Private Baker enlisted in the Rifle Battalion of the short-lived 4th Georgia State Brigade along with the rest of the Dalton Guards on June 11th 1861 at Camp McDonald. They would become Co B of the newly formed Phillips Legion's Infantry Battalion at the beginning of August 1861. Baker's compiled service record indicates that he participated in the brutal campaign into the mountains of northwestern Virginia that autumn. Rolls indicate him absent on sick furlough during May/June of 1862. It would appear that he rejoined his company and participated in the Second Manassas and Maryland campaigns before coming down with typhoid fever in late September 1862. He is admitted to the Confederate hospital at Culpeper, Va on October 1st, 1862 and is then listed as "absent sick" on rolls dated 11/30/1862 and 12/31/1862 indicating that he did not participate in the battle of Fredericksburg. Back with his company on the roll for January/February 1863, he was then severely wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville on May 3rd 1863. A hospital record shows him admitted to Richmond General Hospital #9 in early May and then transferred to General Hospital #26 on May 10th. He was subsequently declared unfit for field servive and detailed to the Quartermaster Dept at Charleston, SC (ANV SO 225/7 dated 9/18/1863).
A postwar pension application filed by his widow, Martha, states that he was born in 1842 and died in Whitfield County on September 11th 1921. It also states that he was wounded in the head and both thighs at Chancellorsville and subsequently detailed to duty at Augusta, Ga with Major Welles of the Quartermaster Dept..
