Show Menu

The Cherry brothers miss the fight at Second Manassas

 Only two months separated the slaughter of Malvern Hill from the next great action of the Army of Northern Virginia. That was the battle of Second Manassas, fought in late August, 1862. After Lee had defeated McClellan before Richmond, President Lincoln ordered the Union army of 90,000 on the James River to sail back to Washington. In the meantime, Lincoln combined the three Union armies in Western Virginia into one force of 47,000. Over this army Lincoln placed General John Pope. In July 1962, Pope issued an address to his troops: I come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an…

Read more

The Cherry brothers survive Malvern Hill

 The Seven Days’ campaign swirled through five more days of attacks by Lee’s army. On July 1, the Union army reached the James River on the south side of the Peninsula. This was Malvern Hill. Union generals created an impregnable position with artillery on the crest. But Lee ordered an all-out assault. You can see in maps of the battle where – late in the afternoon – the 4th Georgia attacked the Union line as part of Wright’s Brigade. They fought at the foot of the hill at Malvern Cliffs and the Slave Cabins. This was a Confederate defeat comparable to the third day at Gettysburg. Crab wrote: About 3:00…

Read more

William C. Cherry sees the elephant

 By the first of July 1862, Private William C. Cherry had become a combat veteran. He and his brother James Albert Cherry – who had enlisted with him — had fought in the first battle of the Seven Days’ Campaign before Richmond. Those battles proved the fighting spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia. General Robert E. Lee had reorganized and renamed the army when he replaced the wounded General Joseph E. Johnston. We know something of William Cherry’s part in the campaigns through a memoir he wrote after the war.  The family knew William Cherry as “Crab” and James as “Judge.” Their company – the West Point Guards –…

Read more

Two Reunions at Chatfield and Telico: 1873 and 2012

 Cousins in Chatfield hosted a reunion of the Hodge, Persons, Pannill, Witherspoon, and Marchbanks families. Chatfield – a small agricultural community – sits about 12 miles from Corsicana. The reunion began July 7 with lunch at the annual meeting of the Chatfield Cemetery Association, so we took a watermelon and drove over. Our cousin Judge Rob Jones organized the reunion with his mother, now in her 90th year. Rob and wife, Jennifer, were showing off their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Mary Page Pannill Jones. The Joneses named the baby for his mother’s grandmother Mary Page Pannill, who married Robert Lewis Hodge. Rob showed us through his mother’s old Hodge home with its…

Read more

Welcome

 I had planned this series for May 21, 2011 — the day 150 years ago that William Carter Cherry enlisted in Company D, 4th Georgia Infantry, at Augusta.  He enlisted with one of his brothers and joined Confederate service at Portsmouth, Virginia.  In the spring of 1862, the regiment marched to join the army defending Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign.   On June 1, 1862, General Robert E. Lee took command and transformed his men into the Army of Northern Virginia.  William Cherry fought in most of the battles of this remarkable army until his capture in 1864. I have a copy of Colonel Cherry’s memoir that he wrote in…

Read more