Read’s Battalion wayside marker

Cold Harbor • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies

The “Read’s Battalion ” wayside marker is a short distance southeast of the Cold Harbor Visitor Center near the beginning of the walking trail. (37°35’07.3″N 77°17’13.0″W; map)

The "Read's Battalion " wayside marker on the Cold Harbor battlefield

The marker looks east across the field toward the Union lines. The Battle of Cold Harbor – Confederate Main Line monument is a short distance away.

Text from the marker:

Read’s Battalion

These cannon mark the approximate position of a four-gun battery belonging to the Richmond Fayette Artillery, part of Major J.P.W. Read’s Battalion that held strategic points along the Confederate main line. The battery supported General Alfred H. Colquitt’s Georgia brigade on June 1, 1864, and took part in the repulse of a Union attack that evening.

On the morning of June 3, Read’s gunners were again called to action. They directed an intense and accurate fire toward the advancing Federal infantry—part of General U.S. Grant’s all-out assault against Lee’s lines.

“few men fell until we reached within [eighty yards] of the enemy’s first line, when they opened upon us with canister [and] grape hurling it into our faces and mowing down our lines as wheat falls before the reaper.”

Lt. Eli Nichols
8th New York Heavy Artillery

“It was a country generally flat, with many small clearings, & thin woods, & scattered pines. No long ranges, but favorable to cross fires & smooth bore richochet firing–& I put in position every gun I had.”

Brig. Gen. E. Porter Alexander
Chief of Artillery, First Corps

From the caption to the photo:

Major John Postell Williamson Read, formerly Chief of Police for Savannah, Georgia, commanded nearly 400 officers and men and 16 guns at Cold Harbor. The unit suffered only seven casualties.

Closeup of the The "Read's Battalion " wayside marker on the Cold Harbor battlefield

See more on the history of the Richmond Fayette Artillery in the American Civil War

Location of the Cold Harbor Visitor Center

The Visitor Center is on Cold Harbor Road about nine miles from downtown Richmond and a little over two miles from exit 34 of Interstate 295.  (37°35’07.3″N 77°17’13.0″W)