“Good-bye, Lieutenant, I am killed.”

Members of Woodson’s Company of Missouri Cavalry followed an unusual path to this field of conflict. Captured in Mississippi in 1862, they were exchanged at City Point, Virginia, a year later, and in Richmond about 70 officers and men were designated as Company A, 1st Missouri Cavalry under twenty-one-year-old Capt. Charles H. Woodson. Transferred to the Valley District and attached to the 62nd Virginia Mounted Infantry Regiment, they lacked horses and fought on foot. During the battle they faced heavy fire from Capt. Albert von Kleiser’s 30th New York artillery battery. Lieutenant Ed Scott recalled Sgt. Day coming to him pale and staggering, blood flowing from his breast and back, asking for help to the rear before dying soon after, while Lt. Jones, Scott’s close friend and companion, fell beside him and Scott himself was struck in the arm by a shell fragment. Scott then helped Tommy Cave to the ground after Cave, blood pouring from his neck, said, “Good-bye, Lt., I am killed,” the last words he spoke. In all, four soldiers were killed and about 35 were wounded, including Woodson. Two veterans of the company, J.H. Dwyer and W.R. Fallis, later commissioned a limestone marker for the unit’s position on the Bushong farm, with Major Christian Shirley contributing a load of sand and Jacob Bushong providing the rock. In early May of 1905, assisted by Shirley and L.M. Henkel, they erected it with the words: “This rustic pile The simple tale will tell: It marks the spot Where Woodson’s heroes fell.” Service in Virginia also brought romance for Dwyer and Fallis: not many months after the battle of New Market, Dwyer married Miss Ada Sprinkle, who had cared for him when he was wounded in Harrisonburg, and Fallis married Miss Sallie Gay of Harrisonburg in 1867, later marrying Miss Mattie O. Giles of Nelson County in August 1885 after Sallie’s death in 1882.

New Market, Virginia · United States