Major Andrew Venable Staff Officer...

5fish

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I found a list of Stuart's staff officers and Major Andrew Venable had a story... He meets Stuart at Chancorville and joins his staff and he is the one to meet Lee first at Gettysburg. He was the one At Auburn to get to Lee about Stuart's entrapment and Stuart gives his horse to him as he died... He gets captured later and escapes and lives in Philadephia and gets married, returns to the Confederacy...


Thus it was that Stuart, who, on Jackson's fall on the evening of May 2nd, at Chancellorsville, had been put in command of Jackson's Corps, met Venable in the very thickest of the battle of the 3rd day. Venable had come up to ask his Colonel whether he didn't think ‘a bean ration would be good for the men.’

“I shall ask that for your services today,” said Stuart, ‘you be assigned my staff.’

For Stuart to ask (after his own brilliant work), was to have, and so Venable, within a few days, was assigned to the Headquarter Staff of the Cavalry, with the rank of Major, and announced in ‘General Orders’ as ‘Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General of the Corps.’

In the Gettysburg Campaign, when Stuart had lost touch with Lee's columns (because of his daring raid towards the Susquehanna), and had finally recognized the imperious necessity of communicating with the commanding general, Venable was the officer chosen to make his way through the hostile country, swarming with the enemy, and carry to Lee the first direct message from his Chief of Cavalry.

The perilous ride was successfully accomplished, and Lee's official report tells us that on the evening of July 1st, Venable reported to him the exact whereabouts of his cavalry.

But his wise audacity (which, if unsuccessful, would have been termed ‘foolish rashness’) had at one point what is known as ‘a very close call.’ The story is familiar to the old troopers of his command and is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say, that he discovered a movement of the enemy's infantry that neither he nor Lee had suspected. As usual, he selected Venable to carry the news to the commanding general, instructing him to ‘ride by way of Auburn,’ which Lomax, with his brigade of horse, was supposed to hold. Venable sped upon his mission, and rode confidently into Auburn, only to ride out as fast as he could put spur to horse under a tempest of bullets, for Lomax had just been driven from the place and Kilpatrick's troopers held all the roads. But the trusted staff officer, with more than one ‘touch-and-go’ escape, made a wide detour, knowing every foot of the country even in the darkness, and safely delivered the message to Lee. [67]


The story of that desperate fight, so tragic in the cruel disparity of numbers, has been too often told to need repetition here. As they lifted Stuart, stricken with his mortal hurt, into the ambulance, he saw some disorganized troopers retreating to the rear. Raising himself up, the old light of battle shining in his eyes, his voice rang out in imperious tones: ‘Go back! go back! Do your duty as I've done mine. I'd rather die than be whipped.’ And once again the little handful turned and stayed the tide of thundering onset.

Venable tenderly bore his chief from the field to Richmond, and then, like a true soldier, galloped back at once to the front. He had looked his last on the face of the man of whom to his dying day he could never speak save with deep emotion.

But, as the brilliant cavalry leader lay a-dying, he did not forget this loyal friend and comrade, knit to him by so many ties of joyous camaraderie and common danger.

As was natural, Stuart was passionately fond of horses, was always superbly mounted, and rode like a Centaur. Of all his horses, his ‘gallant gray’ was his favorite, and, just before he breathed out his dauntless soul, after directing that his personal effects shouldd be sent to his wife, turning to his faithful Adjutant-General, Henry McClellan, whispered, ‘Take the bay and let Venable have my gray.’

The romantic story of Venable's adventures after his capture and confinement in the ‘Old Capitol Prison,’ in Washington, his dare-devil escape by leaping through the window of the car that was carrying him to ‘Fort Delaware,’ as the train slowed up in the dusk of evening near Philadelphia—his successful concealment, through the active help of ‘Southern Sympathizers’ in that rabid and envenomed ‘City of Brotherly Love’ (old St. Louis friends of Stuart's were these sympathizers), who not only secreted the young Virginian at great personal risk, but pressed upon him unlimited money for emergencies—his cool assumption of the role of an ‘oil-land promoter’—his frequent trips to the Pennsylvania oil-fields to pick up hints, for better playing the ‘part’—his writing his fiancee, Miss Stevens (who had come on to Baltimore with her aunt, to avoid the persecution in St. Louis of ‘Rebel sympathizers’), begging her to make a few rapid preparations for marriage, following up the letter (characteristically) with a telegram, ‘Come with your aunt at once’ their marriage by the Rev. Dr. W. S. Plummer in his ‘study,’ who had been his father's classmate at college, and who was then living in Philadelphia—his wife's departure within a few days Southward for Baltimore, while he fared Westward to the oil-fields—his making his way gradually, through help of ‘the underground,’ to Hagerstown, Maryland—his dash, one stormy night, on a fleet horse to an unguarded point on the Potomac—the perilous swim across—and so back to freedom, and ‘Old Virginia’—all this, as wild as any chapter in Stevenson or Dumas, must be told at another time and in another place. A comrade heard him recount the story soon after his return, and begged him to write it down then, and he half-promised to do so, but, as so often happens, never did.
 

5fish

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Here is some more BIO one Venable... He had a bunch of kids...


" I was born with a spirit hard to control, and the struggle of my life has been to conquer it." - Maj. Andrew Reid Venable

Andrew Reid Venable, 1832 - 1909
Andrew Reid Venable was born on month day 1832, in birth place, Virginia, to Samuel Woodson Venable, Jr. and Jane Venable (born Reid).
Samuel was born on November 1 1797, in Prince Edward Co., Virginia.
Jane was born in 1797, in Mulberry, Rockbridge County, Virginia, USA.
Andrew had 5 sisters: Mary Carrington Venable, Magdaline McDowell Venable and 3 other siblings.
Andrew married Adeline Hackney Venable (born Stephens) circa 1865, at age 32 in marriage place, Virginia.
Adeline was born on July 26 1836, in Pennsylvania, United States.
They had 7 children: Woodson Venable, Mary Venable and 5 other children.


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5fish

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Here is another staff officer of JEB Stuart's... His claim to fame is he was the first cousin to General McClellan and his brothers fought for the union. If I forget to mention Henry was born a Yankee. Oh, he wrote a book about his time riding with JEB Stuart...


Henry Brainerd McClellan (October 17, 1840 – October 1, 1904) was an officer and adjutant general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War (Civil War), a teacher and author. He was a professor at Sayre Female Institute in Lexington, Kentucky for 35 years after the war.

Henry Brainerd McClellan was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 17, 1840.[1][2] His family had come from Connecticut where his great-grandfather, Samuel McClellan, was a general of Connecticut troops in the American Revolutionary War.[2] He was a son of surgeon and oculist Samuel McClellan.[2] He had four brothers who fought for the Union during the Civil War.[3] One of them, Carswell (born 1836) was a lieutenant and assistant adjutant general to Union Army Major General Andrew A. Humphreys. Henry was a first cousin of Union Major General George B. McClellan, who twice commanded the Army of the Potomac.[1][2]

In 1885, Henry McClellan published The Life and Campaigns of Major General J. E. B. Stuart.[15]

 

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Here is Henery's grave a short BIO... Photo too...


Here is Andrew's grave and short BIO... Photo too...

 
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