More Civil War Ancestors - C. W. Gray

Out of the four Gray brothers (Robert H, Clarendon W, Augustus L and Madison J) of Stockton, Maine, who enlisted in the Union cause in the Civil War, only Clarendon returned, having seen every major battle from Bull Run to Appomattox. After the war, he served as a Boston police officer. This article, in a September 1897 issue of the Boston Evening Record (a precursor to the Boston Herald), features his Civil War service and his being awarded the Kearny Cross.

BOSTON EVENING [RECORD]
[Septe]mber 18, 1897
LATEST RECORD EXTRA
4:05
HIS PRIZE.
Patrolman Gray Has Kearney Cross.

One of the possessors of the coveted “Kearney Cross,” awarded for especial and conspicuous bravery at the battle of Fair Oaks or Seven Pines, as it is sometimes called is Patrolman C. W. Gray of station 3.

It is a simple maltese cross, dangling at the end of a strip of red, white and blue ribbon, with the words “Kearney Cross,” engraved upon its face, but it is rich in signification, and its value to Mr. Gray cannot be estimated in terms of this world’s riches.

Mr. Gray comes from a family of men who were foremost in answering the call for the defence of the Union. Three brothers, with him entered in the army at the first summons of President Lincoln.

Three of the four brothers left their lives upon southern fields. Mr. Gray alone returned home after the bloody conflict.

And strangest of all the father of these four gallant men was a staunch democrat, bitterly opposed to the war and all that it signified.

It was a bitter irony that three of his sons should have given their lives for the cause to which he was so entirely hostile.

Mr. Gray was but 18 years of age when he entered, and two of his brothers were one and two years younger, respectively. Patrolman Gray is still a young man, and few people who see him on his daily beat would deem it possible that a man so youthful in appearance should have undergone such hardships and attained so great a proof of gallantry as the Kearney Cross.

When I questioned at the station house about the cross and the circumstances under which he gained it he was extremely loath to talk of the matter, preferring, as he said, to leave the relation of the facts to others.

He invited me, however, to come to his home, and see the trophy, and finally I obtained a recital of the circumstances from his own lips.

OF GOOD MAINE STOCK.
Mr. Gray and his brothers were of good old Maine stock, and they enlisted in the Third Maine volunteers. Their first experience under arms was at the first battle of Bull Run, in which engagement Mr. Gray was wounded in the thigh.

His corps was commanded by the gallant Gen. Howard. Mr. Gray fought in all the battles in which his regiment took part, but it was at Fair Oaks that he received the cross for his notable gallantry.

It was after a fierce engagement when the troops were resting after the heavy labor of the day. Mr. Gray, then a sergeant, with two other men of his regiment named Roper and Millano started out to do a bit of independent reconnoitering.

They went far beyond their own lines, and had almost reached the lines of the enemy when they noticed, under a tree a group of Confederate soldiers, who afterwards proved to be a Georgia colonel who was wounded, with five of his men as a body guard.

Their weapons were stacked against a tree nearby, and the men were reclining about apparently with feelings of great security.

“We slowly circled about them,” said Mr. Gray, “through the woods, and suddenly, when we were as near as we could safely get, we leaped out with a great shout and commanded to surrender.

“They were absolutely dazed, and almost before they knew what we were or what they were about, we had them ‘yarded up’ and on the way to our lines.

“But when that Georgia colonel came to his senses, and especially his sense of speech, the language he used was almost as focible as a charge of musketry.

PICTURESQUE SWEARING.
“It was the most picturesque swearing I ever heard, and if profanity could have availed we would have left our captives then and there and fled in terror to our lines.

“We were proof against his wordy assaults, however, and marched him and his men straight to camp, where, as you may imagine, we were received with great ovations.

“This was on May 3, 1863, and May 16 Gen. Braney, who commanded the Third Army Corps, issues a general order commending the splendid gallantry of our corps.

“At the same time the Kearney crosses were presented to the favored few. We were drawn up in line of battle, and Gen. Sedgwick, our division commander, passed along and pinned the crosses on the breast of our coats.

“We were told to wear them continually, and to keep them free from disgrace. We did not have to be told that, and my cross was never removed until the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox.”

THERE ARE TWO OTHERS.
So far as Mr. Gray knows, there are but two other men in this city who have the Kearney cross. They are George Woods, a baggage master at the B. & M. depot, and George Flynn, the janitor of the Lexington School at East Boston.

Both the other men who assisted in the capture of the Georgia colonel and his men were killed in later engagements. Millano was a wealthy Spaniard who left Spain for some political reason. He was killed one month before the expiration of his term of service.

Mr. Gray has, besides the Kearney cross, other tokens of his fighting days, which he values only less highly. Among these are the adjutant general’s report of the records of his three brothers.

HIS BROTHERS’ RECORDS.
R. H. Gray, major of the Fourth Maine, was killed in the battle of the Wilderness. The youngest of the brothers was killed at Fredericksburg, and Mr. Gray buried him with his own hands. The third brother was also killed at Fredericksburg.

Other mementoes are Mr. Gray’s corp badge, a diamond of red cloth which was worn on the cap, and a badge which was given him by his comrades when he was made lieutenant.

Mr. Gray is of the opinion, and it can hardly be disproved, that the record of his family cannot be duplicated among the soldiers of the United States who fought in the Civil War.

At the close of the war his corps was commanded by Gen. Miles, and thus, beginning with Howard, one of the most gallant of the surviving generals, he ended with Miles, no less gallant, who commands the army of today.

My Great-Great-Great Grandfather at Bull Run

I spent the afternoon at the Houghton Library with my uncle Bob, transcribing documents from the MOLLUS Civil War archives. While he worked on our ancestor Major Robert Henry Gray's 1863 war diary, I transcribed two newspaper clippings. What follows below is then-Lieutenant Gray's first-hand account of his experience at First Bull Run, originally printed in the Rockland (Maine) Gazette sometime in 1862, and re-printed in an unknown newspaper some time later (source unknown).

Statements of Lieut. R. H. Gray
[From the Rockland Gazette]

EDITOR GAZETTE: – Agreeably to my promise, I make some remarks concerning the affair at Bull Run.

Of the general features of the battle you have probably before this been well informed. Our brigade commenced moving at about 2 o’clock P.M. We were kept waiting for other troops, who fell in so slowly that at sunrise we had not advanced one mile from our camp. This was a fault. – Had we advanced promptly, we should have taken the northern batteries, as the enemy were not expecting an attack in that quarter. But as our column was some 5 or 6 hours in marching a distance we might easily have gone in two, the enemy, who watched our movements, and saw where the blow was to fall, had time to throw reinforcements into those batteries from Manassas, only three miles distant.

The force detailed to storm the batteries was insufficient. The army generally halted a little short of the battle field, and the battle was fought by detachments from the main body, and marching from one to three miles on a “double quick.” These detachments, after fighting as only brave men will fight, and performing, in many instances, deeds of valor which will never be written were compelled, by being outflanked by superior numbers, and for want of support, to fall back, and abandon the advantages they had gained.

The most glaring fault on the field that day was that, with a few exceptions, our attacking columns were not supported. I make no comments; I am not allowed to censure the conduct of a General, but men will think.

On arriving at a point about one mile from the centre, and about two and a half miles from the right of the enemy’s line, we halted in a wood. While there Major Nickerson was ordered forward to reconnoitre, I got a horse and went with him. Major N. advanced to where Ayer’s battery (formerly Sherman’s) was playing into a [w]ood, where were stationed a body of the enemy’s riflemen and cavalry. They were finally driven out. I passed through this wood later in the day. The havoc was fearful. The trees were splintered and limbs cut off, the ground plowed up, and horses and men dead and dying, lay thickly scattered about. Major N. having finished his reconnaissance, gave me permission to remain a little longer, and returned. – Hitching my horse I climbed a tree and saw Hunter’s brigade engage the enemy. They were about a mile distant, in an open field inclining toward me. I had a fair view. – They had an equal number, no outflanking, and the fight was with musketry alone. – They advanced until the lines were very near, and for about fifteen minutes the roll of musketry was unceasing. The lines of the rebels then began to waver and break, and finally they rallied in four or five confused masses. The rebels were between me and our men. In a moment more the glistening bayonets of our troops came bursting through the smoke-cloud, and rushing on the confused rebel masses. The slaughter for a moment or two was great. The rebels ran to the wood; where they were reinforced and advanced again, and again, after a smart fight, were driven by the bayonet to the wood.

Mr. Russell, the correspondent of the London Times, who pretends to have been an eye-witness of the Battle of Bull Run says there were no bayonet charges on that day. This writer prefers sarcasm to truth, and states what is false.

Thinking I had staid too long, I hastened to join my regiment which was marching by a circuitous route, over to attack the enemy’s left. Before getting into position, […] to [peer? pass?] some distance over a hill.

[column break; two columns of newsprint have been cut and pasted together, and some text is lost here]

[…] missed me, but [reeling? feeling?] so badly, I was some-what indifferent as to the result. I had almost reached my friends, when I was cut off by rebel cavalry, who came charging back, cutting down stragglers. I turned, went into a house used by our troops for a hospital, and lay among the wounded. – The cavalry came up, shot two men who were unwounded, rushed in and took all the guns, pistols, knives and watches they could get, and left. A guard was soon placed over us, which prevented personal violence, but not wordy abuse, for which the rebels have a particular gift. The officers were gentlemanly, but the questions of most of the soldiers showed them to be extremely ignorant. One said to me, “I spose ye are all starvin’ up North, now you don’t git our cotton.” “We do not eat cotton, sir.” “Well, ye wont git any corn up there, neither.” Another, the poorest specimen of humanity I ever observed, ragged, dirty, and ignorant, said to me, “What are you down here for, meddlin’ with out instooshuns?” Our “instooshuns!” I pitied him. The poor class of whites at the South ignorantly worship the Juggernaut “institution,” whose wheels crush them into the mire of society.

A certain rebel colonel belonging in Richmond, after making himself agreeable, as he thought, tried his hand at pumping. – He asked me how many men we had in the fight? I replied, “We had 60,000. How many did you have?” He told me “they had 45,000 at 1 o’clock P.M., besides a reserve,” the number of which he did not inform me, “and at 4 P.M., Johnson arrived with 15,000” I then told him we really had only 32,000 including the reserve, He said I “knew nothing about it, the Yankees had 80,000.” The loss of the enemy must have been severe. An Alabamian remarked with a deep sigh, “If this is war, by —— I want to go home, for our regiment was almost wiped out!” On of their orderlies told me that his company consisted of between ninety and a hundred in the morning, and only forty came out of the fight unhurt.

We received no bad treatment. The good woman of the house made us some goose broth. The good soul was fearful that a bit of the meat would hurt us, and so she kept it for herself and family, giving us only the broth. Whether it was gratis, or the paid her in “Virginia scrip,” I do not know. The dish was without much salt, and being strongly flavored with goose grease, we could not appreciate her kind gift.

The arms of the rebels are generally good, but most of their clothes are cotton, and their shoes are thin and unserviceable. If they stay in Virginia they will suffer much this winter. They have a numerous cavalry and but little of the hay in that State was cut.

I was with the rebels seven days. My condition, to me, was intolerable, and I determined to escape or die in the attempt. I made what little preparation I could, taking some biscuit, (which got wet and I threw away,) and some bandages and salve to dress my wounds, and also a secession blanket. I was thirty-four hours in reaching Georgetown, during twenty-four of which I was saturated with water. I crossed the Potomac by wading and swimming, using a rail to compensate for my arm. I had a slight fever when I started. I was seen several times by soldiers and others, but my blanket deceived them. For the first fourteen hours I repeatedly saw their pickets and sentinels, but they did not see me. – However, I escaped, assisted by a chain of fortuitous circumstances, and a little of that peculiar wit with which Nature kindly furnishes a Yankee.

R. H. GRAY

UPDATE: An 1899 book about Maine Major General Hiram G Berry by Edward K Gould, published by the Rockland Courier-Gazette, contains an account of Lt Gray's escapades at Bull Run that appear to be drawn directly from the above article. It includes information about his wounding that is ostensibly drawn from the missing section:

"Lieutenant Robert H. Gray [...] was wounded and taken prisoner at Bull Run. He received his wound just before the order came to retreat. On his way to the rear Lieutenant Burgin of the Searsport company found him and bound up his wounded arm, and afterwards sent some men to conduct him to a place of safety. They did not find him, however, as his wound commenced bleeding soon after the lieutenant left him, and he started for a stream near by for water. Before he reached it he fainted from loss of blood, and on reviving, saw the retreating column of the Union army nearly a mile away. Replenishing his canteen at the brook, he attempted to rejoin his comrades by a short cut, but soon came in view of rebel troops who began firing on him, but he escaped further injury. His wound was so painful that he was indifferent to the danger he run, and continued steadily on his course until he had nearly reached his friends, when he beheld rebel cavalry rapidly approaching. Hastily entering a house which had been converted into a hospital by the Union forces, he lay down among the wounded, and had just made himself comfortable, when the cavalry dashed up, shooting two unwounded men."

In Search of my Great-Great-Great Grandfather - Part Two

On a cold and sodden Saturday I ventured down to Fredericksburg in an attempt to locate the grave of my Great-Great-Great Grandfather Maj. Robert Henry Gray of the 4th Maine Volunteer Regiment, who fell at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 9 1864. Mortally wounded, he died en route to Fredericksburg and is presumed to be buried there.

Included as an appendix to my transcript of Maj. Gray's 1862 diary is a 190x letter to his son from a colleague, Frank Farnham. In this letter, Farnham gives a likely clue as to where Maj. Gray was buried, and may still now lie. I used this letter as a basis for my search.

I marched with my regiment through Fredericksburg a few days after he was shot.

This would be, presumably, about May 11.

We halted outside a city cemetery which is on the right hand side of the road leading out to Spotsylvania (The National Cemeteries are on the left of this road now).

He presumably is referring to the Town Cemetery on the corner of Washington and Williams; Williams St is the only road he can be referring to. It connects with Rte 3 which is the Old Plank Road running Westbound out of the city. If facing westbound, the City Cemetery is on your right, and the National Cemetary is further down on the left.

I looked through the large gates, set in the stone wall front of the cemetery and saw many tombs and monuments and one new-made grave.

The walls of the cemetery are red brick now. The Fredericksburg Ladies Memorial Association created the Confederate memorial cemetery in the land adjoining the City Cemetery in 1867, and presumably the brick walls surrounding the entire cemetery were built then or soon after.

The cemetery itself is quite fascinating: the Confederate cemetery is arranged in a large rectangle with two diagonal paths (subtly evoking the Stars 'n' Bars) with a memorial statue in the center.

Some of the Confeds are still interred in the City portion of the cemetery. Overall, the graves of the soldiers were in pretty poor condition, covered in moss and eroded by nature and time; some were virtually unreadable.

The large gates and the imposing sandstone archway on Williams St, which I presume are the ones he looked through, appear to be original (1844). The City gate is locked, due to the deteriorating condition of the sandstone, so all enter through the Confederate gate on Washington St.

"Hello" I said "here's a Yankee got in among the FFV's"

(An FFV is a First Family of Virginia. I only know this because I was in a production of '1776' once. )

A few days afterward, I met a member of the 4th Maine, and asked about your father. This man (whose name I never knew) told me that a few days before the regiment was ordered into a hot place, that the other officers got off their horses on account of the danger, but that your father kept his saddle and led the regmt into the fight and as pierced with several bullets that he was placed in an ambulance and died on his way back to Fredericksburg and was buried in the city cemetery as he was one of the first officers to fall in that might, much against the wishes of the rebel proprietors of the cemeteries, and that he was the only Union soldier buried there. So I told that it was your father's grave that I had seen.

He bases his conclusion that the grave he saw was Maj Gray's entirely on the word of that unnamed soldier; not particularly the most watertight case on which to go on, but worth a try.

Alas, I must report that I was unable to find Great-Great-Great-Grampa's grave. There were many possible reasons, even if that was his grave that Mr Farnham had seen.

It's highly unlikely that the Yankees who buried him had a stone marker, so perhaps there was some other identifying marker of a temporary nature (even the Confederate graves initially had wooden markers until the 1880s) which was lost or discarded by the unhappy 'rebel proprietors.' If this is the case, he's still in the City Cemetery, somewhere in view of the sandstone entryway, but unmarked.


The Frederickburg National Cemetery was created in 1867 for the fallen Union soldiers killed in the various battles nearby, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Wilderness, Chancelorsville, etc. Out of the more than 15,000 soldiers there, the identities of 85% of them are unknown... this being the time before soldiers wore dogtags. The register at the National Cemetery does not list Major Gray among the known fallen. So if they did re-inter him there, they likely had no idea of his identity, and he is now one of the many, many unknowns with only a number to mark his remains. (The number on the pictured stone indicates the lot number, 67, and that there are two unknown bodies buried there.) The same appears to be true of his brothers, Madison (fell at Fredericksburg, Dec '62) and Augustus (Cedar Creek, Oct '64). No stone - with their name on it at least - marks where they lie today. That astounds and saddens me.

The site of the battle is well-kept, although suburban encroachment onto the battlefield tended to wreck any sense of the era. The tour guide occasionally pointed out significant events by saying "over there, down that street, around where that blue truck is..." I wonder if the residents know how many dozens of Union soldiers died in their backyards.

In Search of my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather

My Great^3 Grandfather Robert Henry Gray is buried somewhere in Fredericksburg, VA, and I'm on a mission to find him.

Robert was one of four brothers from the tiny town of Stockton ME (near Belfast), who fought in the Civil War. Of the four, Robert, Clarendon, Madison & Augustus, Clarendon was the only one who returned. Madison fell at the Battle of Fredericksburg (Dec 13 '62) age 18, Robert at the Battle of the Wilderness (5 May '64) age 28, Augustus at the Battle of Cedar Creek (Oct 19 '64), age 16. Clarendon saw virtually every significant battle of the Civil War, from First Bull Run to the surrender at Appomattox.

Robert's Civil War story is actually pretty spectacular. He signed up in '61 with the 4th Maine Volunteer Regiment, Company I, and was quickly made Sergeant. At First Bull Run he was wounded and captured; he escaped back to his lines with only a newspaper map for a guide, floating across the Potomac on a fencepost. He received prompt medical care, and was promoted to 2nd Lt. After Fredericksburg he replaced the slain 1st Lt, and was promoted to Major after Gettysburg. On the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness he was shot from his horse by three Rebel bullets, and died being transported back to Fredericksburg.

Many years ago my father transcribed his 1862 diary (which is kept at the Harvard library), and my uncle and namesake Bob presented the family with an annotated version a few years ago. It's a pretty interesting look into the day-to-day minutae of a soldier's life. A lot of the time he was at Camp Knox in Alexandria, and frequently was downtown, so I may have traced his footsteps over the past three years. Through most of the year he was ill with dysentery. That year marked the birth of his daughter Alice and the death of his brother Madison. While not forthcoming with deep emotional insight, one can read between the lines... typical Yankee terseness. Also, quite a lot of "when will these poor Secech's see the error of their ways" type stuff.

According to a letter written in the first decade of the 1900's by his comrade Frank Farnham to his son, Frank Boynton Gray, Major Gray was hastily buried in the Fredericksburg town cemetery (as was brother Madison 18 months earlier), the only Yankee officer buried there. An email inquiry to the Fredericksburg National Cemetery (a memorial cemetery for the fallen Yankee troops) suggests that they were not re-interred, so they're likely still there. The question is are their graves marked?

My intention this past weekend was to go to the cemetery to see; I was going to an audition in Staunton on Saturday, so I took the back roads back thru to Fredericksburg. After staying in Staunton for lunch with some colleagues, by the time I arrived in F'burg it was after 5pm and the sun was starting to descend, giving me only a good hour of exploring at best; plus I was under strict instruction from Al to find a legendary icecream stand called Carl's (every bit as good as its reputation promised). So my next available weekend (after this coming weekend's Baltimore wedding) will see me back down to F'burg for another look.

On the drive from Staunton to Fredericksburg, I did stumble across the Wilderness battlefield site, which I stopped at for about 20 minutes. My research afterwards that evening showed that I wasn't on the part of the field where he fell, so I may go back there as well.

Why am I so interested in finding and communing with my Great-Great-Great Grandfather? After all, I'm a pacifist. I think there's something about the Gray brothers' story that I find inspiring. Not the killing and dying, but I just wonder how I'd react in the circumstances they were in. Would I have the wherewithall to react like he did? Would I find such courage under fire? Do I carry some of that in me, being his descendant? Who knows.

More reports to follow after I go back and attempt another search.