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| This sign talks a bit about the history of
Parker's Battery, which was known as the Boy company.
"Dr. William J. Parker, a highly esteemed
Virginia citizen and devout Christian, recruited a battery of
artillery in the spring of 1862. One of his recruits was a seventeen
year-old lad named William Mays. Although William was very young, it
was not unusual for the Civil War armies to accept teenage recruits.
In fact, out of the 144 recruits who answered Dr. Parker's call, 46
were between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. Captain Parker's
Battery saw action in several engagements including Second Manassas,
Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville, and William
Mays served faithfully through all of these bloody battles. Captain
Parker referred to William Mays as a "good friend and a good
soldier". from Gettysburg:
The Soldiers Battle
There will be some more information about William
Mays later. |
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| This is the map I believe to be wrong, I think
the "You are here" dot should be half the distance from
where it is and closer to the river above it, although not right
on the river. This was not a river battery, but part of the
Howlett line that kept Butler bottled up at Bermuda Hundred |
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| This is a wooden bridgeway that takes you over
some existing earthworks, visible here on the right. This
would be the breast works, with the trench in front viewable in
the distance.
In all of these pictures these depressions and earthworks
tend to look flattened out, but when you are there in person they
are very, very easy to see |
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| The trench in front of the breastworks.
Parker's Battery is about 100 yards or so in the direction this
picture is facing, along the path in the distance. |
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Another view of the breast works, taken on a
different day from the same bridge. You can see the main
earthworks in front of you. To the left you can see the
trench in front. The soldiers would have been behind the
breastworks at the extreme right of this picture. |
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