This artifact was worn by Lt. Col. Daniel A. Ledbetter of Townville. During the Civil War he enlisted in Orr's Rifles and was killed by a sharpshooter at the Battle of Second Manassas in August 1862. Despite traveling to Richmond during the war, Ledbetter's wife Elizabeth and their one-year-old child, D.A. Ledbetter, Jr. were unable to locate Daniel's grave.

More than twenty years later, in 1887, D.A. Ledbetter Jr. was reading a copy of the Keowee Courier when he came across a poem written by W.A. Buckley that mentioned his father's name. Months later, Ledbetter, Jr. reached out to Buckley who agreed to meet him at Second Manassas battlefield and show him his father's grave. They disinterred the body for identification and D.A. Ledbetter, Jr. took his father's sword and one of his epaulets.

In 2001, Ledbetter's descendants donated this epaulet and other family items to the museum.