ALan J. Pitts
The brick wall's name is Broadfoot....
Tue Mar 13 00:15:05 2001


Or maybe my head's as thick as a brick wall. I went to the library tonight ready to unravel a mystery. Instead I found an ordinary-looking jacket on microfilm containing all J. G. Yarborough's records, just as it should.

He enlisted as a private, his name appearing on a bounty roll ($50) on March 7, 1862. Evidently he was assigned to duty as forage master and worked for the brigade quartermaster from July 1862 through at least March 1863.

1st Lt. Washington Floyd, age 53, resigned his commission on Nov. 5, 1863, and junior officers promoted to fill his position. However, that left a vacancy, so an election was held on Dec. 17, 1863 (following the disaster on Missionary Ridge) in which J. G. Yarborough was elected Jr. 2nd Lt. of this company. The other 2nd Lt., J. T. Carlton, was in charge of the pioneer company of Hindman's Division, while the 1st Lt., W. H. Johnson, was often absent from duty due to ill health. Of course that indicates that Lt. Yarborough and the captain were responsilble for leading this company.

The record shows that he received a furlough on March 4, 1864, and was wounded on July 23, 1864. I believed the date should've been recorded as July 22nd, the date for the battle of Atlanta. If you have seen the Cyclorama in Atlanta, you are familiar with the depiction of Manigault's Brigade breaking through the Union positions and capturing DeGress' Battery of 20-lb. Parrott rifles at this critical stage of the fighting. I believe your ancestor was wounded here. He was still absent, wounded, on Sept. 18, 1864. Of course you should lay hands on Manigault's book; my copy has the scene I just described on the cover. It was one of the brigade's better days in action.

The final entry shows him present on roll with Sharp's Brigade when the Army of Tennessee surrendered, May 2, 1865. I checked to see if his name appeared with the consolidated company (as noted in a previous post on Co "A"), but couldn't locate it. He may have been present but not assigned to a consolidated company during the April 9-10 reorganization. Of course you aready have the parole at Montgomery which erroneously stated his unit as the 31st Ala. Inf. Regt.

By the way, J. S. Turney belonged to Zimmerman's Arkansas Battery; J. A. Hewitt to Co. "B", 27th Louisiana. I hope this helps you; sorry I didn't try the simple approach first since we know that Broadfoot's index has a flaw or two.