Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): Donald McKenzie "Doncey" Dunlop

Caption:  Donald McKenzie “Doncey” Dunlop

Credit:  Petersburg Siege Museum

Private (eventually Sgt.) Donald McKenzie "Doncey" Dunlop joined the 12th's Company C, the Petersburg New or "B" Grays, on April 19, 1861.  He was a relative of the prominent Petersburg tobacco Dunlops.  A practical joker who deflated his cousin and fellow New Gray Pvt. "English John" Dunlop's air mattress in Norfolk and a scrounger who left his family without meat on one occasion during the Siege of Petersburg, he suffered wounds at Heth's Salient at Spotsylvania (May 12, 1864) and at Hatcher's Run (February 7, 1865) and was taken prisoner on the retreat to Appomattox.  After the war, Doncey moved to Baltimore.  First Lieutenant James Eldred Phillips of the 12th's Company G, the Richmond Grays, shared with Dunlop a corner of the star Phillips took when dividing up the Petersburg Regiment's last battle flag at Appomattox.