A couple of years ago, when I first put a querry concerning Bradford's Battery on the Mississippi Board, I was contacted by a distant kinsman who is a decendant from Benjamin Owen, one of the three brothers of my ggg grandfather Robert Owen who served in the Battery with Robert. She is also researching the unit, so I recently sent her an e-mail directing her to our exchange on this board. This past week, she advised me that one of the personnel at Petersburg National Military Park (going only on Lt. Hoy's recollections) commented that Bradford's Battery's original guns were cast prior to 1861, probably by Noble Brothers Foundry and Macon Arsenal in Georgia. Do you know whether this is possible or probable, and if so the probable model of the 12 pounders.

My inclination would be, even if true and Hoy's recollection about the guns being cast in Richmond was erronious, and the guns were instead cast at Macon, they were probably of an older pattern. The more I think about this, the possession of older model weapons (rather than Napoleons of 2/3 the weight) explains the deployment of the battery in 1861 through May 1864 in SE Virginia and NE North Carolina.