I am editing a pretty thorough set of letters written by a limber driver in McMahan's Texas Artillery Battery. In the course of the Red River Campaign, he fights in all the usual battles and camps in most of the usual places. At Yellow Bayou, though, he may have been one of THE Confederate troops that made a big difference. He left his horse-holding job with the battery to serve one of the guns (Perhaps a 3-inch rifle captured from Nim's Battery at Mansfield) and helps stem the Union breakthrough after the Texas Brigade in Polignac's Division gets flanked and starts to curl up.
After triangulating on Google Earth by using Union accounts of distances marched and ranges set to fuze (artillery) and by guestimating from Louisiana land records on the whereabouts of Norwood's Farm (the Confederate name for the fight), I it located around the present day settlement of Red Fish, on Louisiana 1 about two miles west from the Yellow Bayou crossing, and about twice that far from the Atchafalaya Bridge at Simmsport. Understanding that the battle had several phases, and that most of the really hot work took place as both sides fought over a strip of scrub woods that each side fed troops into, I think the woods may be where the trailer park now stands, and the battery I am researching posted about 600 yards west of that.
Any thoughts?
Donald S. Frazier