I recently received this letter from Dave Frederick:

In Chapter 9 of the 1884 Wabasha book it says that Alexis Bailly's second son, Captain H. Bailly, was killed in the Great Rebellion at the battle of Lookout Mountain. The Civil War information, however, does not list him ~ perhaps because he was living in Dakota County when he enlisted.

I went to the NARA regimental lists and found Henry G. Bailey (sic), Alexis' second son, enlisted in Company G, 5th Minnesota Volunteers (Infantry) as a (private?), and was shown as a 1st Lieutenant at the end of his military record. Frustratingly, no dates were given, but a footnote implied that he might have been connected to, or confused with, 1st Lt. Alexis P. Bailly, also of Company G, 5th Infantry.

The 5th Minnesota only lost four officers during it's entire existence to casualty (wound or death), and the battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24-26, 1863, overlooking Chattanooga, Tennessee, only had 190 Union casualties. I tracked the 5th Minnesota's brigade assignments and discovered that the Wabasha account followed a small detachment for the 1863 part of the regiment's illustrious history, rather than the full regiment. The main portion of the 5th Minnesota was assigned to the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, 15th Corps under Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen until December 1863. This brigade did not participate in the Lookout Mountain Battle, however!

The good news was that the Union commanders reported that they had accounted for all of the dead in the entire siege of Chattanooga, which lasted from early October to early December of 1863; and had almost daily fighting. Most bodies were taken immediately to a central Union burial ground that was begun in the 1862 Chickamauga campaign and interred in completely random order. The overall Union commander, Gen. Thomas, had specifically prohibited any division of the men by states. The few that were buried where they fell were re-interred by the late 1880's.

To cut to the information: Henry G. Bailly died 10/29/1863 and was buried the same day in the Chattanooga National Cemetary, Section B, Plot 451. The name on his tombstone is Henry Bayles. The only battle on October 29, 1963 was the capture of Brown's Ferry, to open Lookout Valley. The 4,000 Union forces were entirely from the 1st Brigade and 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division and the 3rd Division, 4th Army Corps (Engineers), commanded by Brig, Gen. William B. Hazen. Obviously, this is where Lt. Bailly died.

As you probably know, Civil War volunteer infantry regiments had one captain commanding the company and two first lieutenants. The original two were Alexis P. Bailly of Wabasha and Chas. J. Stauff of Greenfield. Lt. Stauf served the entire war in the rank, being discharged with the regiment in 1865. Lt. A.P. Bailly resigned effective 7/22/1863, the day that the regiment left Ft Ridgely under Col. H.H. Sibley to chase the hostile Sioux into Dakota Territory. Most likely this was merely an administrative date, and safe to assume that Henry G. Bailly had already been appointed as Alexis's stand-in. In the records, it shows that Pvt. George I. Hatch of Lake City was promoted first to Sergeant, and then to 1st Lt. He was discharged 9/6/65 in the final paperwork of the regiment.

It is fairly obvious that A.P. Bailly was replaced by H.G. Bailly, who in turn was replaced by G.I. Hatch. It is also a pretty sure bet that Wabasha County has a forgotten civil war hero buried in the Chattanooga National Cemetery!

In a follow-up letter, Dave wrote:

Since I wrote to you, I did some more research which enabled me to say that everything I assumed was correct except for one detail:

The 5th Minnesota Infantry did not have two 1st Lieutenants per company. When Company G was organized, the officers were Captain Orlando Eddy and 1st Lt. Alexis P. Bailly. Sgt. John King was promoted to 2nd Lt. When A. Bailly resigned, King moved up to 1st Lt. and Henry G. Bailly was promoted to 2nd Lt. Meanwhile, Company D had Captain John Vander Horck, 1st Lt. Francis A. Cariveau, and 2nd Lt. John Groetsch. When a vacancy was created by Cariveau, Bailly was transferred from Company G. When a vacancy was created by Groetsch, Bailly was promoted to 1st Lt. of Company D, and 1st Sgt. William Deutsch became the 2nd Lt. When Bailly was killed Deutsch moved up to 1st Lt. and G.I. Hatch moved to 2nd Lt.

The National Park Service has put together an excellent list of civil war soldiers, from the record stubs in the National Archives. When a soldier's name was misspelled, a new record was often created. Henry G. appears as both Bailly and Bailley, while many in his companies appear four and five times. Using the SEARCH option, I polled the list for Bayles, Henry and found only one in the entire Union forces. He first enlisted in Indiana in 1864 and survived the war.

I think in many cases the families were notified, either by the dead soldier's immediate superior writing a letter, or by someone bringing the news back home; but the information had to be sketchy at best. Lt. Bailly was undoubtedly commanding Company D in the absence of Capt. Vander Horck when he was killed, so it would have been customary to call him Brevet Captain Bailly. The battle was not initially called Hatch's Landing, but was called Lookout Valley. It never even made most northern newspapers because the press over-glorified the capture of Lookout Mountain into "The Battle Above The Clouds." If Henry Bailly's step-mother had been fully informed by the Army, she very well could have told the writers of the 1884 Wabasha book that "His second son, Capt. H. Bailly, was killed in the rebellion, at the battle of Lookout Mountain."

See INDIVIDUAL SUMMARY FOR HENRY GEORGE BAILLY below.

In a letter from Dave on 12/2/2003:

I'm always checking to see if there is new information on an old subject, or something that I missed. I just discovered that there is a monument to Henry G. Bailly in the Bellwood Cemetery. located at Highway 61 and 190th Street East, Marshan Township, Dakota County, Minnesota. An enumeration of markers done in the year 2000 by Debbie Boe cites two inscriptions:

"H.G. Bailly, Co. D, 5th Minn Inf"
and
"Henry G. Bailly, 1st Lt., Co. D, 5th Minn Inf, A Founder of Hastings, 29 Oct 1828 - 7 Jan 1865"

The Bellwood Cemetery was used by the Guardian Angels Catholic Church of Hastings, used from 1862 until just past 1900, when the congregation dissolved. Ms. Boe describes the cemetery as well-kept, but says many of the monuments are overgrown with lilacs. The Bailly stone is probably a monument without a grave, as the inscription cites the same birth date (October 29, 1863), as his known date of death (October 29, 1863) and the death date on the monument (January 7, 1865) is more than two years past when his stepmother cited his battle death. The first burial was of Stephen Collins, who died 31 November 1862; but there are several monuments in the cemetery to persons who died before this date.

INDIVIDUAL SUMMARY FOR
HENRY GEORGE BAILLY
February 19, 2003
Father: Alexis C. Bailly
Mother: Lucy Anne Faribault

Louisiana State University Volunteer Transcribers
US Civil War Center - Chattanooga National Cemetary A-B
http://www.cwc.lsuedu/projects/dbases/chattab.htm.

"Name: Henry Bayles - Section: B - Grave: 451 - Rank: ?"

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