Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1895-11-01

berry a lad of 18 and William HI. Smith
of his company shouldered their mus
kets, stole out of camp and through the
pickets, and taking the main road to
Fairfax Court House, IA miles distant,
where Beauregard's army was stationed,
fired on their pickets in broad daylight,
killing one and w%ounding another.
They heard the long roll beatin the rebel
camp and in ten minutes were sur
rounded by the enemy but through the
friendly offices Of an old negro managed
to escape and get back into camp, the
colonel says as badly frightened as the
rebels were when they opened fire on
them. When wounded at First Bull
Run he refused to leave the field and
afterward fell into line with the frag-.
ments of a hundred broken regiments to
assist in repelling that famous charge
of the Black Horse cavalry. At the
time his regiment met Morgan's COM
mand in Kentucky the colonel had COM
mand of the advance guard and though
the numbers against him were over
whelming, forgetful of danger, he
stepped from shelter in the woods into
the middle of the road, followed by
Charles Benhamo of his company. Capt.
Chenaplt and a sergeant on the confed-
crate side followed their example. The
four fred. Capt. Chenault and Benham
were killed, the confederate sergeant
was shot through both hips and Louns-
berry through the right thigh, the ball
passing through between the bone and
the main artery. At Spotteylvania
court House his command consisted of
Sergeant William Gleason, now Of
Jamestown, N. d., and 25 men. Twenty
two of the twenty-seven, including
Gleason and the colonel, fell under the
murderous fire. It was a hand to hand
conflict as to a portion Of the men who
dubbed their muskets when to load and
fire was impossible. It was in this en-
gagement that the tree cut down by
mimic balls, exhibited at the Worlds
Fair, was found. At Fort Saunders the
conflict was also hand to hand and at
one point of the angle of the fort the
dead were five deep, and the confeder-
ates claimed there was blood enough in
the ditch to drown a cat. Each man of
Colonel Lounsberry's command had
from two to three muskets loaded and
used them with terrible effect. Mus
kets were dubbed and in some instances
the rebels were cut down with axes and
in others %bayonetted. Lieutenant Ben
jamin fired his artillery with deadly eff
feet even after the rebels had laid hands
on his guns. The colonel promises to
make war "reminiscences a feature later
in the Record. Twenty-Five years after
the battle at Spottsylvania Court House
his leg, weakened by the gunshot re-
ceived in that engagement, broke from
his weight.
Col. Lounsberry's three oldest chill
dren Hattie, George and Wells, we're
born at Fairmont, Minnesota, Fred on
the site of the new court house at
Minneapolis, and Willie, now twenty, at
Bismarck. Col. Lounsberry has always
been a republican his father was an
abolitionist. His ancestry on his moth
er's side dates back to Watertown, Mass,
1886, and on his fathers to the Dutch
settlements on the Hudson in 1860.
His father was of Scotch descent COM
bined with French Hugenots, who were
refugeesi in Holland, land he justly boasts
of the fact that his family have made a
record in every war in which Americans
have been engaged, beginning with the
French wars before the revolution.
They were the proprietors at Danbury,
Conn, at White Plains, and Binghamp-
ton, New York, were in the directory of
the Erie railroad when it was built, and
Eli Whitney, the great inventor, was a
near relative. The same is true of
Thurlow Weed, Governor Andrews, of
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