Confederate Enrolling Officer of Albemarle County, Virginia Encounters Deserters in Spring 1863

Tom Elmore

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I came across the following interesting correspondence in the service record of Lt. Gray Carroll of the 38th Virginia Artillery Battalion (Fold3). Carroll had loaned a horse to Lt. Joseph S. Mallory, the acting Enrolling Officer of Albemarle County, Virginia (likely working in Charlottesville). Carroll's agent, James D. Jones, afterwards sought official compensation for loss of the horse during an encounter Mallory had with Confederate deserters:

"Enr. Office, Albemarle County, Va.

This is to certify that in the spring of 1863 I was acting as Enrolling Officer for the County of Albemarle, Va., and not having a riding horse and finding one necessary to the efficient discharge of the duties of my office, and not having the means ... to purchase one, I procured the loan of a ... well gaited mare from Gray Carroll, Lieutenant in Capt. Stribling's battery of Artillery from Fauquier County, Va. ... About that time there was a large number of deserters from our army lurking in the Blue Ridge mountains on the borders of said county, and some 25 or 30 miles from my Headquarters, and committing many outrages upon the persons and property of citizens in that neighborhood. That on or about the 16th day of May 1863, with a portion of my Conscript Guard (all of them mounted), I went to the neighborhood where these deserters were known to be, to arrest them if we could, and upon arriving in the said neighborhood late in the afternoon of that day, and whilst riding along the road in company with one of my men, we were fired upon from the bushes on the side of the road by several men there concealed. A portion of the shot so fired taking effect in my leg and instantly killing the horse I was riding ... ."

A Colonel Taliaferro attested to the fact that Lt. Mallory was acting under his orders at the time he was wounded and the horse killed.
 
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