The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Battle Site, and Key Vibbard Scrap Day Before

Sure. I haven't got to pinpointing the site in my own research yet, but should be able to easily get it. I have an account from an eyewitness who identified the site by legal description I'll dig up. A couple more early postwar accounts referenced the battle and mentioned who owned the site that will also be useful. No doubt the locals there have the site pinpointed but I'm going to do my own sleuthing on this with the historical accounts I have before cross-referencing with them.

I finally pulled up an 1870s Ray County plat map yesterday that I'm putting to use to identify that site, and another very intriguing site -- the day immediately prior to the Battle of Albany Anderson, the James brothers, et al. got into an extremely intense running shooting scrap in which they were surrounded a couple times by three companies of the 51EMM, and with Lt. James F. Baker's 4PEM company playing shock troops and diving headlong into them. This taking place up by current-day Vibbard--with the heat on and Anderson and his boys barely making their escape they immediately headed down to the safety of Hendley's Fishing River camp west of Albany and his large number of recruits.

"Safety" being used ironically here since it's where they would meet their fate the very next day and almost end up dragging Hendley down in disaster too in the process. Surprisingly, the critical Vibbard scrap the day before has never seen the light of day in any current-day historical rendering I've looked at, but it's critical in Anderson's story because it's why he ended up where he ended up, and why Baker and the Vibbard 51EMM force, and Sam Cox's 33EMM arriving-just-in-the-nick-of-time with critical leadership and reinforcements ended up coming down right on top of Anderson hours later. ("Critical leadership" because the 51EMM c.o., Major John Grimes, wouldn't go the final step--my men are tired, and they might get wiped out, yada yada yada--Cox called him a few choice names, booted him to the curb, took his troops and made history. Then at the battle site Grimes came galloping up when the shooting was over and was showing off his revolver, saying look look, I was involved in it too down the road and my six-shooter is empty--to the considerable mockery of the Feds later on....)

Don't get me going or I'll write a book right here on this website. I'll see if I can dig that legal description up for you the next few days.

Messages In This Thread

How Feds Were Positioned in Bill Anderson Ambush
Re: How Feds Were Positioned in Bill Anderson Ambu
Battle Site, and Key Vibbard Scrap Day Before
Vibbard/Crowley Farm/Rocky Fork Fight Site
Ambush Site, Anderson Camp Site, Fed Base Site
Re: Ambush Site, Anderson Camp Site, Fed Base Site
Re: Ambush Site, Anderson Camp Site, Fed Base Site
Brashears Road, and back to the teenagers....
Another Site Identifier Clinched It
Camp Site Anderson Was Decoyed Out Of
3D Google Position of Battle and Camp Sites
Need to Sign Into Google to See As Described
Re: 3D Google Position of Battle and Camp Sites