Spencer Glasgow Welch (1834–1916) was a South Carolina physician and Confederate Army surgeon, remembered chiefly for the collection of wartime correspondence published as A Confederate Surgeon's Letters to His Wife (Neale Publishing Co., New York, 1911). Welch was born on 12 March 1834 in Newberry County, South Carolina, to William Welch and Mary Crozier Glasgow Welch. He was educated at Furman University and then pursued medical training at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, one of the leading American medical schools of the era, before returning to South Carolina to practise. On 23 August 1861 he enlisted as a private in Company D of the 13th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, part of McGowan's Brigade, mustering at the Newberry Court House; once his medical qualifications were examined and certified he was promoted to assistant surgeon on the regiment's field and staff. He served through the war's major campaigns in Virginia, was paroled at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, and made the roughly three-week journey home to Newberry on foot and by whatever transport he could find. He married Cordelia Strother, and the couple had three children. Throughout the war Welch wrote frequent, candid letters to his wife describing camp life, battlefield medicine, troop movements, and his hopes for the Confederacy's cause and his own survival. In 1911 these letters were compiled and published, and the book has since become a frequently cited primary source for Civil War medical and social history, valued for its unusually direct, unpolished perspective on a regimental surgeon's daily experience. It has appeared in numerous later editions and reprints. Welch died on 5 January 1916 in Newberry, South Carolina.
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