For the past year or so, I’ve been struggling to find more information on my GGGG Grandmother Rebecca Corbett. I keep hitting a dead end around 1850 or so, and have thus far been unable to locate any record of her any earlier than that. I feel pretty comfortable in asserting that she had five children: three sons (William, Mustoe, and Charles) and two daughters (Jane and Isabella). Mustoe Hamilton Corbett is my GGG Grandfather.
I found out today that all three sons served as Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. The American Civil War Research and Genealogy Database is doing a great job of creating “the largest, most in-depth and fully searchable database of United States Civil War soldiers and events.” They continue to add more data all the time.
William Corbett
William Corbett was the eldest son of Rebecca Corbett. He would have been approximately 22 years old in 1861 when he enlisted as a Private in Company E of the 31st Infantry Regiment (Virginia). It is not certain, but it is likely, that William participated in the Battle of Greenbrier River on October 3, 1861. It was a rather indecisive battle, and the casualties were not particularly heavy on either side. Fought at the site of an inn on the Parkersburg-Staunton Turnpike, the battle lasted less than a day.
As best I can tell, after the battle the 31st Infantry moved to Camp Allegheny where William died on 15 November 1861 of disease. The conditions there were bad: the frequent storms of snow and rain, combined with the fact of the troops not being fully provisioned for winter led to many Confederate deaths that winter and the abandonment of the camp in the spring.
Mustoe Hamilton Corbett
Rebecca’s second son, Mustoe Hamilton Corbett, enlisted as a Private on 18 May 1861 in Company D of the 9th Battalion Regiment (Virginia). My information on the early action of the 9th Battalion is a little sketchy (they did fight in the Battle of Rich Mountain in July 1861), but on 1 May 1862 the battalion was transferred into the command of the 25th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
Mustoe almost certainly saw immediate action in the Battle of McDowell (8 May 1862) and Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign. He also served in “A” Company, 19th Virginia Cavalry, but I am not sure when or for how long. It is not certain when Mustoe was discharged from the army, but he survived the war and lived until 1926.
Charles Porter Corbett
Charles Porter Corbett was Rebecca’s youngest son. Born in 1848, Charles must have been a very young boy when he enlisted: he was only 13 at the start of the war in 1861. I don’t have many details of his service (I don’t know his enlistment date, for instance), but he mustered into “G” Company, 18th Virginia Cavalry and also served in “I” Company, 25th Virginia Infantry. This is the same unit that Mustoe served in from May 1862 onward, leaving open the possibility that these brothers fought side by side. Charles survived the war and lived until 1913.
I have never been much of a Civil War buff, but I am intrigued that these three boys all elected to join the war. It is hard to imagine what they gave up to fight (or what they aimed to gain). We know that William and Mustoe were both serving in the fall of 1861, and I can only imagine that Charles was anxious to join in.
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