Site Visit Saturday: the Grave of Abraham Buford, Lexington, Kentucky

    Cemeteries are wonderful history lessons. Often, the larger cemeteries have scores of lessons. We could spend the rest of the year just in today’s cemetery, the Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky. For now, we’ll concentrate on just one story, the life of Abraham Buford.

    Born in Woodford County, Kentucky, on January 18, 1820, Buford was educated by a private tutor before attending Centre College and then West Point, where he graduated in 1841. Among his classmates were Richard B. Garnett, Robert S. Garnett, Josiah Gorgas, John Marshall Jones, Samuel Jones, and Claudius Wistar Sears, all Confederate generals. (There were a few Union generals in his class as well, including Horatio G. Wright, Schuyler Hamilton, John F. Reynolds, and Nathaniel Lyon.) After graduation, Buford was assigned to the 1^st US Dragoons, seeing duty in Kansas, Mexico (where Buford was breveted to captain for gallant and meritorious service in the battle of Buena Vista), New Mexico, and at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Buford resigned from the army in 1854 and took up farming in Woodford County. He was soon breeding racehorses and shorthorn cattle, gaining a national reputation.

   A biographical sketch states that while Buford was an ardent advocate of states’ rights, he counseled

Abraham Buford. 

against secession, and remained neutral until the summer of 1862 when he joined with John H. Morgan. Buford raised what amounted to a brigade composed of the 3^rd, 5^th, and 6^th Kentucky Cavalry regiments. Buford led the brigade at Perryville and during the Murfreesboro campaign. Official promotion to brigadier general came on November 29, 1862. Following a dispute with one of his regimental commanders, Buford was transferred to Mississippi and placed under John Pemberton. He led his brigade at the battle of Champion Hill and served in W. W. Loring’s Division for several months, escaping the surrender at Vicksburg. In March 1864, Buford was assigned to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s command, and Buford’s infantry raided into Kentucky to supply itself with horses. Buford was assigned to command one of Forrest’s cavalry divisions.

   The battle of Brice’s Cross Roads in June 1864 is considered Buford’s finest hour, and Forrest’s greatest victory. Buford rode with Forrest until November when his division was attached to the Army of Tennessee. They opened the battle at Spring Hill, fought at Murfreesboro, and Buford was wounded in the shoulder near Franklin on December 17, and in the leg at Richland Creek on December 24. He returned to the war in February 1865, and fought at Selma, Alabama in April 1865. Buford was paroled at Gainesville, Alabama, on May 10, 1865.

Lexington Cemetery 

   Following the war, Buford returned to Kentucky to raise racehorses, advocate reconciliation, and serve in the Kentucky legislature in 1879. However, the death of his only son and his wife, as well as a series of severe financial reverses that resulted in the loss of his home, led Buford to commit suicide at his brother’s home in Danville, Indiana, in June 1884. He was buried next to his wife in Lexington. The Lexington Cemetery is the final resting place of a number of Confederate generals, including John H. Morgan, John C. Breckinridge, and Basil Duke.

   There is no stand-alone biography on Abraham Buford. However, there is an excellent sketch in Kentuckians in Gray, edited by Bruce Allardice and Lawrence Lee Hewitt (2008)

   I have visited the Lexington Cemetery once, in the fall of 1997.

Site Visit Saturday: Lt. Col. Frank A. Reynolds, 39th NC, Egypt, and Philadelphia

 

   In June 2015, we were on one of those classic “see America” road trips. Our son had been competing at National History Day in Maryland, and after the contest ended, we headed north to Philadelphia for a couple of days, then west to Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry. One of our stops was Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Laurel Hill is one of the classic Victorian Cemeteries, and with more than 33,000 graves, it is huge. There are graves of many important historical people at Laurel Hill: novelist Owen Wister; Titanic survivor Eleanor Widener; Constitutional Congress secretary Charles Thomson; Union general George Gordon Meade; and Confederate general John C. Pemberton, just to name a few. As we were stumbling through this cemetery, I found the grave of another interesting Confederate soldier: Lt. Col. Frank A. Reynolds. 

Frank A. Reynolds (findagrave)

   Frank A. Reynolds was born in the current state of Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia) on August 10, 1841. His father was Alexander W. Reynolds (Yep, the Confederate general) and his mother was Mary Reeves Ash Reynolds. Like his father, Frank Reynolds attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. The younger Reynolds graduated[MCH1]  in June 1861. Some of his classmates included Alonzo Cushing, Patrick H. O’Rorke, and George A. Custer. Reynolds, however, did not follow his classmates into the Federal army. Instead, he returned to Virginia. He served as a cavalry officer under Gen. John B. Floyd in 1861, then was appointed captain and assistant adjutant general to Gen. Samuel G. French. On May 19, 1862, Reynolds was appointed major and assigned to the 39^th North Carolina Troops. He was appointed lieutenant colonel on December 29, 1862.

The 39^th North Carolina Troops was one of four North Carolina infantry regiments that served in the Western Theater of the war (the 29^th, 58^th, and 60^th NC regiments are the others). The 39^th Regiment saw action at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Resaca, New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, Ezra Church, Franklin, Nashville, Mobile, Fort Blakely, and Spanish Fort. It appears that Reynolds was present for most of those actions. On May 9, 1865, the lieutenant colonel was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi.

   After the war, Reynolds served for a brief amount of time as a street inspector in New York City, before accepting a commission as an artillery colonel on the staff of Gen. William W. Loring, in the Egyptian Army. Frank Reynolds was in Ilion, New York, when he passed in July 1875. A brief obituary in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), simply read: Col. Frank Reynolds, one of the American officers in the service of the Egyptian Khedive, was found dead in his bed Tuesday at Ilion, N.Y. He was on leave of absence.” Writing in 1901, Lt. Theodore F. Davidson regretted that there was little “data of his subsequent career,” but believed that Reynolds was “an accomplished soldier.”

Remembering Robert B. Vance

Today, I had the opportunity to attend the unveiling of a marker remembering Robert B. Vance in Crosby, Tennessee. The marker was installed by the Maj. James T. Huff Camp 2243, Tennessee Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans.

We seldom remember Robert Brank Vance. He gets lost in the shadow of his younger brother, Zebulon Baird Vance. Robert was born in 1828. He was a merchant in Asheville, a farmer, and a clerk of court in Madison and Buncmbe Counties. On September 11, 1861, Vance was appointed colonel of the 29th North Carolina Troops. The regiment moved from Asheville to Raleigh in October 1861, and then after the bridge burnings to Jonesboro, Tennessee, in late November 1861. The winter months were spent in Cocke County, Tennessee, and then along the East Tennessee and Georgia and East Tennessee and Virginia Railroads. On February 20, 1862, Vance and the entire 29th were ordered to Cumberland Gap, serving there until late April, and in east Tennessee until Bragg's Kentucky campaign. The 29th Regiment fought at Murfreesboro in December 1862/January 1863.

Vance was promoted to brigadier general on March 4, 1863. When the Department of Western North Carolina was created, Vance was tapped as its commander. Around the end of 1863, Vance was ordered to Raleigh. Before he left, he was ordered to make a demonstration into Tennessee, hoping to distract Burnside who was looking to engage with Longstreet. Vance and his command captured a supply train, but on their return and after a small skirmish near Crosby, Tennessee, Vance was captured. He spent time in the prisons at Nashville, Louisville, Camp Chase, and Fort Delaware. Vance was finally paroled on March 14, 1865, and returned to North Carolina.

After the war, Robert Vance served in the General Assembly and in the US House of Representatives, and then in the patent office. He was married twice: first to Harriet McElroy, and then in 1892, to Lizzie R. Cook. He died at his farm near Asheville and is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville. His grave is right in front of that of his brother.

If you are heading down US321, towards Gatlinburg (from the east), take a moment, pull over, and learn a little more about the life of Robert B. Vance, and the skirmish at Shultz's Mill.

Looking for NC's Civil War: the 29th NCT at Murfreesboro

Some battlefields, like Gettysburg or Fort Fisher, I visit on a regular or at least annual schedule. Murfreesboro is not one of them. My first visit came in 1993 or 1994. A second visit came in October 2012. I stopped for the purpose of photographing the different spots that are associated with North Carolina regiments. There were three of them involved in the battle: the 29th NCT, 39th NCT, and 60th NCT.

Here are the words of Robert B. Vance, then colonel of the 29th NCT, and later brigadier general:

   In the heat of the fire, Private David Patton, of the "Buncombe Life Guards," was killed by a shell which took his head off, and it [his head] lodged in the fork of a small tree.

   While the regiment was in camp at Versailles, Ky., the Colonel of the Twenty-ninth got his meals at the house of Colonel Cotton, of the Sixth Kentucky (US). Mrs. Cotton was very bright and said she would make her colonel shoot ours if they met. Our colonel said: "We will shoot high on your account," but sadly enough, he was killed in front of our lines on the field of Murfreesboro or Stone's river.

   After the fire had slackened on 31 December, 1862, our men saw a Federal Lieutenant-Colonel between the lines, seemingly fearfully wounded. At the risk of their lives our people formed a squad and went after him. The balls fell around them, but not one was struck.

 

I took this photo, over ground where the 29th NCT charged on December 31, 1862, in October 2012.