U.S. Civil War Confederate Officer Cards

Letter from a Battlefield

A few years ago I had the opportunity to browse a file filled with correspondence written by a Civil War veteran who served in the same South Carolina coastal artillery unit as our 2nd great-grandfather. I traveled to the area for only one day, so I skimmed each letter, taking photos of those I planned to study more carefully when I got home. A week or so later I read these words, written from a little-remembered North Carolina battlefield on March 16, 1865:

“Our 3d gun was engaged this morning, the horses shot down, & the cannoneers retired under orders from Taliaferro. The gun was lost, but fought to the end most gallantly. No one was killed, but Julius Bell was hit in the ankle & Wilson Hall had his foot shot off & was left on the field.”¹

Tears welling, I gazed in wonder at the screen, then jumped up to show my wife. “That’s my ancestor!” I excitedly told her. Julius Bell made it back to his lines, and was evacuated to a hospital in Raleigh. A few years later he married and started a family in Savannah, Georgia, of which we are the fortunate fourth generation result.

Confederate Officer Cards

It is a thrill to find documentation that fleshes out the life of an ancestor. In the 1930s a veterans organization compiled a database of men who served as officers in Civil War Confederate units. Information about each man was handwritten onto an index card, often on both sides. The “United States, Confederate Officers Card Index, 1861-1865” was alphabetically digitized, and is now available to browse online.² I was familiar with the database, but recently ran across one card that all these years later movingly connects disparate branches of our Grayson family tree.

8th Virginia Infantry Regiment

The 8th Virginia Infantry Regiment included six companies from Loudoun, two from Fauquier, and one each from Fairfax and Prince William Counties. “This was a regiment of brothers,” states a unit history, “four sets of four, sixteen sets of three and more than eighty pairs, gave it the air of a family gathering.”³ The 8th Virginia was certainly a regiment of Grayson first cousins. I’ve discovered at least seven:

• Lt. Richard O. Grayson, age 23; his younger brother
• Sgt. Maj. T. Fitzhugh Grayson, 21; and their older cousin
• Capt. Alexander Grayson, 27, all of Company “F.”
• Lt. Benjamin Grayson Carter, 20, attached to Co. “I.”
• Lt. Joseph L. Stephenson, 26, attached to Co. “C”; his younger brother
• Sgt. James A. Stephenson, 17, attached to Co. “C.” All six of these young men were unmarried. Finally
• Maj. John B. Grayson, a 47-year old widowed first cousin who served as regimental quartermaster.

Lt. Richard O. Grayson, Gaines’ Mill

In 1861 the 8th Regiment fought at 1st Manassas and at Ball’s Bluff. In the spring of 1862 the unit was sent south to defend Richmond. Though located less than a mile from an interstate highway and a mere ten miles from the city, few clues to modernity can be found at the Gaines’ Mill battlefield. “It is a nearly pristine landscape,” testifies the National Park Service “Gaines’ Mill Confederate Attack Trail” brochure, “one that veterans of the epic battle here surely would recognize if they could return to the scene.” The Virginia brigade under Gen. George Pickett was tasked with crossing 200 yards of exposed farm and grassland into withering cannon and rifle fire at and above Boatswain’s Creek. Of the 185 that set off, regimental losses were 52 wounded and 13 killed.⁴

Capt. Alexander Grayson, Gettysburg

One year later, the 8th Virginia Regiment arrived at Gettysburg on the evening of that battle’s second day. After a two-hour artillery barrage late the following morning, Gen. Pickett once again led his Virginians across exposed farmland toward a heavily fortified ridge. Of the 218 men of the 8th Virginia that set off on that fateful historic charge, 178 were killed, wounded, and/or captured. Only six are known to have reached the objective before being killed or captured.⁵

Lt. Henry W. Chamblin

Though Henry Chamblin is not a blood relative, his detailed officer card makes clear his ominous wartime association; It is silent about his post-war family connection.

Henry served as an officer in the same regimental company as Richard and Alex, and was gravely wounded at Gaines’ Mill.⁴ After his hospitalization, Henry returned to his Loudoun county home to recuperate and recruit. Henry was promoted to company 1st Lieutenant with the death of Richard, and was in line to ascend to the captaincy one year later. Henry was detained by Union troops and transported to Johnson’s Island POW Camp on Lake Erie. Though he couldn’t have appreciated it then, Henry’s capture was a veiled blessing. To begin with, despite the many hardships the captives faced, a history of the POW camp admits that the men “were eating better than many of those still fighting for the Confederacy.”⁶ Most importantly, by being captured on May 28, 1863, Henry was spared the momentous but tragic charge at Gettysburg just over one month later.

Henry lived through the war and his imprisonment. He once more returned to Loudoun County and married Hebe Grayson, 3rd cousin of the forever childless Richard and Alex. The couple had three children before Hebe died in 1873. Henry fathered five more children with his second wife, and died in 1908 at age 72.

¹Charles Woodward Hutson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

² https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States,_Confederate_Officers_Card_Index_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records Sign up for a free account at https://www.familysearch.org/en/identity/signup/

³ 8th Virginia Infantry Regiment, “The Bloody Eighth” https://www.warofrightsforum.com/showthread.php?5755-Regiment-History-8th-Virginia-Infantry accessed Mar 2024

⁴ “List of Killed and Wounded of the 8th Regiment Virginia Volunteers in the Engagement of June 27, 1862.” Richmond Whig, 2 Jul 1862 pg. 3

⁵ 8th Virginia Infantry (The Virginia Regimental Histories Series) by John E. Divine (1983, H.E. Howard, Lynchburg VA) pg. 42

⁶read more at http://johnsonsisland.org/history-pows/civil-war-era/