Raynors 2012-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/27/2012
A good war-date Union artillery document packet with seven documents signed by Robert Bruce Ricketts, Captain of the 1st Pennsylvania Artillery, total of nine folio documents in the packet, being the "Quarterly Return of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores, Received, issued and remaining on hand, in "In the field…January 1863 by 1st Lt. R. B. Ricketts, Comdg. Bty. F 1st Reg't Pa.V. Lt. Arty." The time covered in this packet includes the battle of Fredericksburg and Burnside's Mud March. These documents show the blacksmith's expenditures, worn out horses and of the loss of "two, horses, died on the march from Belle Plain to Falmouth." More. Ricketts' battery was - beginning on May 13, 1863 - in the third volunteer brigade of the Reserve Artillery under Captain James F. Huntington. Battery G, First Pennsylvania Light Artillery, was attached to Ricketts' battery a few weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg, on June 1, 1863. This merger was resented until gunners from Battery G were permitted to form a section of the consolidated battery. This merger took place while the army was marching north in pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia, beginning on May 15. They arrived in Gettysburg on the Taneytown Road on the morning of July 2, 1863 and replaced Capt James H. Cooper's Battery B, First Pennsylvania Light Artillery, on East Cemetery Hill about 4:00 PM. It was exposed to enfilade fire from Benner's Hill and Seminary Ridge. Around nightfall, two Confederate brigades from the division of Major General Jubal Early attacked the hill. It broke the thin Union front line at the foot of the hill in two places. In other places they were repelled. Some Confederates reached the top of the hill, and one group attacked the left of Ricketts' battery, trying to spike the guns. The fight for the guns became hand to hand, but the Confederates were unable to capture the whole battery. Eventually Union reinforcements from the II Corps brigade of Col Samuel S. Carroll drove the Confederates down hill. A monument to the battery stands in the general location of their fight. Overall VG
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