Five Forks • Tour the Battlefield • The Armies • Battle Maps
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Visitor Center • Stop 1 • Stop 2 • Stop 3 • Stop 4 • Stop 5
The ‘Death of Pegram’ wayside marker is at Stop Three on the Auto Tour. (37°08’24.1″N 77°36’39.0″W; map) It is next to the ‘Digging In’ wayside marker.
Death of Pegram
Late afternoon, April 1, 1865. Confederate infantrymen waited behind rude, muddy earthworks lining the White Oak Road. Young Colonel William R.J. Pegram tended to his artillery: three guns in this field, three others farther to the west (your right). Then came the Federals. Sheridan’s dismounted cavalry attacked frontally. Later, Warren’s infantry swept down from the east.
After fierce fighting, the Confederate positions around the intersection collapsed. In the melee fell Colonel Pegram, mortally wounded in the side. Just 23 years old, Pegram had survived all of the Army of Northern Virginia’s major battles. He died only five miles from his ancestral home and just nine days short of the war’s end.
From the caption to the photo:
Colonel William R.J. Pegram – “the boy colonel” – whom one man described as “the most splendid soldier in all the world.” Another considered him, “one of the few men who, I believe, was supremely happy in battle.”
From the caption to the background photo:
Pegram fell somewhere near this spot. He died the next day at Ford’s Depot, ten miles to the northwest.