Comments on: #27 – Capt. Romeyn B. Ayres

By: Gil R.

Gil R. — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:03:02 +0000

That all makes perfect sense. Thanks for the explanation!

By: Harry Smeltzer

Harry Smeltzer — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:38:08 +0000

Dresser was a member of the USMA class of May, 1861, and he was commssioned a 2nd LT in the 4th Arty upon graduation. However, Dresser along with most graduates of the two classes of 1861 proceeded upon graduation to Washington to train volunteer troops then assembling there. When McDowell’s army advanced, most of the officers in Washington at the time attached either to staffs or to regular units like the artillery. Keep in mind that at the time of the battle Ayres had been assigned to the 5th Arty, Co. E – a unit that had yet to be organized. But he was still with his old command at the time of the battle.

Dresser in fact appears to have spent little time with the 4th Arty. After Bull Run he served in the defenses of Washington until the Peninsula Campaign, where it looks like he was perfoming staff engineering duties. He was acting Ordnance officer for 3d Corps theough 7 Days until the evacuation in August, then he went back to West Point to teach Arty tactics until August 1863.

He did command his battery in Tennessee from Dec. ’63 to March ’64, and served with the IG dept in Washington and with the 5th Corps until the end of the war. He resigned in Oct. of 1865 (he had received two brevets but no regular promotion past 1st LT).

He became a civil engineer and died at Newport, RI in 1883, at the young age of 46 and only two months after the death of his wife, at whose funeral service he took ill. Both he and his wife were buried in Newport.

Dresser’s Cullum number is 1906. Here’s his NYT obit:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9902E0DB1431E433A2575BC2A9639C94629FD7CF

By: Gil R.

Gil R. — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:13:32 +0000

Ayres refers to Lt. George W. Dresser of the 4th Artillery, but that battery wasn’t at the battle. Was he serving in a staff position? (His New York Times obituary, which I found through Google, confirms that he was at the battle, but says nothing more about this.)

By: Sherman’s Battery, and Sherman’s Battery, Too, but not Really « Bull Runnings

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:47:08 +0000

[...] think the answer can be found in Ayres’s official report (I’ve made a new page for it here), and his Cullum and Heitman entries, the starting points for all biographical sketches of West [...]

By: This Battery Just Keeps Going, and Going, and Going… « Bull Runnings

This Battery Just Keeps Going, and Going, and Going… « Bull Runnings — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:31:41 +0000

[...] in his narrative, then “A.G.C” was mistaken. Sherman’s Battery did not cross Bull Run (see Ayres’ OR). Only Ricketts’s Battery I, 1st US, Griffin’s West Point Battery, and Reynolds’s Rhode [...]