staff rank of captain, and served in Florida for two years. In 1848 he was ordered to Mexico and until 1852 convoyed trains to Forts Washita and Towson, Indian Territory, and to Santa Fé, New Mexico. Some question as to his accounts came up, and he was ordered to Washington to explain alleged discrepancies, was dismissed from the service on October 8, 1855, but was reinstated with his staff rank of captain in 1858.
In February and March 1861 he was on duty at San Antonio, Texas, as assistant quartermaster when state troops took from him the federal funds in his charge in the name of the state of Texas, and took over the city of San Antonio. He was then ordered to Washington, but for failing to report to army authorities, he was dropped again from the service on October 4, 1861.
Meanwhile, he had sent his wife to Philadelphia and had joined the cause of the Confederacy, being commissioned colonel of the 50th Virginia Infantry in July 1861. His regiment saw service in West Virginia under Gen. John Buchanan Floyd during the winter of 1861-62. After the Fort Donelson campaign, in 1862 he was ordered to support Kirby-Smith in Knoxville and was given a brigade in Stevenson's division. He took part in the defense of Vicksburg and was captured when it fell. Being soon exchanged, he was made a brigadier-general in September 1863, for services at Vicksburg.
He took part in the Atlanta campaign, in campaigns in northern Alabama and middle Tennessee, and was highly commended for repelling Federal raids. Following the war he rejoined his wife in Philadelphia, and in 1869, she and their only son, Frank, who had also served in the Confederacy, accompanied him to Egypt where he joined the forces of Ismail Pasha, with the rank of colonel.
He became one of that small but almost unsung band of gentleman-adventurers, mostly ex-Confederates, who tried to bring order out of chaos in Egypt. Reynolds served in various staff capacities, helping to build up the Egyptian army for its ill-fated campaign in Abyssinia in 1875. Early in that year he was chief of staff for William Wing Loring, who commanded an infantry division at Alexandria, but Reynolds did not accompany him in the disastrous campaign which followed. Broken in health, and mourning the death of his son, also a colonel under Ismail, he died in Alexandria, Egypt, the following spring.
He was married and had at least one son, Frank.
