Who was Turner anyway?

Who was Turner anyway?

Click on this image to find out who Turner was.

Field Musicians Wanted!

A Turner Bugler, 2004

Click on this image to learn about opportunities as a bugler, fifer or drummer with the Turner Brigade.

HISTORY

Guns at Pilot Knob, MO, 2006

Company M’s Ames 3-pdr. and Filley gun at sunrise at Fort Davidson State Historic Site in Pilot Knob, Missouri, October 2006.

A love of history is obviously a key element to the reenactor. The following represents just a small part of the fruits of Brigade members’ research into the background of the original units we represent, and into the events that shaped St. Louis and Missouri in the period around the Civil War.

Excerpts from the Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Missouri for the Year ending December 31, 1865.

1st Missouri Light Artillery

1st Missouri Infantry

17th Missouri Infantry

 

Research

The Woodruff Gun by Dr. John Margreiter, reprinted from Civil War Times Illustrated (with permission).   Newly revised and expanded. Includes new photos, new annotations, and recent research. Updated September 2024.

Researching the Woodruff Carriage by Randy Baehr. The quest to create an authentic Woodruff carriage and the recent discoveries that made this possible.

Woodruff Gun Update: Ceremony at Pilot Knob, April 2024, by Randy Baehr. Report on the debut of the new Woodruff replica carriage displayed at the Battle of Pilot Knob State Historic Site.

By George! The Thilenius Tube, by Scott House. An original Woodruff tube, first identified in 2023, is returned to Cape Girardeau, where it had once been publicly displayed, and its amazing history is revealed.

Why is the Cape Girardeau Woodruff tube different from all other surviving Woodruff tubes? by Randy Baehr. The differences between the Cape Girardeau Woodruff tube and all other surviving Woodruff tubes are explained.

 

Biographical Sketches

Giles F. Filley, St. Louis industrialist

David Murphy, Missouri Artillery Officer

Joseph L. Follet, Missourian awarded the Medal of Honor

Joseph Garneau, Forgotten Cracker King

James A. Mulligan and the Western Irish Brigade

 

News of 150 Years Ago: Articles from the Missouri Democrat

March/April 1865 — Abraham Lincoln inaugurated for a second term; Lee surrenders at Appomattox; Lincoln assassinated.

January/February 1865 — Rebel cause “under a cloud”; Missouri Constitutional Convention adopts abolition of slavery in the state; 13th Amendment passes the U.S. House of Representatives.

November/December 1864 — Abraham Lincoln reelected President; Sherman begins his March to the Sea; Hood defeated at Franklin and routed at Nashville; Sherman captures Savannah; Lincoln proclaims a National Day of Thanksgiving.

October 1864 — Ewing’s force escapes to Leasburg after the Battle of Pilot Knob; Price raids across Missouri; Price defeated at Westport and routed along the Kansas Border; “Bloody Bill” Anderson killed.

September 1864 — Sterling Price invades southeast Missouri; the Battle of Pilot Knob.

July/August 1864 — The Alabama sunk by the Kearsarge off Cherbourg; disaster in the crater at Petersburg.

May/June 1864 — “Military Progress”; guerrilla raid on Hermann; Pauline Cushman, Union spy; Col. Thomas Fletcher nominated for Missouri governor; John C. Fremont nominated for President by Radical Republicans; Abraham Lincoln renominated at Baltimore convention.

March/April 1864 — Grant takes command; disaster on the Red River; massacre at Fort Pillow; Sherman takes Meridian; elections in occupied Louisiana; “The Western Sanitary Commission: What It Does with its Funds”; preparations for the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair in St. Louis.

January/February 1864 — Death of Missouri Gov. Gamble; Sherman’s expedition to Meridian, Mississippi; attempted attack on the U.S.S. Housatonic in Charleston harbor; escape from Libby Prison; St. Louis will host the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair; “The Wind and the Snow”.

November/December 1863 — President Lincoln speaks at the consecration of the Soldiers’ Cemetery in Gettysburg; Gen. Sherman writes about the death of his son Willie; victory at Chattanooga; the case of Maj. David Murphy; plot to free rebel prisoners foiled; Radical Republicans in the Missouri legislature elect 2 U.S. Senators; Germans in Missouri; “The Colored Soldiers” and the end of prisoner exchanges; condition of Union prisoners in Richmond; Lincoln proclaims a national day of thanksgiving; “Pardon and Amnesty to the Rebels on Certain Conditions”, Britain stops releasing ships built for the Confederate navy; international military developments; “How the Three-Hundred-Pounder Parrotts are Worked”; the Lindell Hotel Ball.

September 1863 — Gen. Ewing reports on the sack of Lawrence, Kansas, issues Order Number 11.

July/August 1863 — The Battle of Gettysburg; Vicksburg surrenders; Violence mars July 4th in St. Louis; St. Louis celebrates four Union triumphs.

March/April 1863 — Adm. Porter fools the rebels; running the batteries at Vicksburg.

January/February 1863 — Victory at Stones River; the Emancipation Proclamation is implemented; the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers; Emancipation Rally in St. Louis; the Proclamation upheld in a St. Louis court case; battle at Hartville; the deaths of John Wimer, Emmett MacDonald, and William Carr Lane; the Conscription Act; Gen. Grant and the Jews; the Vicksburg campaign; a letter from Van Buren; the Monitor and its successors; Hooker replaces Burnside in the East; the statue on the U.S. Capitol and the stature of American soldiers; “Relief for the Contrabands”; “Are the West Point Graduates Loyal?”; Thomas Reynolds addresses Missouri after the death of Claiborne Fox Jackson.

November/December 1862 — Too much baggage; playing cards in church; emancipationists win election in Missouri; news from Patterson; “How to Choose a Rifle”; McClellan for President in 1864?; the South as seen from London; “American Generalship”; a trip to Pilot Knob; “Pictures of the Dead at Antietam”; British artillery tests; “Awful Tragedy at a House of Ill Repute”; slavecatchers thwarted in Hermann; Frank Blair chooses the army; refuting lies about the Palmyra Massacre; military arrest in Jerseyville, Ill.; “Why Northern Men are Called Mudsills”; victory at Prairie Grove; disaster at Fredericksburg.

October 1862 — Gen. Jefferson C. Davis shoots Gen. William Nelson in Louisville; Southerners denounce the Emancipation Proclamation; W. Gratz Brown proposes that the Proclamation apply to Missouri; rumored removal of McClellan; rumors of peace propositions; “Butler’s Rule in New Orleans”; victory at Corinth; “Running an Engine in Rebel Service”; the fight at Newtonia; draft resistance in Indiana; the Battle of Perryville; the Alabama raids Union commerce; “Iron Plates and New Projectiles”; rebel prisoners executed at Palmyra; fire among the steamboats on the St. Louis levee.

September 1862 — The Second Battle of Bull Run; “The Underground Rebels of St. Louis County”; John Knapp appointed to command of the 8th Enrolled Missouri Militia; the Confederate invasion of Maryland and the Battle of Antietam; Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation; reports on Missouri units; the raid on Palmyra; “Inside View of the Fashionable Secesh of St. Louis”; tipping the waiter in Paris; victory at Iuka.

March/April 1862 — The death of Willie Lincoln; the Monitor and the Merrimac; the fall of Columbus and Nashville; battles at Pea Ridge, Island No. 10 and Shiloh; the Western Sanitary Commission responds; letters from Orpheus C. Kerr.

January/February 1862 — The St. Louis Chamber of Commerce splits over secession; Washington’s birthday celebrated in St. Louis with 11-mile-long parade.

November/December 1861 — Fremont removed from command in Missouri; Zagonyi’s charge; the Battle of Belmont; the Trent Affair; how to dry a tent; soldier’s complaints; “Delusions as to Bayonet Wounds”; Grant and Sherman out?; Halleck’s Order No. 24; the Ladies’ Union Aid Society ramps up its activities; will the Prince of Wales succeed Queen Victoria soon?; “Bishop Timon Pronounces Against Low-Necked Dresses”; “A Peep Into the Sheik’s Harem”; “The Art of Shopping”; the new state of Kanawha.

October 1861 — Eads’ gunboats launched; 1st Missouri Light Artillery trains; the Pony Express ceases operations; telegraph service established with the Pacific coast; Mr. Cox and his revolving gun; the Armstrong gun and the Enfield rifle; Fremont buys Hall rifles; the Battle of Fredericktown.

July/August 1861 — The fight at Cole Camp; the Battle of Carthage; Fremont takes command in the West; Fremont authorizes the Engineer Regiment of the West; U.S. Grant in southeast Missouri; Federals routed at Bull Run; the Battle of Athens; Hamilton Gamble named provisional Governor of Missouri; the Battle of Dug Spring; Lyon killed at Wilson’s Creek; 1st Missouri reorganized as artillery regiment; “History of the Rifled Cannon”; a flag presentation in Allenton.

June 1861 — Death of Stephen A. Douglas; Lyon and Jackson meet at the Planter’s Hotel; Jackson flees Jefferson City; Lyon takes Jefferson City; Secessionists defeated at Boonville.

May 1861 — Does Gov. Jackson plot Missouri’s secession?; the Missouri legislature convenes in Jefferson City; Gov. Jackson addresses the legislature; the St. Louis Arsenal fortifies; James Lindsay defends his honor; the State Militia begins its encampment at Lindell’s Grove; the Police Commissioners order federal troops restricted to the Arsenal; Lyon captures Camp Jackson without a shot; a mob attacks the federal troops, who fire into the crowd, killing 28; panic grips St. Louis in the wake of the unrest; the habeas corpus case of Capt. Emmett MacDonald; the legislature passes the Military Bill, arming the state; Gen. Harney responds; the “Enterprise” boldly goes where no man has gone before.

March/April 1861 — Lincoln inaugurated; Minute Men show secession flag in St. Louis; State wrests control of St. Louis Police Board; Fort Sumter surrenders; President calls for troops and Missouri Governor refuses and calls militia into camp; St. Louis volunteers flock to enlist in U.S. service anyway; Mayor Taylor inaugurated; Britain and France in naval arms race.

November/December 1860 — Abraham Lincoln elected President; South Carolina calls a convention and votes an ordinance of secession.

September/October 1860 — Population of St. Louis doubles since 1850; first 15-inch columbiad tested; the oil boom in Pennsylvania; the 1860 political campaign in Missouri; “The Wide-Awake Organization”; an interview with Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia; increasing rumblings about Southern secession; why secession is not in the South’s self-interest; Congressional elections indicate a Lincoln victory; “Secession and the Border Slave States”; how Southern slaves might react to Lincoln’s election; remember Buchanan?—he’s still President; the Prince of Wales visits America, with a stop in St. Louis; “The Huge Steam Plow”; a book review of The Woman in White; Washington University begins its fall term; “City News”, “Personals”, and “The Nicholson Pavement”.

July/August 1860 — Will Jackson and Reynolds support Douglas or Breckinridge?; German Republicanism in Illinois; Lincoln’s campaign biography; “the four parties and two principles”; twenty houses of ill repute sacked; boxing champion John C. Heenan returns from England; the steamboat Spread Eagle on the upper Missouri; civil war in Syria; Republicans triumph in local elections; William Walker returns to Nicaragua; the Chicago Zouaves perform in St. Louis.

May/June 1860 — The Democratic convention in Charleston; Douglas nominated at the reconvened Democratic convention in Baltimore; Bell nominated by the Constitutional Union convention in Baltimore; Lincoln nominated by the Republican convention in Chicago; Breckinridge nominated by breakaway Southern Democrats; Frank Blair awarded contested Congressional seat; the St. Louis Courthouse dome is under construction; Mormon sects split; Japanese envoys visit Washington; “rumored removal of Holy See to St. Louis”.

March/April 1860 — The Pony Express: “Nine Days from California”; Carstang vs. Shaw, round 2: “Conclusions of the Breach of Promise Trial”; the Vera Cruz incident: “War with Mexico”; Political Humor; “Base Ball Rules”; Democrats meet to nominate a Presidential candidate: the Charleston Convention; “Wives and their Shopping Bills”.

January/February 1860 — Down the Iron Mountain Railroad; Who the New York Tribune thinks should be nominated by the Chicago convention; Frank Blair speaks at Cooper Union; Abraham Lincoln speaks at Cooper Union; Henry Boernstein retires as editor of the Anzeiger des Westens.

November/December 1859 — Execution of John Brown; State moves to wrest control of St. Louis Police Board; Thanksgiving; the Sons of Malta; John Wise on Thaddeus S. C. Lowe; “How to Get Married”.

October 1859 — Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry.

September 1859 — Sam Hawken in the Pike’s Peak Gold Fields; Fourth Annual Fair of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association.

July/August 1859 — The Grand Experimental Air Voyage to the Atlantic Coast.

May/June 1859 — Carstang vs. Shaw Breach of Promise Suit; Southern Commercial Convention in Vicksburg; Horse-drawn streetcars in St. Louis; Buried Alive; Sharps Breech-loading Rifles; A Model Newspaper.

March/April 1859 — O. D. Filley is reelected Mayor of St. Louis; Daniel E. Sickles murders Philip Barton Key in Washington, D.C.