Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/168

 From the News Leader, May 6, 1908. HOT NIGHT FIGHT AT STONY CREEK.

'''Virginian Guided a Flank Attack at Farm He Was Born On—Movement Which Broke Wilson's Great Raid.'''

'''Working Through a Swamp in the Dark With Talk of "Dominecker" Which Was Found to Be Unfounded.'''

Captain W. R. Brooks, of the Hampton Legion, now a resident of Abbeville county, S. C, is publishing a series of extracts from his forthcoming book on scout services with Hampton in the Civil War. In one of these articles, recently published he tells a story of special interest to people in this part of Virginia. After describing the return from the fight with Sheridan at Trevillian's, and General M. C. Butler's interview with General R. E. Lee in the latter's tent at Petersburg, he says: We moved in a column of fours through the city of Petersburg and after clearing the city struck out in a southerly direction, skirting the Petersburg and Weldon railroad. After getting out about seven miles we halted for the night and bivouacked in a field filled with shocks of bearded wheat. The bearded wheat was the forage for our horses (would kill the average horse now) but our poor tired animals appeared to enjoy it. How the men were provided with rations I cannot now recall, but in those days we were young and did not quail before hardships. Well, we spent the night in the wheat-field and bright and early by daylight the twenty-eight day of June, we were mounted and set our for Stony Creek, thirteen miles away, reaching there in time. Meantime General Hampton had come down from Richmond on the train and joined us. our vigilant and restless scouts (God bless them) kept us informed of Wilson's whereabouts and movements. On the strength of their information General Hampton posted the Holcombe Infantry Legion( in which my old friend Dick Anderson, now from Edgefield, S. C, was a private, youthful but a first class gallant soldier) and the cavalry dismounted with our right and left resting on a swamp, about two or three