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PORT HUDSON PAROLE OF GORGE H. APPEL CO. F, 1ST MISSISSIPPI LIGHT ARTILLERY, WIA, WITH RELATED WARTIME DOCUMENTS, EX-COCO COLLECTION

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Scarce printed Port Hudson parole filled out for G.H. Appel, a private in Company F of the 1^st Mississippi Artillery who had been seriously wounded by a gunshot wound in the neck at the beginning of the siege in May, likely during the first Union infantry assault on May 27, though a muster roll dates his wounding as May 28. With this parole are three other wartime documents related to his service. All are in very good condition. The text of the parole reads as follows, with the square brackets indicating the handwritten additions:

Port Hudson July [12,] 1865 / I [G.H. Appil] a [private] of Company [F] in the 1^st regiment of [Mississippi Vols. Lt. Artillery] and a prisoner of war, do hereby give my parole of honor not to bear arms against the United States , or render any service, military, garrison or constabulary, to the Confederate States, or to perform any duty usually performed by soldiers, until regularly exchanged according to the provisions of the cartel of exchange. [G.H. Appel] // Approved: [James P. Parker / Lt. Col.] Commanding the Regiment (“regiment” crossed out and [Battn] added.) // This is to certify that the above named [G.H. Appil], a prisoner of war, has been this day released upon his parole, given and subscribed as above. [T.E. Chickering] Colonel 3d Reg’t. Mass. Cavalry, Provost Marshal and Paroling Officer.

The parole measures 6-1/8” by 5-1/4” and shows three horizontal folds, and some creases at lower right, but no separation lines or edge losses. Appel’s signature is clearly “Appel” which the clerk filling it in twice rendered as “Appil.” We would only note that his service file indexes him as “Apple,” apparently to cover all the bases, even though the muster roll abstracts in the file have it correctly spelled as Appel. The signatures of Parker and Chickering are light, Chickering’s more so than Parkers, but visible. Lt. Col. James P. Parker commanded the three companies of the 1^st Mississippi Artillery posted at Port Hudson, (B, F & K, though some secondary sources include H.) He has a certain amount of fame as Custer’s West Point roommate and rival for demerits. After his surrender at Port Hudson he remained in a prisoner of war until the end of the war, no doubt in large part due to his rather late decision, in July 1861, to join the Confederacy. (See John Sickles’s article in Military Images.) Thomas E. Chickering had been Colonel of the 41^st Massachusetts in  Banks’s Louisiana Expedition, served as military governor of Opelousas, playing a major role in recruiting freed slaves for the Union army, and then commanded the newly created 3^rd Massachusetts Cavalry at Port Hudson and later in the Red River Campaign, serving until September 1864 and earning a brevet to brigadier general.

With Appel’s parole are three other documents relevant to Port Hudson and his wounding: 1) a longhand letter dated April 6, 1864, from Mayberry’s Brig. Infirmary at Chrystal Springs from S.R. Chambers, “In charge Brig. Infirmary,” in support of an application by Appel to extend his furlough, testifying he has examined Appel “and find him still suffering effects of a gunshot wound of the neck received during the siege of Port Hudson, La., rendering him unfit for duty” and recommends extension of his furlough for thirty days; 2) an undated longhand petition by Appel to t Maj. D.W. Florence, Adjutant General Gulf District requesting assignment to light duty because of a neck wound suffered at Port Hudson, and rheumatic pain in one arm and leg; 3) a March 21^st 1865 dated printed Medical Certificate Recommending Detail to Light Duty, made out to Appel by the Field Examining Board at Mobile finding him “unfit for military duty in the field in consequence of, ‘partial paralysis resulting from a wound in the neck involving the spinal column’ ” and recommending he be detailed for forty days and report to the Chief Commissary or Q.M. at Brookhaven, MS. This is signed by two surgeons of the examining board.

George Henry Appel (1824-1894) had been born in Germany (Hesse) in 1824 and is picked up in the 1870 and 1880 census records as a dry goods merchant in Chrystal Spring, Copiah County, Mississippi. He seems to have had some early war service in the Chrystal Springs Guards, which became Co. F of the 6^th Mississippi Infantry, his name showing up among those receiving votes for an officer’s spot in the company on July 22, 1861, but records are incomplete. In any case, he enlisted again on June 3, 1862, as a private for “three years or the war” in Company F of the 1^st Mississippi Light Artillery, mustering in on June 6, 1862. The company had organized March 26, 1862, with 85 men originally and others joining it. The regiment officially organized at Jackson, MS, in May 1862, but did not serve as a unit, the companies serving separately or in smaller groups at different posts or in different assignments, some as heavy artillery and some as light.

Muster rolls list Appel as present until his wounding, with the exception of the Sept.-Oct. 1862 roll that says he is absent sick, but he is back with company by the Jan-Feb 1863 roll. Company F, under Capt. J.L. Bradford, was stationed at Jackson from April 24 to June 30, 1862; at Port Hudson in July; in August at the Yazoo River near Vicksburg; ordered to Port Hudson again on Sept. 8, arriving there Sept. 20 and serving there at least through October. While there Bradford wrote a letter on Sept. 27 indicating he could only man two guns, but hoped to get enough new men to bring up two six-pounders he had left behind, though he wished to exchange them for rifled pieces. How successful he was is unclear. The company was ordered to Ponchatoula, LA., in January-February 1863, and to Enterprise, MS, on March 1, 1863, but were back in Port Hudson when the siege began and remained there throughout the siege, which ended shortly after the fall of Vicksburg, opening up the Mississippi, and prolonging Nathaniel Banks’ military career by a year.

The regiment’s companies at Port Hudson were together referred to as the “1^st Mississippi Light Artillery Battalion” in some records, with the battalion losing 11 killed and 33 wounded in the fighting there through June 1. A veteran of the battery recalled Bradford as a gallant officer so severely wounded at port Hudson as to be disabled for more than a year and added that during the siege all four of Bradford’s lieutenants were under arrest for incompetence and sergeants commanded the guns. After their surrender and parole the company was posted to Mobile, but their muster rolls are incomplete. A Nov-Dec 1863 roll says he had not reported due to his wounding. A March-April 1864 roll lists him absent wounded. Perhaps due to Bradford’s wounding and absence the company seems to have fragmented, if not dissolved. The veteran of the company mentioned above recalled joining Hoskins’ Mississippi Battery with about 30 others from Company F. in fact, Appel is picked up on a June 26, 1864, roll of Grenville Cook’s Company of Horse Artillery, but this may be a matter of bookkeeping: Cook had been a lieutenant in Company F and his unit may have been a continuation of it in some form and it is unclear if Appel saw any active service in it. From the documents in this group it looks like he spent much of his subsequent service on detached duty. His service file for Company F records his capture at Port Hudson on July 9, his parole on July 12, and his subsequent absence from the company, with a gap to his inclusion on a May 19, 1865, roll of unattached men surrendered May 4, 1865, and paroled May 19 at Jackson, MS.

He returned to Chrystal Springs after the war, where he is picked up with his wife growing family in the 1870 and 1880 census, by which time they had seven children. He passed away there in 1894.  [sr][ph:L]

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