As promised, my great, great grandmother’s brother, who was captain of the volunteer Cahawba Rifles, 1861; colonel of the Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, 1862; fatally wounded leading the regiment in a charge at Gaines Mill, VA, May, 1862; died at Richmond, July 15; and buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
Posted in Civil War, Genealogy
Tagged 5th Alabama Infantry Regiment, Col. Christopher Claudius Pegues
Enjoying Lynyrd Skynard’s 1975 “Sweet Home Alabama,” a rebuke of Canadian Neil Young’s critical 1970 “Southern Man.” Searching for the lyrics of each lead me to this site of the 5th Alabama Infantry Regiment and Band reenactment group. Which reminded me…
The history of the regiment includes my maternal great great grandmother’s brother, Christopher Claudius Pegues, who was the regiment’s commander at the Seven Days’ battle of Gaines Mill, Virginia (also called First Cold Harbor) where he was mortally wounded leading a charge from the front.
Called Kit in the family, he was a lawyer from Cahawba, the state’s first capital (now a ghost town and state park), and an alcoholic who was his mother’s despair. After his death, he was just another hero-martyr of the bitter war, albeit one with his own ghost story. I photocopied his tintype at the state archives in 2003, enroute to my infantry OCS class’s first reunion at Fort Benning since our graduation in 1968. A reminder that I need to scan the photocopy and post it.
CORRECTION: After scanning the photocopy, I see that it is not a tintype but a photograph of a painting, probably done on wood, in the usual format of the day, i.e. the head carefully rendered from life but the costume so slapdash it is cartoonlike.
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Posted in Civil War, Genealogy
Tagged 5th Alabama Infantry Regiment, Cahawba, Christopher Claudius Pegues
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 