Confederate Identified Model 1842 Musket Found Under a House Being Demolished in the 1970s in Fulton Bottom in Richmond, Virginia – This gun was discovered beneath a house being demolished, in the 1970s, in the Fulton Bottom area of Richmond, just north of the sites of Rocketts’ Landing, the Confederate Navy yard and just east of the site of the Confederate Hospital at Chimborazo. When found, the gun, a U.S. Model 1842, had been partially painted white; when the paint was carefully removed, Civil War period initials and a regimental designation was revealed, carved into the right side of the butt stock. The carving is as follows:

“COH ~ H ~ IX”

We firmly believe that the initials are those of Chilean O. Huff, Jr. Huff enlisted initially in  the 9^th Va. Infantry (hence the IX), in May, 1861, as a private. About one year later, Huff transferred into the Salem Flying Light Artillery, remaining with that regiment until the surrender at Appomattox. The Salem Flying Artillery served with the 9^th Va. Infantry early in the war and both regiments were in the Richmond area, participating in battles encompassed in the Peninsula Campaign. It appears as though this gun was cut down in the period, perhaps by Private Huff, to make it more amenable for use as a mounted artilleryman. The gun is a U.S. Model 1842, with the following stamped on the lock plate:

“SPRING

FIELD

1853”

Visible just forward of the hammer, on the lock plate, is stamped the typical U.S. Eagle. Of interest, is the ramrod, which is that found in a P53 Enfield; the ramrod appears to have the same age as the gun and was apparently utilized in the period of use. The gun is a .69 cal. smoothbore and remains in stable condition, with surface pitting, but no flaking rust, apparently having been spared the vicissitudes of weather while laying under the building. The cocking and firing mechanism works well; the gun apparently saw a lot of action as there is a considerable section of wood “burnout” behind the nipple bolster. The Fulton Bottom area would have been relatively open during the Civil War and would have had Confederate camps in the area, along Gillies Creek, which flows into the nearby James River, at Rocketts Landing. Fulton was developed in the late 19^th century and had numerous, late Victorian houses, all of which were demolished in the 1970s.

 Measurements: Overall length – 52.5”; Barrel length – 37.5”

Chileon O. Huff, Jr

Chilion O Huff

9th VA Infantry

9th Regiment, Virginia Infantry

Overview:

9th Infantry Regiment completed its organization at Portsmouth, Virginia, in July, 1861. Its members were from Portsmouth and the counties of Roanoke, Chesterfield, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Lunenburg, Dinwiddie, and Norfolk. The regiment served in the Department of Norfolk and in June, 1862, totalled 435 men. During the war it was attached to General Armistead’s, Barton’s, and Steuart’s Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia. It fought in many conflicts from Seven Pines to Gettysburg and after serving in North Carolina participated in the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff. Later the unit was involved in the Petersburg siege north of the James River and the Appomattox Campaign. It lost 9 killed, 34 wounded, and 23 missing of the 150 at Malvern Hill, and of the 318 engaged at Gettysburg more than half were disabled. The unit reported 47 casualties at Drewry’s Bluff, and many captured at Five Forks and Sayler’s Creek, and surrendered 2 officers and 37 men on April 9, 1865. Its field officers were Colonels David J. Godwin, James J. Phillips, and Francis H. Smith; Lieutenant Colonels James S. Gilliam, John T.L. Preston, and William J. Richardson; and Majors Stapleton Crutchfield, Makr B. Hardin, and John C. Owens.

Salem Flying VA Light Artillery Battery

One man, Abraham Hupp, seems to have been the rallying force behind a military presence. On August 4, 1840, he organized and became captain of the Salem Yellow Jackets, a unit attached to the 157th Regiment, Virginia Infantry, and one of six such militia groups in the county. Then, after it disbanded, he organized and commanded a successor company, the Salem Light Infantry Grays. While the volunteer Yellow Jackets and Grays had a nominal capacity for military action that was never required, their primary function, aside from some training, was performing at dress parades for occasional celebrations, perhaps accounting for their transitory existence.
In contrast, Captain Hupp’s next unit, the Salem Flying Artillery, was early into the fray and credited with firing the last shot at the surrender at Appomattox. In between, its men fought at Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harbor, among other places. Hupp organized the Flying Artillery January 30, 1860, when volunteers were enrolled in a corner of the courtyard marked today by a Confederate monument. A month after Virginia’s 1861 vote for secession, he led its volunteers in their send-off parade from the courthouse to the Virginia and Tennessee Rail Road station, then to Lynchburg, where they were mustered into service of the Confederate States Army.
Hupp had obtained a position of prominence, riveted by success as a manufacturer and distributor of metalware. He was a staunch supporter of education, active as a trustee in the establishment of Roanoke College and a principal in organizing a circulating library. Fire destroyed his metalshop adjacent to and east of the courthouse. After rebuilding, he not only took the lead in organizing a volunteer fire company but donated the town’s first pumper. He was a founding partner of the Roanoke Red Sulphur Springs resort in the Catawba Valley and, as an Odd Fellow and a member of the town’s board of trustees, he was a leader in building the first town hall. His imposing brick residence across Main Street from the courthouse was beautifully landscaped, eclipsed only by his gardens a short distance north of town that he opened to the public.
Hupp’s Salem Flying Artillery was designated Company A, 9th Regiment, Virginia Volunteers, during a year of training and service at Craney Island in the Elizabeth River near Norfolk. During reorganization in May 1862, the unit became Hupp Battery, 1st Regiment, Virginia Artillery. Ill health overtook Hupp later the same year and forced his retirement from the field. He died of cancer at home September 2, 1863.
His military command went to a fellow townsman, Captain Charles Beale Griffin, a physician, who enlisted as a private in 1861 and was promoted to first lieutenant a year later and who led the battery until the surrender April 9, 1865. That Captain Griffin’s artillery fired the last shot at Appomattox is documented in an article in the July 1869 issue of the magazine, The Land We Love, published by General D. H. Hill. Braced for an enemy charge that was already within pistol shot, the battery was in a commanding position overlooking the town when a Confederate general some distance away ordered a cease fire. “The hoarse sound of the cannon had died away in every part of the line except this, the extreme left, which was soon after silenced, and with it the last gun of the Army of Northern Virginia,” the article said. Another account of the surrender in Harper’s Weekly confirmed that the guns of the Salem battery “fired the last shot, on this occasion, at the Federal Army.”

Griffin’s Company, Virginia Light Artillery (Salem Flying Artillery)

Overview:

Salem Flying Artillery was organized as an infantry company and served with the 9th Regiment. In May, 1862, it was transferred to the artillery. All of its members were recruited to Roanoke County. The unit was assigned to J.T. Brown’s and R.A. Hardaway’s Battalion of Artillery, Army of Northern Virginia. It served in the Richmond area, then participated in numerous engagements from the Maryland Campaign to Cold Harbor, endured the hardships of the Petersburg siege, and was active around Appomattox. The battery reported 1 man wounded at Fredericksburg and ten percent of the 69 engaged at Gettysburg disabled. On April 9, 1865, it surrendered 1 officer and 97 men. Captains Charles B. Griffin and Abraham Hupp were in command.

Fulton Bottom lies just north of the site of the Confederate Navy Yards and Rocketts’ Landing, as well as the entry point of Union troops entering Richmond, on April 3, 1865.  Fulton Bottom and Fulton Hill were major residential areas in Richmond, Virginia’s East End after the American Civil War. The Fulton neighborhood began shortly after the war when simple, one-story homes were built, making it one of Richmond’s first suburbs. In 1905, Richmond annexed the neighborhood from Henrico County.

Before desegregation, Fulton was a “black zone” and the top of the hill was a “white zone”. Whites lived in the Bottom and worked at the city docks, for railroad companies, or in the tobacco factories. By the 1960s, the area at the base of the hill bordering Gilies Creek was mostly home to low and middle income African Americans.

Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865). It was a heavily industrialized city at the beginning of the war, with five railroads, large warehouses for tobacco and cotton, and woolen mills. Richmond resisted repeated Union assaults before officially capitulating on April 3, 1865.

Fulton Hill

Fulton Hill is a neighborhood located in the East End of Richmond, Virginia. The name is used for the area stretching from Gillies Creek to the Richmond city limits. The Greater Fulton Hill Civic Association includes Fulton Bottom, part of Montrose Heights and part of Rocketts. Fulton Hill is south of Church Hill and Shockoe Bottom, north of Varina, east of the James River, and west of Sandston.

History

This Richmond neighborhood was named for Irish-born James Alexander Fulton, who married Eliza Mayo about 1800 and built a large estate atop current day Powhatan Park. In the 17th century the park was once home to Powhatan Village consisting of twelve dwellings. Tradition holds that Christopher Newport and John Smith first met with Parahunt, Powhatan‘s son, in May 1607 at this point. In the early 18th century, a ferry was established from a property at the bottom owned by Robert Rocketts to connect the north and south sides of the James River. A neighborhood of low-slung, single-story homes emerged here after the Civil War, and the area was annexed by Richmond from Henrico County in 1905.  By the 1960s, the area at the base of the hill bordering Gilies Creek was mostly home to low and middle income African Americans. The housing stock was regarded as rather shabby, and after very severe flood damage in the early 1970s, many residents took Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act (1970) money and relocated elsewhere in the city. Eventually, the entire Fulton Bottom community was completely demolished, marking Richmond’s only neighborhood-wide urban renewal slum clearance.