Jennifer Bohnhoff
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Mules in the Civil War

3/16/2022

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PictureMule carrying parts of a cannon
Mules did much of the heavy hauling for both the Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War.

They pulled the supply wagons, the limbers and caissons for cannons. They pulled the ambulances. The fearlessness and tenacity that many mules demonstrate made them ideal for the difficult conditions of war. 

More than one soldier found them better and more reliable mounts than horses. The bond between a man and his mule could become very strong, indeed.
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Both lead characters in Where Duty Calls have connections to mules. To protect his family's mules after they are sold to the Confederate Army, Jemmy joins on as a packer. Raul Atencio uses mules to haul supplies to Fort Craig. On the night before the battle at Valverde Ford, he sells two of his mules to, a Union spy captain named Paddy Graydon,  who loads them with ammunition and attempts to goad them into the Confederate lines in an attempt to destroy the Confederate's supply chain. The explosion caused the mules, who were already thirsty, to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union soldiers rounded them up. 
​In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din of battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.
Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!
Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of middle grade novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, is scheduled to be released by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in June 2022 and is now available for preorder on Amazon and Bookshop. 
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Of Palaces and Drummer boys

2/23/2022

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PictureAn old post card of the Palace of the Governors, It has looked similar throughout its 400 year history.
I don’t think any other state in the United States has a history museum that’s quite as storied as the one in New Mexico. Housed in a building called The Palace of the Governors, it is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.
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The Palace of the Governors was built in 1610, soon after the King of Spain appointed Pedro de Peralta to be the governor of New Mexico. The territory covered most of the American Southwest. Including what is now the states of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.
In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain and the Palace became the center of administration for the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.  
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​It became New Mexico's first territorial capitol on August 14,1846, when General Stephen W. Kearny rode his troops into Santa Fe during the Mexican American War. He claimed the New Mexico Territory for the United States without a shot being fired. 
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The museum houses artifacts dating back to man’s first entrance into the land, thousands of years ago, and it houses artifacts from recent history. These artifacts inspire museum goers to think about what New Mexico was like in the past. One of the artifacts on display, this snare drum, helps inform viewers about the Civil War in New Mexico. During the Civil War, drums were important for giving commands on the battlefield, and drummers were required to learn a standardized system of marches and signals. As the label indicates, this one was found in the Pecos River about a decade after the Battle of Glorieta Pass. 
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Willie, the Confederate Drummer Boy in my novel Where Duty Calls, would have carried a drum similar to this one. Willie is a fictional character, but this is exactly what I think he looked like: small and dark eyed, with a pale, round face. He drummed (at least in my story) during the charge at the Battle of Valverde in which the Confederate forces overtook the Union artillery position commanded by Captain Alexander McRae.
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Although most drummers were actually adult men, some drummers were children.  Some, like John Lincoln Clem, known by the nickname of Johnny Shiloh, ran away to join the army. Clem was only nine years old when he became a drummer boy. He continued in the Army, coming the youngest noncomissioned officer in history and retiring in 1915 as a brigadier general. 

Other boys who served as drummer boys were the sons of soldiers serving in the same unit. Still others, like my Willie, were orphans. An orphan from Louisianna, Willie would have joined the army to be fed and clothed, and to have a sense of belonging.  Like many of the boys who joined young, Willie became a kind of mascot for the men, who made sure that he was taken care of. 
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We Willie the drummer is one of the characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of middle grade novels, Rebels Along the Rio Grande. The first novel,WhereDutyCalls was released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. Book 2, The Worst Enemy, will come out in August 2023 and can be preordered here. Book 3, The Famished Country, will be released in 2024.

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]
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A General with a Plan

2/22/2022

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PictureJemmy and his home, as depicted by illustrator Ian Barstow
The main character Where Duty Calls, my Civil War novel set in New Mexico, is Jemmy Martin, a gentle farm boy from San Antonio, Texas. Jemmy loves his humble home and his family, but has a very special relationship with the farm animals, especially the two mules. 

Jemmy's brother, Drew, is a little flightier. When Drew sneaks into town to join the Confederate army, Jemmy is tasked with finding him and bringing him back. While he is in town, a group of riders passes, and Jemmy is impressed: 
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​"At their center was a fine-looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."
The fine-looking man that had impressed Jemmy so well was Confederate Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, and while Jemmy Martin is a figment of my imagination, General Sibley was a real person who impressed many. Several contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.
PictureThe coat of arms of the 2nd Dragoons
Henry Hopkins Sibley' came from a family that had served the United States since its inception. His grandfather, Dr. John Sibley, was a medical assistant in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over, he continued his training and became a surgeon. In 1803, after the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase, he left his native Massachusetts and joined an expedition to the Red River country of western Louisiana. He liked the new territory so well that he moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he worked as a contract surgeon and was an Indian Agent for New Orleans. John Sibley also served as a Senator in the Louisiana State Senate, and was a colonel in the local militia, a cattle farmer, a cotton planter, and a salt manufacturer. His son Samuel Sibley served as a parish clerk.

Henry Hopkins Sibley was born in Natchitoches in 1816. His father, Samuel, died when he was only seven years old, after which lived with an uncle and aunt in Missouri. He was admitted to West Point when he was seventeen, and when he graduated in 1838, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Between 1840 and 1860 he fought Seminole Indians in Florida, served on the Texas frontier, fought in the Mexican–American War, was involved in trying to control conflict in Bleeding Kansas and quelling a Mormon uprising in Utah. In 1857, Sibley was assigned active service protecting settlers from Navajo and Apache attacks in New Mexico. 
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​During the 1850s, Sibley invented and patented a tent and stove for military purposes. The "Sibley tent", which was inspired by the teepees of Native American Plains Indians, was widely used by both the Union Army and Confederate Armies during the Civil War. The conical Sibley tent stove, pictured on the right side of this tent, was used by the Army into the early years of the second World War. Despite the popularity of both of these inventions, Sibley received little remuneration for them.
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Sibley tents in Camp Columbus, NM in 1916 during the build-up to the Punitive Expedition. The lower skirts have been removed from the one in the foreground to keep the air inside cool.
At the time that the Civil War began, Sibley was stations at Fort Union, in northern New Mexico. Like many soldiers who had been raised in the south, he resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army. Sibley resigned on May 13, 1861, the same day he was promoted to major in the 1st Dragoons. Had he not left, he would have been offered the command of the military department of New Mexico, since the man who had held that position, Colonel William Wing Loring, had also left to take a southern commission. 

Sibley took a stagecoach out of New Mexico. A diary of a Union soldier stationed in Albuquerque says that, while passing through in a stagecoach, Sibley stuck his head out the window and shouted “Boys, I'm the worst enemy you have!”

He passed through Texas and Louisiana on his way to Richmond, Virginia, where he talked Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general. Davis authorized him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico. From there, he would seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields.

Sibley's battle cry, “On to California!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio. One of them, at least in my story, was Jemmy Martin.
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Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022.

It is available for preorder here.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. She is a native New Mexican and lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 
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160th Anniversary of a Significant Battle

2/21/2022

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PictureBrig. Gen H.H. Sibley
February 21, 2022 is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Valverde, the first major battle of the American Civil War fought in New Mexico territory. It was a Confederate success, but did not give the invading southern army the advantages it had hoped to attain with such a victory.
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On January 3, 1862, Confederate brigadier general, Henry Hopkins Sibley left El Paso with a little more than three regiments of mounted Texans. This brigade, which he called the Confederate Army of New Mexico, totaled 2,510 officers and men. He headed north, with the intention of defeating the Union forces at Fort Craig, capturing the capital city of Santa Fe, taking the heavily provisioned Fort Union, and then marching into Colorado to take control of the gold and silver mines before finally heading westward to conquer California. If his plan had succeeded, Sibley would have fulfilled the Confederacy’s dreams of Manifest Destiny while giving the south warm water ports on the Pacific and a huge boost to its treasury.
PictureCol. E.R.S. Canby
​Fort Craig, 140 miles north of El Paso, was the first obstacle in Sibley’s path, and taking it was an important objective. Sibley’s army traveled light, with the hope of acquiring food, arms, ammunition, and other supplies as they went. He needed the provisions within Fort Craig to replenish his already dwindling supplies. However, Colonel Edmund R.S. Canby, the commander of Federal troops in New Mexico, was hunkered down in the fort, waiting with 3,800 men. Only 1,200 of Canby's men were professional soldiers. The remainder were militia and volunteers from New Mexico and Colorado. Kit Carson, the famous Indian fighter, mountain man and scout, commanded the largely Hispanic First Regiment of New Mexican volunteers.
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Sibley arrived at Fort Craig in the middle of February. Scouts, fooled by Canby’s use of “Quaker cannons,” logs painted black to imitate artillery pieces, reported that the fort was too heavily fortified to be taken. Hoping to lure the Federals into the open, Sibley moved his men into an arroyo south of the fort. The cautious Canby refused to be provoked. 
PictureThe black line on the horizon is Contadoria Mesa. The battle happened just to the left of it.
When the Confederate supplies could only hold out for a few more days, Sibley decided to abandon his plan to take the fort. Instead, he decided upon a “roundance on Yankeedom,” in which he would cross to the east side of the Rio Grande, flank the fort under cover from surrounding hills, including Contadoria Mesa, then recross the Rio Grande at Valverde ford, six miles north of Fort Craig and continue on to the town of Socorro. Sibley planned to be able to cut Union communications between the fort and their headquarters in Santa Fe this way, making further conquests more achievable. ​
PictureLt. Colonel William Read Scurry
​On the morning of February 21, Sibley sent an advance party consisting of four companies of the Major Charles Pyron’s  2nd Texas Mounted Rifles and Lieutenant Colonel William Read Scurry’s  4th Texas Mounted Rifles to scout the ford at Valverde. To their surprise, Canby had anticipated their move and had secured the ford with cavalry commanded by Major Thomas Duncan. The Texans took cover in an old river bed, which served as an excellent defensive position, with Scurry to Pyron's right, and their artillery on their left. The Confederates possessed numerical superiority, but were armed with short range shotguns and pistols which could not reach the Union positions three hundred yards away. The Confederate howitzers also could not reach the Union artillery, which had remained on the western bank of the river.
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As the day progressed, more soldiers arrived on both sides of the battle line. Colonel Benjamin S. Roberts reinforced the Union cavalry with the 5th New Mexico Infantry.  When Colonel Canby arrived with most of Fort Craig’s remaining garrison, he ordered all but First New Mexico Volunteers under Carson and the Second New Mexico Volunteers under Colonel Miguel Piño to cross to the eastern side of the river. 
PictureMaj Lockridge
​The remainder of the Confederate force, the 5th Texas Mounted Rifles under Colonel Thomas Green and a battalion of the 7th Texas Mounted Rifles under Lieutenant Colonel John Sutton, arrived at the battlefield early that afternoon. Sibley, who had fallen ill, most likely from drinking too much, relinquished command of the brigade to Green, who then handed over command of the 5th Texas over to Major Samuel Lockridge.
PictureIllustration by Ian Bristow in Where Duty Leads.
​Around 2:00 pm, Green authorized the first and last lancer charge of the American Civil War. Using lances they had captured from Mexico during the Mexican-American war, the lancers charged what they thought was an inexperienced company of New Mexico volunteers on the Union extreme right. They expected the New Mexicans to break and run. However, the Union soldiers were actually a company of rough and tumble Colorado miners, who withstood the charge. Twenty of the lancers and almost all of the horses were killed or wounded. 
PictureAn etching from a Harper's Weekly showing McRae defending his guns.
​By 4:00 p.m., when the Union appeared to have the advantage, Canby shifted his lines in order to attack the Confederate left. He ordered one of his batteries and several of his companies, including Carson's First New Mexico Regiment, to cross the river on his right. Unfortunately, weakened the center of the Union line, which Green then attacked with three successive waves which managed to overwhelm the Union guns.  Samuel Lockridge, who led the charge and Alexander McRae, who commanded the guns, were both killed, and six Union artillery pieces were captured as the Union battle line crumbled into a panic-stricken retreat across the river. Canby then sent out a white flag, asking for time to remove the dead and wounded from the battlefield, and moved his forces back into Fort Craig. 
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Map by Matt Bohnhoff. A similar one will appear in Where Duty Calls.
PictureIllustration by Ian Bristow, from Where Duty Calls.
​Since the Union left the Confederate forces in possession of the battlefield, the Battle of Valverde is technically a Confederate victory. However, it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. The Confederates suffered sizable casualties: 36 killed, 150 wounded, and one missing out of their 2,590 men. They  did not capture the fort’s supplies, which they desperately needed. And although they did cut Fort Craig off from their forces in the north, the Confederate supply chain to El Paso was also severed. Finally, the Texans had lost so many horses and mules in the battle and the days preceeding it that the 4th Texas cavalry had to dismount and become infantry and some of the Confederate supply wagons had to be abandoned. These loses, plus those which were to occur in the mountains east of Santa Fe a month later caused the Army of New Mexico to turn back to Texas before they fulfilled their goal. Sibley’s army had won the battle, but lost their war. 
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​The climax of Jennifer Bohnhoff’s novel Where Duty Calls occurs at the Battle of Valverde. Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022. It is available for preorder here.
​Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 
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The First Song of the Civil War

2/20/2022

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PictureSoldiers sang a lot while sitting around their campfires. Illustration from Where Duty Calls by Ian Bristow
People sang a lot more at the time of the Civil War than they do now. There were no i-pods, no portable boom boxes, no radios to entertain soldiers as they traveled from place to place or sat around the campfire. Instead, they sang together. Singing helped boost morale and united the soldiers. Robert E. Lee, the greatest general on the Confederate side, said, "I don't think we could have an army without music."

In my middle grade historical novel Where Duty Calls, both the Confederate soldiers and the Union ones, as well as the Spanish-speaking residents of the town of Socorro, sing songs that are authentic to the period.
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​One song that was very popular at the time of the Civil War but not included in Where Duty Calls is "The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right." Written by  George Frederick Root, it is recognized as the first song specifically written for the American Civil War, and was published and distributed just three days after the Battle of Fort Sumter.

"The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right," isn't the most recognizable of Civil War songs to 21st century listeners, but it is likely that every Union soldier would have known it. Root went on to write many other songs that had a war theme. "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" was also wildly popular at the time of the war. His most enduring song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," continues to be well known.

The prolific songwriter was born August 30, 1820 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He died in 1895, leaving behind a legacy of church hymns and popular parlor songs.

Here are the lyrics to the Civil War's first song:
1. The first gun is fired!
May God protect the right!
Let the freeborn sons of the North arise
In power’s avenging night;
Shall the glorious Union our father’s have made,
By ruthless hands be sunder’d,
And we of freedom sacred rights
By trait’rous foes be plunder’d?

​Chorus--Arise! arise! arise!
And gird ye for the fight,
And let our watchword ever be,
“May God protect the right!”

2. The first gun is fired!
Its echoes thrill the land,
And the bounding hearts of the patriot throng,
Now firmly take their stand;
We will bow no more to the tyrant few,
Who scorn our long forbearing,
But with Columbia’s stars and stripes
We’ll quench their trait’rous daring.

3. The first gun is fired!
Oh, heed the signal well,
And the thunder tone as it rolls along
Shall sound oppression’s knell;
For the arm of freedom is mighty still,
But strength shall fail us never,
Its strength shall fail us never,
That strength we’ll give to our righteous cause,
And our glorious land forever.
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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 

Her novel Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022 and is now available for preorder here.

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The First - and Last- Lancer Charge of the Civil War

2/16/2022

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Illustration by Ian Bristow from Where Duty Calls.
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​When Confederate Major General H. H. Sibley invaded New Mexico in 1862, he brought with him two companies of lancers.

Handsome and chivalrous heirs of medieval knights, the lancers were the darlings of the parade through San Antonio on the day Sibley's force, which he named the Army of New Mexico headed west. Bright red flags with white stars snapped in the breeze as they rode past. Ladies swooned. Everyone thought the lancers were invincible. 

Lances had been used in battle for a long time. Common on Napoleonic battlefields, and were used by Mexican cavalry during the conflicts against the Texans in the 1830s and 1840s. The lances carried by the two companies that accompanied Sibley into New Mexico were war trophies that had been captured from the Mexicans during the Mexican American War thirteen years earlier.
PictureCol. Thom Green
On February 21, 1862 those two companies, along with the rest of Sibley's forces, had made it well into New Mexico. After finding E.R..S. Canby, the commander of Union forces in New Mexico, unwilling to come out of the heavily fortified Fort Craig, the Confederates had bypassed the fort and made their way to Valverde Ford, a crossing on the Rio Grande several miles north. There, they found Union forces blocking their way. The battle for that crossing, known as the Battle of Valverde, was over by that afternoon.

On the the day of the battle, Confederate Colonel Thomas Green's forces had taken shelter in the curve of a dried oxbow that the river had abandoned. He peered across the battlefield and saw uniforms that he couldn't identify. Knowing they weren't Union regulars, he guessed that these men on the Union extreme right were a company of  inexperienced New Mexico Volunteers whom he expected would break and run if faced with a lancer charge. 
PictureCaptain Lang
Green turned to the commanders of his two lancer companies, Captains Willis Lang and Jerome McCown. He asked which would like to have the honor of the first charge.

The first hand up belonged to the leader of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment's Company B.  Captain Willis L. Lang was a rich, 31 year old who owned slaves that worked his plantation near Marlin in Falls County, Texas.

​Lang quickly organized his men. Minutes later, he gave the signal and his company cantered forward, lowered their lances, and began galloping across the 300 yards that divided his men from the men in the unusual uniforms. The plan called for McCown's company to follow after the Union troops had broken, and the two lancer companies would chase the panicking Union men into the Rio Grande that stood at their back.
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But Colonel Green was wrong. The men in the strange uniforms were not New Mexican Volunteers. They were Captain Theodore Dodd’s Independent Company of Colorado Volunteers. Dodd's men were a scrappy collection of miners and cowboys who were reputedly low on discipline but high on fighting spirit. They formed into a defensive square, then coolly waited until the lancers were within easy range. Their first volley unhorsed many of the riders. Their second volley finished the assault. More than half of Lang's men were either killed or wounded, and most of the horses lay dead on the field.

​Lang himself dragged himself back to the Confederate lines because he was too injured to walk. 
Lang's charge was the only lancer charge of the American Civil War. The destruction of his company showed that modern firearms had rendered the ten-foot long weapons obsolete. McCown's men, and what remained of Lang's men threw their lances into a heap and burned them. They then rearmed themselves with pistols and shotguns and returned to the fight.
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The day after the battle, Lang and the rest of the injured Confederates were carried north to the town of Socorro, where they had requisitioned a house and turned it into a hospital. A few days later, depressed and in great pain, he asked his colored servant for his revolver, with which he ended his suffering. Lang and the other Confederate dead were buried in a plot of land near the south end of town that has now become neglected and trash-strewn. The owners do not allow visitors.  
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This field used to be a Confederate Cemetery.
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The Confederate lancer charge is one of the events detailed in Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel Where Duty Calls, an historical novel for middle grade readers which is scheduled to be released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. 

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of the battle, Ms. Bohnhoff is having a Preorder Party for Where Duty Calls from February 20-26th. Anyone who preorders a copy of the book and lets Ms. Bohnhoff know will be entered into drawings for prizes and book bling. 

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]
Click here to preorder the book.
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Paddy Graydon, Wild and Crazy Spy Captain

2/9/2022

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Picture"A Jurilla" Library of Congress
There aren't too many Civil War characters more colorful Captain James (Paddy) Graydon. He was a hard drinking, disagreeable man who was quick with his fists and short on temper, but his recklessness has earned him a place in American history.

Graydon was born in 1832 Lisnakea a poor, isolated Irish village. He emigrated to the United States to escape the Potato Famine when he was 21 years old. Like many poor immigrants of the time, Graydon joined the army soon after arriving, and was posted to the southwest with the elite 1st Dragoons. They took the Santa Fe, and arrived in New Mexico in August of 1853. Graydon was posted to Los Lunas, a village south of Albuquerque along the Camino Real.
PictureRichard Stoddert Ewell in his Confederate Uniform
Grayson, a fair skinned, blue-eyed man who stood about 5 feet 7 inches tall, was quick to adapt to the rigor of military life. Under the command of Richard Stoddert Ewell, a West Point graduate who was to become a general in the Confederate Army, Graydon learned to speak Spanish and Apache. For five years, he fought Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Jicarilla Apaches, Navajos, bandits, renegades, and claim jumpers in an area that stretched from north and south from Santa Fe to the Mexican border and as far west as Fort Buchanan, in what is now Arizona. ​
​When he was discharged from the Army in 1858, the seasoned veteran opened a hotel and saloon a few miles south of Fort Buchanan in Sonoita, Arizona. The whitewashed adobe, which became known as “Casa Blanca,” or “The White House,” attracted a rough crowd of patrons. His establishment boasted round-the-clock poker games and housed the region’s top prostitutes. But all this was still too sedate for Graydon, who tracked horse thieves and murderers, rescued captives from the Indians, and guided army patrols and U. S. military expeditions in his spare time.

In 1861, when Confederate General Henry H. Sibley threatened to bring the Civil War into New Mexico, Graydon abandoned Casa Blanca and rode to Santa Fe to offer his services to the Union. Territorial Governor Henry Connelly awarded him with a commission to recruit a company of spies that would operate virtually independently of the Army. Graydon rounded up 100 of the “hardest cases” he could find, then reported to Colonel E.R.S Canby, the Commander of the Army in the territory, at Fort Craig. Many of the men Graydon recruited were former patrons of his saloon. They were an undisciplined lot, mean and nasty, but very good at collecting information and doing the kind of sabotage work that regular Army soldiers could not. Canby gave Grayson the mission of infiltrating the Confederate lines and sending back news about troop movements and numbers. 
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​There are no pictures of Graydon or of his Company of spies, but the Library of Congress sketch entitled "A Jurilla" that is shown at the top of this article is probably a good representation of what a member of the spy company would look like.  They wore no uniforms, rarely bathed, and refused to participate in parades and drills like regular soldiers. The bottom corners of this lithograph, from an April 9, 1863 Harper's Weekly, shows a company of spies taking two sentries prisoners. Graydon's spies did this kind of work. They were also well known for wandering into the Confederate camp and sitting around the campfires, drinking coffee and gathering information.
But the action that Graydon is most famous for happened on a bitterly cold night in February, 1862. Sibley's Confederate Army was encamped about four miles east of Fort Craig, where Canby's Army and a large number of New Mexico Volunteers awaited. Under cover of darkness, Graydon and four of his roughest men left the fort and crossed the icy Rio Grande. When they got close to the corral that enclosed Sibley's pack train, Graydon lit the fuses on pack boxes filled with explosives that he had put on two old mules, then shooed them towards the Confederate lines.
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From Steve Cottrell's book Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory.
Graydon's scheme did not go as planned. His mules turned back. As Graydon and his men rode for their lives, the explosives blew up, killing no one but the mules they were attached to. However, the explosion caused Confederate pack mules to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union troops rounded them up. The Confederate Army lost over 100 animals, and had to abandon many of the supplies that they desperately needed if they were going to conquer New Mexico and the rich gold fields of Colorado and California. Graydon’s outrageous scheme had not stopped the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, but it had seriously crippled it.
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also from Steve Cottrell's book Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory.
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Graydon continued to command his spy company for another year and a half. In October of 1862, he was involved in an altercation with Mescalero Apaches at Gallinas Springs. At least eleven Apaches, including their Chief, Manuelito, were killed. The next month, he was in Fort Stanton when Dr. John Marmaduke Whitlock, an Army surgeon and Graydon got into a fight over the killings. Whitlock shot Graydon, and then Graydon’s men shot Whitlock. Graydon is buried in the Veteran’s cemetery in Santa Fe. 
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James Graydon is one of the historical people who appear in Where Duty Calls, an historical fiction novel for middle grade readers by Jennifer Bohnhoff. It will be published in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, an imprint of Artemesia Publishing.
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The Jeffery: Modern Mule

10/3/2021

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Early in the 20th century, the U.S. Army decided that mechanization was the wave of the future. In 1912, it requested proposals for a truck that could take the place of the four-mule teams used to haul standard one-and-a-half-ton loads of equipment, supplies and men. One of the companies that responded was the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
 
The Jeffery Company began their development by buying and studying a truck developed by The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company (FWD). They soon sold it and began their own design from scratch. By July 1913, they had developed a prototype of the Jeffery Quad that was ready for public demonstration of its capabilities.
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The Jeffery designed a four-wheel-drive truck, known as the "Quad" or "Jeffery Quad" that was sturdier than anything that had come before it. It had four-wheel brakes and an innovative four-wheel steering system that allowed the rear wheels to track the front wheels around turns. This meant that the rear wheels did not have to dig new "ruts" on muddy curves.  A very high ground clearance allowed it to drive through mud up to its hubcaps. The wheels were the same as those used on locomotive cars, with the addition of a thin rubber tire. When they were used near train tracks, the tire could be taken off and the Quad set on the rails.
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Quads on a muddy road in Mexico
Jeffery Quads first saw service during the Army’s 1916 Punitive Expedition through Mexico. General John “Blackjack” Pershing used a mix of Quads and mule-driven wagons to transport troops and supplies. He also had two Quads that had been specially modified with armor.
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Armored Jeffery Quad at Pancho Villa State Park, New Mexico
The Jeffery Quad Armored Truck, also known as Armored Car No. 1, was not the first armored car -- several National Guard units had already had their own designed – but it was the first one built by the U.S. Government specifically for Army’s use. It was designed to support combat forces. It had armored plate made by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and two manually operated turrets. Three light machine guns, a Bennett-Merier and 2 Colt “Potato Diggers,” provided the firepower. Neither vehicle was reported to have seen military action.
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When Pershing led the Army overseas, he brought the Quad with him. Its ability to negotiate France and Belgium’s muddy, rough, and unpaved roads made it the workhorse of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
Quads were also used by the United States Marine Corps from 1915 through 1917, during their occupation of Haiti, and of the Dominican Republic.
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Marines in Santo Domingo, 1916
Approximately 11,500 Jeffery and Nash Quads were built between 1913 and 1919. They continued to be produced until 1928, but their reliability and ability to negotiate difficult terrain that challenged more modern trucks meant that civilians to use these slow, but steady workers until into the 1950s.
Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical novels from her home high up in the mountains of central New Mexico. A Blaze of Poppies: A Novel About New Mexico and World War I will be published in October 2021.
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Fort Bayard: Southern New Mexico Site

8/1/2021

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I've written about Fort Bayard's history before. You can read all about it here. 

Fort Bayard has been on my mind a lot lately. I had intended to go down and revisit it during spring break this year. Travel restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to that. So, instead, I did as much research as I could online. I found some good information, but nothing is as good as actually being in a place. 

Fort Bayard ceased to be a military post when the last detachment of the 9th U.S. Cavalry departed on January 12, 1900. That doesn't mean that the site was abandoned. The War Department had already issued an order issued  on August 28, 1899 that authorized the Surgeon General to establish the first military sanatorium dedicated to the treatment of Army officers and enlisted men suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. Major Daniel M. Appel, an Army surgeon, arrived at Fort Bayard on October 3, 1899 to organize the hospital. 

Fort Stanton had undergone a similar conversion, becoming a sanatorium for tubercular merchant seamen in April 1899. Fort Stanton was transferred to the Department of Interior in 1896, and then to the U.S. Marine Hospital Service, a bureau within the Treasury Department, in 1899, Fort Bayard remained within the Army under the auspices of the Army Medical Department. 

. The Spanish-American War. drove the need for sanatorium for the Army's soldiers and veterans. In the humid, tropics of Cuba, more soldiers succumbed to disease than enemy fire. Many soldiers serving in the Philippines returned with pulmonary disease. At 6,100 ft. and with a dry, sunny climate, Fort Bayard seemed a perfect place to restore health to diseased lungs. Fresh air and sunshine was considered so important to healing that patients who were ambulatory stayed outdoors at least eight hours daily throughout the entire year,  and dormitory windows remained open. By March 1902, over 600 patients had been treated at the sanatorium.

World War I created another upsurge in the need for a hospital dedicated specifically to injuries and illnesses of the lungs. The cold, damp trenches of Northern France were breeding grounds for pneumonia, and gas warfare damaged thousands of dough boy lungs. The Great Influenza of 1918-19,  often referred to as the Spanish Flu, also contributed to pulmonary disease. 

By 1920,  the Army involvement with medicine for veterans was changing. In May the War Department closed the sanatorium and transferred most of its corpsmen, physicians and patients to other facilities in an effort to consolidate services. Most patients were moved to Denver. 

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Jennifer Bohnhoff lives in the mountains of central New Mexico and writes historical fiction. Her novel, A Blaze of Poppies, is  set in Southern New Mexico and France during the 1910s. Some of the action takes place at Fort Bayard. Available October 2021, you can preorder this book now.
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Bobbed Hair and Bravery

7/18/2021

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The main character in my next book, A Blaze of Poppies, is a feisty little woman with more determination than muscle, though she has plenty of that, too. Agnes Day is a third-generation rancher in the dry desert of southwestern New Mexico. She stands barely five feet tall, but she’s adept enough on horseback to rope a steer and bring it down. The fifth daughter in a family that has no sons, she is determined to follow her father and keep the Sunrise Ranch going.
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When I write, I amass pictures to help me envision my characters and settings. My inspiration for Agnes Day is a contemporary of hers, an inspiring, real woman named Mabel Strickland. Mabel, who was born in Walla Walla, Washington, in January 1897, learned to ride the same time she was learning to walk.  Standing just over five feet tall, she was slim, but muscular enough to throw a 345-pound calf to the ground and pin its flailing legs, a feat that even male cowboys find difficult. She started her riding career when she was only fifteen years old. By 1916, Mabel was competing in rodeos. She continued to compete – and win – for 26 years.
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Like Mabel, Agnes Day wears her hair bobbed.  One of her suitors, trying to gain her favor says “Bobbed hair like yours is very fashionable now, though. I saw a lot of it on the girls in Boston, where Harvard is. You would fit right in.” Agnes responds with ““I don’t care a continental about fashion, and I don’t care about fitting in,” then watches with satisfaction as the young man blushes. Agnes’ mother then says that “Our Agnes is a practical girl. She bobbed her hair so it won’t get into her eyes when she’s riding.”
PictureMy grandmother (left) and her sister with their new, modern bobs.

​​While neither a rancher nor a rodeo rider, my own grandmother showed some bravery by getting the same haircut that Mabel Strickland and Agnes Day had. The family story is that she and her sister quietly went into their father’s room when he was sleeping and asked if they could get their hair cut. In his half-asleep state, he assented. The girls then went out and got their hair bobbed, being the first women in Deshler, Nebraska to do so. The family was not happy, but my grandmother and her sister started a trend, and soon many of the girls in town had bobbed hair. 
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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexican who lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. A Blaze of Poppies will be published in October 2021, and is available for preorder here.
To see more images related to this story, visit her Pinterest page.
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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.


    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

    ​    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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