Grove's Culpeper Battery: The Nucleus of the Stuart Horse Artillery
Hdqrs. Army of the Potomac Special Order I. Captain Pelham will report with his Battery to Brig. Gen. J .E.B. Stuart for service as horse artillery. By command of General Johnston. Thomas G. Rhett |
This Special Order which transferred Lieutenant Jolm Pelham (he wasn't commissioned a Captain until March 23, 1862) and his battery into service as horse artillery was the real beginning of the Stuart Horse Artillery, also known as the 1st Stuart Horse Artillery and as Pelham's Battery.
During the autmn of 1862 this unit split, forming the 1st and 2nd Stuart Horse Artillery , commanded respectively by Captain James Breathed and Captain Mathias Winston Henry.
The battery which Lieut. Pelham brought with him into General Stuart's command went by several different names from the time of its enlistment until it became in effect the Stuart Horse Artillery. It seems to have been widely known as Grove's Culpeper Battery after its captain, George A. Grove. It was mustered into Confederate service on April 19, 1861 in Culpeper County, Virginia. It became Co. C, 1st Regiment, Virginia Light Artillery during Colonel William Nelson Pendleton's failed attempt to form a regiment of light artillery in early 1861. (Company B, of this short-lived regiment, also known as the Wise Artillery, commanded by Captain Ephraim G. Alburtis, had Lieut. Pelham as one of its officers.)
Grove's Culpeper Battery saw service at the Battle of First Manassas, July 21, 1861. A section of this battery under command of Lieut. Robert F. Beckham did gallant service in shelling Union troops on the extreme Confederate left in front of General Stuart's position. Stuart had appropriated Beckham's guns for use with his cavalry during the afternoon fighting. Stuart most likely remembered Beckham's performance and would later request, after Pelham's death, that Major Beckham be given command of the Stuart Horse Artillery. Beckham later went to Tennessee and was killed at the Battle of Franklin.
John Pelham was probably transferred from Co. B, 1st Regiment Virginia Light Artillery (the Wise Artillery) to Co. C, Grove's Culpeper Battery in the early part of September 1861. The muster rolls for September and October list him as company commander and mustering officer. In a return signed by Lieut. Pelham on October 31st, Captain Grove is listed as on detached duty, thus leaving Pelham in command. It was in this capacity that Pelham reported to Stuart under Special Order #557 in late November 1861.
It was this battery, then, variously known as Co. C, 1st Regiment, Virginia
Light Artillery, the Newtown Artillery, the King and Queen Battery, and most
often as Grove's Culpeper Battery, which became the nucleus of the famous
Stuart Horse Artillery.
This article first appeared in Volume 7, No. 4 of The Cannoneer.
Source:
Robert K. Krick, Lee's Colonels, rev. 2nd ed., Morningside, 1984.
Charles G. Milham, Gallant Pelham: American Extraordinary.
Lee A. Wallace, Jr., A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations 1861-1865,
1986 ed.
Jennings C. Wise, The Long Ann of Lee.
Robert J. Trout, "In Pelham's Shadow: The Commanders of the Horse Artillery
of the Army of Northern Virginia after Major John Pelham," Civil
War Quarterly, Vol. XI, 1987.)
