a companion to Antietam on the Web
John Cook was not quite 14 when he enlisted as Bugler of Battery B, 4th United States Artillery in June 1861. You probably recognize his name from his heroism at Antietam in September 1862, for which he was much later awarded the Medal of Honor.
Here he is in a widely reproduced image probably taken soon after his enlistment. Thanks to the Adjutant General’s Corps Regimental Association (AGCRA) for putting that online.
In 1860, the companies [of the 4th United States Artillery] in Utah were kept busy protecting the parties of emigrants going West, and keeping open the mail routes. Light Battery B, operating as cavalry, marched during that summer 2000 miles over a barren and desert country, and though the Indians were continually hostile, the roads were kept open. The battery had a successful fight against 200 Indians at Eagan’s Canyon, August 11, 1860, losing three men wounded (one mortally).
From May to October 1860 Battery B was based at the small Pony Express station located at Station Spring at the southern end of Ruby Valley in western Utah Territory (now Nevada). 32 year old First Lieutenant D.D. (Delavan Duane) Perkins, USMA ’49 was in command; Lieutenant Stephen H Weed USMA ’54 and Surgeon Charles Brewer (Assistant Surgeon CSA 1861-65) were the other officers.
On 15 and 16 July 1860 US Census enumerator J.P. Waters identified 105 Americans there, but did not include the band of Shoshone who lived nearby. His three page [ page 1 | page 2 | page 3 ] listing of the residents is a great reference for students of the Battery.
Among the 70 soldiers listed in Ruby Valley that summer at least 17 were also in action with Battery B just over two years later at Antietam, including then-Sergeant James Stewart, who commanded the Battery at Antietam after Captain Campbell was wounded, and Private Richard L Tea, who was slightly wounded at Antietam, was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1876 for action against the Cheyenne in Kansas the year before, and retired from the Army in 1888 after 30 years in uniform.
Others of the Battery in that 1860 Census list known to be at Antietam in 1862:
William West (WIA Antietam)
John Mitchell
Andrew J Ames (WIA Antietam)
Joseph Brownlee (WIA Antietam)
John Brown (KIA Antietam)
James Cahoo
Frederick A Chapin
Henry P Lyons (KIA Antietam)
William Kelly
Joseph Herzog (MWIA Antietam)
Andrew McBride
John Wilsee/Wilsey (WIA Antietam)
Robert Moore (WIA Antietam)
William Kelly
William Moffitt (WIA Antietam)
_______________
The quote at the top is from the US Army history of the 4th Regiment of Artillery, online thanks to the Center of Military History.
The census pages are from 1860 United States Federal Census, Population, Schedule 1. NARA microfilm publication M653 (1,438 rolls). Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. The Ruby Valley, St. Mary’s, Utah Territory set are on roll M653_1314, Pages 1-3. I found these page images online thanks to FamilySearch.
The photograph of the Battery’s battlefield tablet at Antietam was taken by Craig Swain for the HMDB.
This impressive photograph of George W Cooley, Company F, 7th Wisconsin Infantry is from the massive collection of Dennis Skalstad, who kindly shared it online on Cooley’s cemetery memorial page. Private Cooley was killed at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain in Maryland on 14 September 1862.
Bristol, CT bookkeeper Charles Lyman Taylor enlisted as a Sergeant in the 16th Connecticut Infantry on 29 July 1862 and married Harriet Wenslow Tuttle (1840-1916) about 26 August. There was probably no honeymoon, as he and his regiment left for the war immediately after.
I’d guess these photographs were taken on the occasion of that wedding.
Below are Harriet and her family some years earlier. Harriet and younger brother Edward Hubbard Tuttle (1842-1868); mother Betsey Hubbard (1814-1888) and father Edmund Tuttle (1814-1886), a mechanic and deacon in Meriden, CT. Excellent images, both.
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The wedding pictures accompanied a very large collection of the couple’s letters sold at auction by Swann Galleries in 2016. Family genealogist Charles J Christenson shared that pair of Tuttle photographs to the FamilySearch database.
In an 1863 letter home to his parents Private Gavette Burt Holcomb of the 16th Connecticut Infantry wrote
We are raising the flag to day and well we might for one year agoe was the day that we received a warm reception from those grea [gray]backs, such a one as, I never forget, that day was 17 Sept 1862. That day many of our brave Soldiers died.
He was a farmer in his hometown of Simsbury, CT for the rest of his life, and was for many years on the school board there. And he apparently owned one of the faster horses in the area, a mare named Belle of Kentucky.
The fairgrounds at Cherry Park in Avon, CT hosted a regional fair every September from 1883 to 1911, complete with horse racing on a dirt oval about 1/2 mile long. There was auto racing there in the 1930’s and 40s and a suburban housing development took over in about 1960.
Gavett is about 17 years old in that photograph, from Jim Silliman out of his collection. His 1863 letter is in the collection of the Simsbury Historical Society. The news clippings are from the New Haven Morning Courier and Journal of 6 September 1895, online from the Library of Congress.
