Information
Sheet
R Pilot Knob (Mo.).
137 Civil War telegrams,
1862-1863.
Two folders,
photocopies.
These are telegrams sent and received by
Col. John B. Gray, commander of the Union post at Pilot Knob, Iron County,
Missouri. The dispatches include
communications with district headquarters at St. Louis, and with detachments
throughout southeastern Missouri, especially those at Fredericktown,
Patterson, Van Buren, and Barnesville.
The telegrams cover the period from November 1862 to April 1863.
Located south of St. Louis at the end of
the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad, Pilot Knob was one of three strategic
railhead installations through which Federal military effort was directed
during the Civil War in Missouri. Union
armies operating in southeastern Missouri and along the Missouri-Arkansas
border were supplied and reinforced via long lines of communication stretching
back to the railhead at Pilot Knob. The
post also stood squarely in the path which would be taken by any rebel forces
attempting to advance on St. Louis through southeastern Missouri. Sterling Price’s Confederates followed this
route in their invasion of Missouri in 1864, battling the Union defenders of
Pilot Knob at Fort Davidson.
Although the post was included as part of
the Military District of St. Louis, Pilot Knob was of sufficient importance to
rate the assignment of a colonel or brigadier general to its command. The First Regiment of Missouri State Militia
Infantry, commanded by Col. John B. Gray, was stationed at Pilot Knob in
September 1862 and Gray was named to command the post, which also included
guard stations along the Iron Mountain Railroad at Mineral Point and Sulphur
Springs. Gray remained at Pilot Knob
until March 1863, when he was promoted to brigadier general and appointed
Adjutant General of Missouri.
Mrs. Pollie Hollie, the archivist and
historian of the Immanuel Lutheran Church, where the telegrams were found,
located the Pilot Knob telegrams.
Records of incoming and outgoing dispatches were kept separately and
in chronological order, although there is some mixing of the two types of
telegrams, and there are some irregularities in dates, especially in March and
April 1863. A few dispatches are missing
where pages were torn from the original volume.
The telegrams concern routine military
business at the post, and were not published in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies. There are many
communications with commanders of the St. Louis district, generals John W.
Davidson and Eugene A. Carr, and several concerning operations of the Army of
Southeast Missouri. The dispatches
concern transportation and troop movements, prisoners, deserters, spies, and
noncombatants moving through the district.
One interesting exchange of telegrams concerns the wife of Confederate
Colonel John Q. Burbridge, who was moving south through Federal lines to visit
her husband in Arkansas. She was
stopped and searched twice by army authorities who were convinced that she
was carrying rebel mail. The telegrams
also include communications with garrisons at Fredericktown, Van Buren,
Patterson, and Barnesville, details on an attempted mutiny by the Second
Missouri Artillery at Pilot Knob, and reports of a skirmish with six companies
of guerrillas at Bloomfield, Missouri. A
complete roster of the telegrams can be found in each folder.
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