James Graydon (abt. 1832 - 1862)

Born about 1832 in Ireland

Died 9 Nov 1862 at about age 30 in Fort Stanton, Lincoln County, New Mexico

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Biography

James Graydon fled the green shores of Ireland because of the devastating Potato Famine, he arrived in Baltimore in 1853. Four months later, he enlisted in the 1st U.S. Dragoons. After brief training at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, Graydon traveled west and joined his unit at Los Lunas, some 20 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory. He served under Captain Richard S. Ewell, who would later achieve fame as a Confederate general. Graydon learned strict discipline from Ewell and carried that throughout his military career.

From 1854 to 1856, Graydon was posted at Forts Thorn, Craig, and Union, usually in pursuit of the Mescalero. As a newly promoted corporal in September 1856, he followed his new commander, Major Enoch Steen, into the area around Tucson. There, in the recently acquired Gadsden Purchase (an area in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona, purchased from Mexico in 1853), the settlers were beset by Indian raiders, Mexican horse thieves, and renegade American opportunists seeking gold and silver.

Duty at Fort Buchanan, 60 miles south of Tucson, was grim, and two years of pursuing the Chiracahua Apaches through the surrounding mountains — for low wages — grew tiresome. In 1858, Graydon received an honorable discharge and soon opened the United States Boundary Hotel, three miles from his former duty station. He was 26 years old.

Graydon’s saloon attracted the toughest gamblers, prostitutes, filibusters, and gunslingers in the territory. He soon grew wealthy from his hotel and also thrived as a farmer, guide, interpreter, and horse-thief–catcher.

With the coming of the Civil War in 1861, the 1st Dragoons abandoned southern Arizona — and Graydon — to the Confederates. Graydon took action immediately. Drawing on his military experience, he led a wagon train with 70 fellow Union sympathizers through Apache ambushes to the comparative safety of the Rio Grande Valley. Then he hurried to Santa Fe, where Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, commander of Union forces in New Mexico, commissioned him as a captain in the newly organized New Mexico Volunteers. Graydon insisted on an independent command and received permission to raise a company for scouting duties. In October 1861, at the village of Lemitar, just north of present-day Socorro, he recruited 84 native Nuevo Mexicanos, who enlisted for 40 cents a day and provided their own horses and equipment.

The independent nature of Graydon’s command was apparent in the unit’s mustering-in ceremony. Graydon had prepared a blue silk battle flag, emblazoned with a cross. Each new applicant fell to his knees before the banner, swore by ‘Jesús Cristo y…Santa Maria’ to support the Union in general and Paddy Graydon in particular, and then kissed the banner. This ritual completed, the recruit was a member of Paddy Graydon’s Spy Company. The isolated hamlet of Lemitar seemed far away from combat, but Graydon and the other Union forces in New Mexico would soon have plenty of Confederate invaders in their back yard.

Graydon’s scouts soon proved their worth, patrolling the roads along the Rio Grande and the so-called Jornado del Muerto (Journey of Death) — a long waterless stretch between the Rio and the San Andres mountains. In late December 1861, Graydon and his men rode to the outskirts of El Paso, Texas, and returned with a full report on Confederate forces at Fort Bliss and Mesilla.

Eight years of Indian-fighting and service under Ewell had made Graydon a tough, even ruthless, disciplinarian.

After the Texas Cavalry abandoned their venture into New Mexico, Canby gave Graydon command of a company in the reorganized 1st New Mexico Cavalry. Graydon was assigned to fight the newly resurgent Mescalero Apaches in the mountains of central New Mexico, and he departed for Fort Stanton with his company in October 1862.

Later that month, in the Gallinas Mountains north of Fort Stanton, Graydon encountered the aged chief Manuelito and a small band of Mescalero Apaches on their way to Santa Fe to meet with Brigadier General James Carleton, who had replaced Canby as commander of the Department of New Mexico. What followed next is one of the many debated chapters in Graydon’s life. Most accounts say he provided liquor to the Indians and, when they were thoroughly intoxicated, shot them and took their 17 horses with him back to Fort Stanton. Graydon’s report, however, stated the opposite. Graydon claimed he had refused to give whiskey to Manuelito, who drew his gun and declared he would fight for it. At that point, said the report, Graydon gave the order to fire upon the Indians. What remains undisputed is that at least 11 Apaches were killed, and twice as many wounded. Graydon’s extermination of this small band of Indians was not received well by his superiors, and both Carleton and Colonel Christopher ‘Kit’ Carson, who had assumed command of Fort Stanton, expressed considerable annoyance. Graydon was reprimanded, and he accepted the rebuke with apparent equanimity. He was less gracious, however, about a letter that appeared shortly thereafter in a Santa Fe newspaper, denouncing his act as barbaric treachery.

A few weeks after the letter was published, Dr. John Marmaduke Whitlock, a friend of Carson’s, rode into Fort Stanton on business. Graydon had just learned that Whitlock was the letter’s author; when he learned that the doctor was at Fort Stanton and was calling him a ‘murderer and a thief,’ the Irishman determined to meet his accuser face to face.

On the evening of November 4, 1862, Whitlock was playing cards in the sutler’s store at the fort. Graydon burst in, confronted Whitlock, and demanded to know if it was true he had called him ‘an assassinating cowardly son of a bitch.’ Whitlock coolly replied that he ‘could not recollect exactly having used such language,’ but that the general intent was correct. Graydon left the room and returned with a letter, presumably a written challenge. Whitlock continued his card game, stating, ‘Captain, you see I am engaged, let the matter rest until tomorrow and I will give you an explanation and satisfaction if you desire.’

The next morning, Graydon confronted Whitlock again. ‘If you come to this post again and insult an officer, I will horsewhip you,’ he barked. ‘I am an officer and you are a pimp that follows the army.’

The surgeon turned away, then suddenly drew his pistol and fired at Graydon, who immediately reciprocated. Both men missed. Graydon retreated behind a wagon, while Whitlock crouched behind a Sibley tent. The two men kept firing. Suddenly, Graydon clutched his chest and yelled, ‘The son of a bitch has killed me!’

Graydon’s troopers, attracted by the gunfire, rushed to their wounded captain. Whitlock had been non-fatally wounded in his side and right hand; Graydon’s men pursued him and gunned him down. The doctor’s body was thrown into a ditch, and witnesses claimed that afterward, Graydon’s soldiers continued to fire round after round into the lifeless corpse. Carson estimated that more than 100 shots had been fired at Whitlock.

Source: http://www.historynet.com/union-captain-james-paddy-graydon.htm

Sources

• http://www.historynet.com/union-captain-james-paddy-graydon.htm

• https://www.desertusa.com/desert-people/paddy-graydon.html

• "New Mexico Civil War Service Records of Union Soldiers, 1861-1865," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JWR6-QJS : 27 December 2014), James Graydon, 1861; from "Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the Territory of New Mexico," database, Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com : 2010); citing military unit Battalion Volunteers (1866-67), M-W AND Alarid's Independent Co., Militia Infantry (See Ortiz y Alarid's Indep Co) AND Duran's Co., Militia AND Gonzales' Independent Co., Militia AND Graydon's Independent Co., Mounted Volunteers AND Hubbell's Independent Co, Mounted Volunteers AND Martinez' Independent Co, Mora County, Militia AND Mink's Independent Co., Mounted Volunteers, NARA microfilm publication M427 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1963), roll M427_0042.

• "United States, Burial Registers for Military Posts, Camps, and Stations,1768-1921," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVYT-89PN : 2 March 2015), James Graydon, 08 Nov 1862; citing Death, Fort Stanton, New Mexico, United States, Volume One, p. 264, line 4, Burial Registers for Military Posts, Camps, and Stations, 1768-1921, NARA microfilm publication M2014 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 1; FHL microfilm 2,155,570.

• https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3869607

• "United States Civil War and Later Pension Index, 1861-1917", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NHD9-N47 : 24 March 2016), James Graydon, 1870.