My ggg grandfather Robert H. Owen was the bugler in Bradford’s Mississippi Battery. I also had up to eight gggg uncles in this battery. The Battery was formed as Grisham’s Battery in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, in the Summer of 1861. Near the end of 1861, it was sent to Virginia, and throughout the war it was generally located in Southeast Virginia and Northeast North Carolina. In 1862, Bradford assumed command of the unit. It is also sometimes referred to as the “Confederate Guards Artillery.” It participated in the Suffork, Virginia (April/May 1863) and the Plymouth/New Bern, North Carolina (April/May 1864) operations before being sent to the Petersburg area in May 1864, where it remained through the end of the war.

The Battery was originally equipped with four twelve-pounders. During the move to Petersburg in May 1864, one section was left around Hicksford, Virginia, while the other went on to Petersburg itself. The two sections apparently were never rejoined, and the Hicksford section appears to have retained its two twelve-pounders. The section at Petersburg received three twenty-pound Parrotts around the end of May 1864, captured from Battery F of the 1st Rhode Island Artillery at Drewry’s Bluff on May 16, 1864, to replace its twelve-pounders. When the final retreat from Petersburg occurred in Spring 1865, the section spiked one of the twenty-pounders and left it behind.

I would like to confirm the type of twelve-pounders the Battery received in 1861. Around 1903, a veteran of the Battery, Lt. Patrick Hoy, wrote a short history of the unit. He described the artillery pieces as “a 12 pounder brass gun, with swell muzzle mouldings, handles over the trunions, with knob and band at the breach and when nicely polished was a thing of beauty, when lying quietly on its carriage.” Hoy relates that, when the Battery reached Richmond in late 1861, the officers of the unit had sights fitted to the pieces at the Tredegar works, and states that the guns themselves had been cast there the prior year.

A 1863 report from General French’s headquarters, during the Suffork campaign, states that Bradford was instructed to take his “four heavy 12-pounders” to relieve Capt. Martin’s Virginia Battery, which had four “12-pounder howitzers”. The position Bradford assumed was along a river, and he was to interfere with river traffic. A Military History of Mississippi, talking of the Battery after the northern section had received the Parrott rifles in 1864, states, “The battery also had two 12-pounder guns. Lieutenant A. J. Cochran's section was with Garnett's brigade in October, 1864, and later on the Weldon Railroad.”

The twelve-pounders clearly seem to be guns, rather than howitzers, as they are referred to as such. The 1863 report specifically states that the Battery, with its “heavy” twelve-pounders, was replacing another battery that was armed with howitzers. I assume this was because the solid shot and higher muzzle velocity of a gun made a better anti-river boat weapon. I assume the guns were Model 1857 “Napoleons,” especially if they were (as stated by Hoy) cast in 1860. But is it possible they were an older pattern twelve-pounder? In this regard, I note the reference to “heavy” twelve-pounders in the report; I understand the Napoleons were lighter than the older twelve-pound guns they replaced. I also note Hoy’s reference to “handles over the trunions;” I do not recall seeing handles on Napoleons; did early Napoleons have such a feature?