Robert E. Lee's Organ Cave - Revisited

I wanted to share this post that first appeared on this blog back in 2009. It is a neat story about one of the Confederacy's greatest wartime secrets:

This is a really incredible story I learned just recently. Apparently, in the early stages of the Civil War, the Confederates ran a top-secret mine in a West Virginia cave known as "Organ Cave." Under the guidance of Robert E. Lee, Confederate troops mined and processed nitre/salt peter, which is critical in the manufacturing of gun powder. Most of the processing equipment is still there. At one point, this cave provided the majority of the Confederacy's salt peter supply! Since the cave is quite large, Confederate officials also occasionally held Sunday church services in the cave, attracting hundreds of Confederate troops. Most incredibly, although Union forces were later camped on top of this cave, they had no idea that the Confederates were there mining below them. The cave was later abandoned around 1863 after its personnel were drawn away to participate in a nearby battle. The U.S. Government knew nothing about it until after the war! Shown here is a photo of the cave (photo by Valerius Tygart). For more information about the cave, go to www.organcave.com/ It provides a good historical overview about the cave and information about visiting it.

Searching for Lt. J.W.J. House, CSA

As a Civil War historian, I feel fortunate to have relatives who served on both sides of the conflict. Through my maternal grandmother's family, I have several great-great-great granduncles and cousins who served in the Union Army (mostly from Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia). I also have a distant cousin who was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army (more on all of them later).

Further, through marriage, I am related to an individual who has fascinated me for quite some time: James Washington John (J.W.J.) House (1833-1924) of North Carolina. J.W.J. is my wife Katey's great-great-great grandfather. Fortunately, my wife's grandparents have had copies of his military records for quite some time, which help to tell a quite remarkable story about his service to the Confederacy.

It appears that J.W.J. was from Edgecombe County, North Carolina, and enlisted in the Confederate Army (30th North Carolina Infantry, Co. F) on August 31, 1861. From there, he saw action with the Army of Northern Virginia in all of its campaigns from the Seven Days Battles (1862) to Cold Harbor (1864). Sometime in either late 1862 or early 1863, J.W.J. was promoted to sergeant and was later wounded during the March 17, 1863 Battle of Kelly's Ford (near Culpeper, VA). After recovering from his injuries, he returned to active service and was later awarded the Confederate Medal of Honor for his heroism during the Battle of Chancellorsville (General Order 131/3, October 3rd, 1863). However, due to a scarcity of metal, no medals were actually awarded. Instead, the honorees names were placed on a Roll of Honor in the Confederate Adjutant & Inspector General's Office.

J.W.J. was later elected a 2nd lieutenant (though some sources claim he ultimately became a 1st lieutenant) on May 24, 1864. After serving with the 30th North Carolina in the Shenandoah Valley, J.W.J. surrendered with the remnants of his regiment and other Confederate forces at Appomattox in April 1865. Somewhere along the way, he had also sustained an injury in his right foot. J.W.J. later concluded his military career as a POW at Ft. McHenry, MD, but was later released in June 1865 upon taking the Union oath of allegiance. Luckily, he went on to live a long and productive life in North Carolina after the war, finally passing away in 1924.

Since he was an individual who witnessed and survived some of the most famous battles of the Civil War, I have long been intrigued by J.W.J. By all accounts, he was an excellent soldier who was highly regarded by his brothers in arms. Anyway, one of my desires over the past few years has been to track down a picture of J.W.J. - preferably one in uniform (if such an image exists). My wife's family has no such images in its possession, and I am currently trying to track down more distant relatives (who are also House descendants) to see if they have any. I like to imagine J.W.J. as looking like the Confederate officer depicted in the attached image - but it would be nice to track down a real photograph.

Anyways, I know that many of the readers of this blog are quite knowledgeable about where to find images of Confederate soldiers, etc. If any of you have ideas or suggestions as to which institutions, websites, or books I should consult to find such a picture, please let me know by posting a comment below. Thanks!

The Blue and the Gray meet the two World Wars

Building on my previous post about Stonewall Jackson's great-grandson, Col. Thomas Jonathan Jackson Christian Jr., it is fascinating to study the military careers of other descendants of prominent Civil War commanders. Sadly, a noticeable number were killed in action during the two World Wars. For instance, E. Porter Alexander III (a grandson of the Confederate artillery commander) was killed in France during the World War I (in 1918) while serving as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

At least three descendants of well-known Civil War commanders were killed in battle during World War II. In addition to the previously-mentioned Colonel Christian, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. (a son of the Confederate general) - who is shown here - was killed by Japanese shell fire during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. I believe he was one of the highest-ranking American military commanders to be killed in battle during the entire conflict. In a previous post, I discussed how Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest III (the Confederate cavalry general's great-grandson) was shot down over Germany during a bombing run while serving with the U.S. Army Air Corps.

While I am showcasing individuals who lost their lives in battle, there were several other descendants who were fortunate enough to survive their service in World War I and/or World War II. They all brought great honor to their Civil War ancestors by providing outstanding leadership and valor in later conflicts. I will discuss more of these descendants in future posts. While much scholarship is focused on the Civil War commanders themselves, I think it is both useful and fascinating to study the lives and careers of their descendants. As I have mentioned before, the lives these individuals led were often just as fascinating as that of their Civil War ancestors.

Stonewall Jackson's Great-Grandson: WWII Hero

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of my primary interests as a Civil War historian is to research the life and times of descendants of top Civil War commanders - particularly their namesakes. I find that in many cases, their careers and contributions to society were just as fascinating as that of their Civil War ancestors. Today, I highlight the great-grandson of Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson - Col. Thomas J. Jackson Christian, Jr. - who performed heroic service as a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot during World War II. The highlighted photograph and biographical summary below are from the Texas State Cemetery website:

"CHRISTIAN, JR., THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON (1915~1944) Thomas Jonathan Jackson Christian, Jr., Colonel in the United States Army Air Force and great grandson of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, was born on November 19, 1915, in San Francisco, California to Thomas Jonathan Jackson Christian, Sr. and Bertha Marguerite Cook.

Christian attended the University of Chicago before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1935. On June 12, 1939, he graduated 45th in a class of 456 and chose to enter the Field Artillery branch of the U. S. Army, his father's branch of service, where he was appointed a Second Lieutenant. Soon after making his branch decision, Christian changed his mind and joined the Army Air Corps.

From 1939 to 1941, Christian was a student in Texas at the Air Corps Primary Flying School at Love Field in Dallas, the Air Corps Training Center at Randolph Field and the Air Corps Advanced Flying School at Kelly Field, both in San Antonio.

After receiving training as a pilot, Christian was assigned to the Philippines, where, after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, he was reassigned to Bataan, Mindanao, Australia, and Guadalcanal. While there, he flew B-17s and was shot down and declared missing in action somewhere in the South Pacific. He was able to return to the base after living with natives in the jungle.

With the 1st Air Group, Christian landed on Guadalcanal on August 15, 1942. While there, he flew more than 60 hours in combat missions and was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry.

After being granted leave, Christian returned to the United States, where on January 2, 1943, he married Marjorie Lou Ashcroft, whom he met while in Dallas. Their permanent residence was Sulphur Springs.

While in the U. S., he formed and trained the 361st Fighter Group. They were sent to England in November 1943. In Europe, Christian flew more than 70 combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters and the Purple Heart. In March 1944 he was promoted to full Colonel.

While overseas, Christian became a father. His daughter, Lou Ellen, was born in January 1944, in Dallas.

Having never met his daughter, Christian was killed in action on August 12, 1944, while flying a P-51 Mustang, which was named Lou IV, in honor of his daughter. Colonel Christian was shot down over Arras, France and his body was never recovered."

Upcoming Revolutionary War Magazine Articles

Tidewater Historian is back after a short hiatus! I spent the bulk of November, December, and early January completing some writing projects and tending to my wife (who is pregnant with our first child), so please forgive the lack of posts lately. Anyways, I am pleased to announce that I will have two articles published in upcoming issues of "Patriots of the American Revolution" magazine. "Patriots" is great, up-and-coming publication that fills an important void in the world of magazines devoted to American history. While we have many great Civil War magazines in circulation, there has not been as much out there devoted to the American Revolution, so kudos to "Patriots" editor Tim Jacob and his team for providing this great resource!

Anyways, the first article that will be published is a biographical piece on Maj. Gen. Edward Hand (1744-1802), who served as George Washington's adjutant general during the Battle of Yorktown. General Hand was one of those rare military leaders during that era who could function equally well as either a combat commander or an administrator, so he had a quite eventful career during the war. I have several friends who are Hand descendants, and had the privilege last fall of speaking at their family reunion held in Hand's hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Thus, I am quite interested in doing more research and writing on General Hand and will keep you posted as more of my work on him appears in print.

The second article (that will be published in a separate issue) is a biographical piece on my distant cousin, Maj. Gen. William Heath (1737-1814) of Massachusetts. Like General Hand, William Heath worked closely with George Washington over the course of the war. However, Heath was more effective as an administrator than a combat commander during the conflict, and was best known for the challenging job of managing British John Burgoyne's surrendered convention army following the Battle of Saratoga. As with General Hand, I plan on doing more research and writing on General Heath in the future.

Ultimately, I really enjoy highlighting the work of Continental Army commanders who served faithfully during the conflict, but are not as well known to history as some of their peers (i.e. Daniel Morgan, Nathanael Greene). If you happen to come across "Patriots of the American Revolution" while visiting your local Barnes & Noble or other bookstore, please take a look!

The Amber Room - World War II's Greatest Mystery

I recently watched a TV show that focused on the hunt for the Amber Room, an ornate masterpiece of Russian craftmanship that was lost during World War II. Worth upwards of a quarter billion dollars in today's money, the Amber Room was built in the 18th century and placed in an imperial palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

During the German invasion of Russia in 1941, the Amber Room was deconstructed by the Nazis, placed in 26 shipping crates, and taken to a castle in East Prussia (modern-day Poland). It was apparently moved again in 1944 right before the Soviets conquered East Prussia and was never seen again. The whereabouts of the Amber Room now constitutes one of the greatest unsolved mysteries from the Second World War. Here is a short article on it from U.S. News Online:

Not Forever Amber - Treasure Hunters Seek Missing Room

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL

It vanished in the wake of World War II–an 11-foot-square hall walled with amber and other semiprecious stones and worth $142 million in today's dollars. One of the only pieces to be found is a small mosaic of jasper and onyx.

In 1716, the king of Prussia presented the Amber Room, a masterpiece of Baroque art, to Russian Czar Peter the Great. Catherine the Great later commissioned a new generation of craftsmen to embellish the room and moved it from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to her new summer abode in Tsarskoye Selo, just outside the city. "When the work was finished, in 1770, the room was dazzling," wrote art historians Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov. "It was illuminated by 565 candles whose light was reflected in the warm gold surface of the amber and sparkled in the mirrors, gilt, and mosaics."

This opulent gesture of friendship between Russians and Germans would come to serve as a potent symbol of their divisions. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, his troops overran Tsarskoye Selo, dismantled the panels of the oversized jewel box, packed them up in 27 crates, and shipped them to Königsberg, Germany (today's Kaliningrad). In January 1945, after air raids and a savage ground assault on the city, the room's trail was lost.

After the war, the German official in charge of the amber shipment said the crates were in a castle that burned down in an air raid. A Soviet investigator found a charred fragment from the room. Others think the palace sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea in a torpedoed steamer or was stashed in an abandoned mine in Thuringia. Serious historians of the subject have little hope that the room will ever be found. Nonetheless, the Internet bubbles with Amber Room-related theories. A German film company even made an Indiana Jones-style movie based on the story.

War trophy. Reality caught up with the fantasies in 1997, when a group of German art detectives, including a former Stasi agent, heard talk that someone was trying to hawk a piece of the Amber Room. Police raided the office of a lawyer in Bremen who was trying to sell the work for a client–the son of a German officer who had accompanied the wartime convoy to Königsberg. The son said he had no idea how his father got the mosaic. One theory is that the crates of amber were bombed on the road and the father swiped a chunk of the room as a war trophy, figuring no one would be the wiser. In April, officials from Berlin presented the recovered mosaic to Russian President Vladimir Putin–along with an intricately inlaid chest from the Amber Room that had also turned up–in a goodwill ceremony faintly and oddly reminiscent of that first kingly gift just under 300 years ago.

The Netherlands Antilles is Dissolved!

Since my paternal family is all Dutch, I take a great interest in Dutch history as well as important news coming out of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. My wife and I have also spent time in Sint Maarten, which has long been a Dutch-governed territory in the Caribbean. Therefore, I was quite interested in this recent news story coming out of the Dutch news media:

Netherlands Antilles to cease to exist as a country

Published: 1 October 2009 13:17 | Changed: 1 October 2009 15:43

By Radio Netherlands Worldwide

The Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist as a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands on October 10, 2010.

In a meeting on Curaçao on Wednesday, the Dutch-Caribbean islands of Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba agreed to become Dutch municipalities.

On the same date, 10-10-10, Curaçao and the Dutch half of St Maarten will become independent countries within the Kingdom, on an equal footing with the Netherlands proper and with Aruba, which gained its "status aparte" in 1986.

The previous semi-independence arrangement between the Dutch central government and its former Caribbean colonies dated from 1954 and was due for renewal.

Dutch deputy home affairs minister Ank Bijleveld warned that a lot of work remains to be done following Wednesday's Curaçao agreement. The parliaments in The Hague and Willemstad (Curaçao) need to pass a number of laws, and administrative bodies for Curaçao and St Maarten need to be set up.

The Dutch government also wants assurances that rampant crime on Curaçao and St Maarten will be fought harder. Dutch police detectives will continue to be active in the kingdom's new countries.