Joseph Griffith Abney.  With the close of the war and the dismal situation that presented itself thereafter, he was one of several presents in August of 1865 at a meeting that formed the Southern Colonization Society in Edgefield, of this society he was elected the President. The purpose of the Society was to find new land for the defeated southerners in Brazil, and for a short time, he went with those who had decided to go to Brazil, however before long he returned to South Carolina and his home in Edgefield.

On Wednesday, February 2nd, 1870, after only ten hours of illness Colonel Abney died at his home in Edgefield, he was 48 years old. He had fallen victim to an epidemic of meningitis that was then raging through Edgefield County. His remains were laid to rest shortly after his death at the Willowbrook Cemetery in Edgefield, South Carolina.

Military:
He was Second Lieutenant in the Palmetto Regiment, commanded by Colonel Pierce Butler, during the War with Mexico, and was severely wounded at the battle of Cherubusco. Lieutenant Sumter was also wounded in the same battle, and though they were both wounded early in the engagement, yet they continued with their companies until the last shots were fired. In the War of Secession Joseph Abney was appointed Major in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, and was placed in command of the Second Battalion of South Carolina Sharpshooters of three companies, commanded by Captains ReO. Chisolm, Joseph Blythe Allston, and Henry Buist. Appointed July 1862. This battalion was united with the Charleston Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel P. C. Gaillard and formed the Twenty-seventh South Carolina Infantry.   Major Abney was in all the battles around Petersburg until he was wounded at Drury's Bluff, in the attack by Beauregard on Butler. The Twenty-seventh South Carolina Infantry was in Johnson Hagood's Brigade, in the division of Major General Hoke, of North Carolina, Longstreet's corps.

See Abney family page.