Lt.Arty Two Brass Cannon Known as the "Medical Directors" at the Wilderness - What Battery? What kind of cannon?

They were using 3" Ordnance Rifles at Gettysburg. I wonder if they were assigned smoothbores again at some point.

Ryan

Possibly. Appears to have been a six-gun battery operating in three sections. The two-gun 10lb Parrot section might have been replaced?
 
Of tangential interest -

"Album" embossed in gold on spine, containing 20 identified photographs, mostly CDVs, of soldiers from Battery F of the 1st Pennsylvania Artillery, also known as Ricketts' Battery. Several of the soldiers are pictured wearing their uniforms and kepis. Many of the cartes bear backmarks for Pennsylvania photographers, including D.C. Burnite & Co., Harrisburg; T.J. Trapp, Williamsport; Nice & Dorey, Jersey Shore; J.P. Leisenring, Danville; J.W. Miller, Pittston; A.M. Allen, Pottsville; Harmany & Eberman, Lancaster; R.M. Tudor, Philadelphia; Chas. G. Crane, Philadelphia; L. Horning, Philadelphia; and Richards, Philadelphia; while the 5 tintypes included in the album are uncredited. A couple of the photographs are signed, and all have period and/or modern verso inscriptions identifying the subjects, from which some details below were obtained.

 
The bravest men I ever saw......yeah it got to me too. And, that name for the cannon - "Medical Directors." You know I like that sarcastic sense of humor. :D

I found another mention of the two cannon in the road from another member of the 14th Indiana, Carroll's brigade. In describing activity of May 5, 1864, Lieut William Landon, wrote to the Vincennes Western Sun:
"At 4 o'clock a tremendous musketry fire opened, with occasional discharges of artillery directly in our front. In a few moments, out of breath and heated to a perfect glow, we reached Brock's Roads, and piling knapsacks, dashed into the fight, the left of our regiment saving two pieces of artillery directly on the plank-road, that were under a terrible fire from the enemy's sharp-shooters, they having killed all the horses and disabled the cannoniers."​
[Letter. Lt. William Landon to Editor Vincennes Western Sun, (Vincennes, IN), dated Mount Pleasant Hospital, Washington, DC, May 18, 1864, reprinted in Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 34, No. 1 (MARCH, 1938), page 90.]

Maybe I should have just made it a trivia question and let the players find the answer - if its out there. :bounce:
Not directly related to your question but I'll add that according to E. P. Alexander's Fighting For the Confederacy the 24-pounder guns were his favorite type, and he recounts aiming one at Fredericksburg that "skipped" a shot through a house there that was filled with Union sharpshooters with apparently devastating effect.
 
Is there any chance that they could have been taken from the Confederates? Of course, 24-lb guns were a rarity even in the Army of Northern Virginia (there were 4 at Gettysburg) so probably not.

Another possibility is something that I hadn't thought about until I looked at the order of battle. Is it possible that the 3rd Battalion, 4th New York Heavy Artillery brought some guns with them when they joined the Army of the Potomac? I know that they were acting as infantry but wonder if they plied their trade a bit with a pair of bronze guns. In fairness, their records don't indicate that this was the case though.

Ryan
 
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