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Surnames/tags: US_Civil_War Kentucky
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: US_Civil_War Kentucky
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See Category: First Brigade, Kentucky (Orphan Brigade) (Confederate), United States Civil Warthe category for profiles of men of the unit.
First Brigade, Kentucky (Orphan Brigade)
Contents |
Summary
Flag of the Kentucky Orphan Brigade |
- Excerpt from: Kentucky Orphan Brigade in Essential Civil War Curriculum (see source)
- No Kentucky commands that fought in the Civil War, save for Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry, were more well-known and well-respected than those that formed the First Kentucky Brigade, or, as it was affectionately known, the Orphan Brigade. The brigade was composed of the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 9th Kentucky Infantry regiments and Cobb’s, Byrne’s and Graves’s batteries of artillery, and, at times, the 3rd Kentucky Infantry and the 5th Kentucky Infantry. The Orphans campaigned over more territory (8 states), suffered higher casualties, and lost more brigade commanders than any other comparable unit in the war. And as if those trials were not enough, after February 1862 the brigade was never able to return to Kentucky to fight for its native state; instead, it fought the entire war far from home. A November 1862 circular prophesied:
- “However this war may terminate, if a man can truthfully claim to have been a worthy member of the Kentucky Brigade he will have a kind of title of nobility."
Original Units of the Kentucky Orphan Brigade
- Category: 2nd Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War
- Category: 3rd Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War Reorganized as Mounted Infantry Spring 1864.
- Category: 4th Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War Reorganized as Mounted Infantry Fall 1864.
- Category: 6th Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War Reorganized as Mounted Infantry Fall 1864.
- Category: 9th Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War Reorganized as Mounted Infantry Fall 1864.
- Category: Cobb's Company, Kentucky Light Artillery (Confederate), United States Civil War
- Category: Byrne's Battery, Kentucky Artillery (Confederate), United States Civil War
- Category: Graves' Battery, Kentucky Artillery (Confederate), United States Civil War
Other Units that joined the Orphan Brigade
- Category: 5th Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), United States Civil War Reorganized as Mounted Infantry Fall 1864.
- Category: 41st Regiment, Alabama Infantry, United States Civil War (fought as part of the Orphan Brigade at Murfreesboro, the Siege of Jackson and Chickamauga)
- Category: 31st Regiment, Alabama Infantry, United States Civil War3
- Category: 49th Regiment, Alabama Infantry, United States Civil War
Formally in but not directly serving with
- 1st Kentucky Cavalry, organized at Bowling Green 1861
Sources
- Kentucky Orphan Brigade in Wikipedia
- Kentucky Orphan Brigade in Essential Civil War Curriculum
- First Kentucky Orphan Brigade Homepage (at RootsWeb)
- Confederate Soldiers with a Kentucky Connection on File with the Orphan Brigade Kinfolk Alphabetical listing of those who served in the Orphan Brigade and the units they served with.
- Thompson, Edwin Porter History of the First Kentucky Brigade. Cincinnati: Caxton Publishing House, 1868. (at Internet Archive, with download links)
- Davis, William C. The Orphan Brigade: The Kentucky Confederates Who Couldn’t Go Home. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1993.
- Young, Lot Dudley Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Orphan Brigade. Louisville KY: Courier Journal Job Printing Company, 1918.
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