Series 1, Volume 12, Part 1, pp. 439-440
APRIL 17-21, 1862.:Expedition from Summerville (Nicholas Court-House) to Addison, W. Va.
Report of Maj. Ebenezer B. Andrews, Thirty-sixth Ohio Infantry.
SUMMERVILLE, VA., April 22, 1862.
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I left this post for Addison, Webster County, on the morning of April 17, for the purpose of destroying any parties of armed rebels that might be found and of co-operating with certain other Federal troops who were ordered to concentrate at Addison. My command was composed of parts of Company E, Captain Hollister, and Second Lieutenant Patton, with 45 enlisted men; Company G, Captain Palmer, First Lieutenant Stanley, and Second Lieutenant Clarke, with 50 enlisted men; Company I, Captain Nye, and First Lieutenant Clarke, with 51 enlisted men; and Company K, Captain Walden, and First Lieutenant Stearns, with 50 enlisted men; in all, 200 enlisted men.
We started at 7.30 o'clock and reached Andrew Hickman's before noon. In the afternoon we marched to within a mile of Gardner's store and halted for the night, making for the day a march of 22 miles. We captured that evening Jonathan Griffin, a bushwhacker, who confesses to having been in the skirmish at Gardner's store last January.
The next day (Friday) we reached Addison at 2 o'clock p. m. That evening we captured a man named Lynch, who, if not a bushwhacker, has been in sympathy and communion with them, and had just returned from their camp at Holly Creek, a branch of Elk, which empties into the latter stream from the east below Addison. He was well armed when captured.
The next morning (Saturday) Captains Morgan and Murrin, of the Tenth Virginia Volunteers, reached Addison from Upshur County. They had found no armed rebels on their route. About noon Lieutenant Lawson, of the First Virginia Cavalry, from Sutton, and Captain Darnall and Lieutenant Connoly, of the Tenth Virginia Volunteers, with 80 men, from Bulltown, reached Addison. They reported that the cavalry had a skirmish on Thursday with a band of bushwhackers, estimated to be 50 or 60 strong, on Holly Creek, and killed 2 of them. On Friday, re-enforced by Captain Darnall, they met the rebels again and entirely routed them, killing 7. On Saturday morning they killed another of the band. They also reported the capture of a considerable number of horses which had been stolen from Union men, and also some goods recently stolen from a store in Bulitown.
On Sunday morning I started on my return, having sent all the other forces, numbering in all 220 men, to scour thoroughly the infested Holly region. We marched only 13 miles, having halted at the only place where we could obtain shelter from the rain. The next morning (Monday) we started at 5 o'clock and reached Summerville a little before night, having marched 25 miles. A part of one company, which I sent off the road to capture a rebel, marched 31 miles. It was a rainy flay and the marching difficult. All reached camp in good condition; every man in his place in the ranks. No straggling whatever was allowed during the expedition. I attribute the power of endurance shown by the men to the habit of daily drill with their loaded knapsacks.
Although we could find no armed rebels on our own route, nor hear of any, yet the expedition as a whole will, I think, be productive of much good. The people of Webster County have been shown that they are entirely in the power of the Federal Army, and signs of incipient loyalty are seen in many neighborhoods. The bushwhackers have also been taught a lesson by their losses of life and property which they will not soon forget. At Addison I obtained the muster roll of the Webster Dare Devils, a guerrilla company organized at Addison by Duncan McLaughlin, of Addison, now a delegate in the legislature at Richmond. His small salt-works at Addison, which I found in operation and from which the rebels of Webster County have obtained their salt, I ordered to be destroyed.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
E. B. ANDREWS, Major, Thirty-Sixth Ohio Vol. Infantry, Comdg. Expedition
May 1
From Northwestern Virginia.
Wheeling, Va. April 27.
--The combined movements ordered by Gen. Fremont against the guerillas in Webster county have proved eminently successful. Lieut. Lawson, with one detachment employed in this service, has returned, and others are returning. In a severe running fight of seven miles, Lawson killed seventeen guerrillas and took nineteen prisoners. The town of Addison, a small place, the only one in the new county, being deserted, was burned. It had been a guerilla haunt. A formidable organization in Braxton, Webster, and adjoining counties, is entirely destroyed, the leaders proposing to surrender. It is understood the guerillas taken will be promptly tried and shot.
General Milroy's scouts on the 23d instant, attacked the rear guard of the enemy ten miles east of the Shenandoah Mountain, the boundary of this department. They killed one Lieutenant and two men, and captured a Lieutenant and one man. None of our men were hurt.
The rebel conscripts are deserting in large numbers, swearing Unionism and returning home.
Snow fell eighteen inches deep at Monterey on the 24th Instant.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: April 1862