Milam County Community Honors Civil War Battle - Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram

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Milam Co. Community Honors Civil War Battle

by Jeanne Williams, Telegram Staff Writer

Temple Daily Telegram - July 26, 2010

VAL VERDE COMMUNITY — Vicksburg, Miss., Chattanooga, Tenn., Manassas, Va., and

Gettysburg, Pa., are recognized as famous landmarks of the Civil War.

Though few sites in Texas are associated with the War Between the States, the Val Verde

community in northwest Milam County stands today as a permanent monument to the local

men who fought with Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley in his famed New Mexico Campaign of 1862.

Among Milam County volunteers in the Confederate Army was Mississippi-born James Pittman

Whittington, who enlisted June 25, 1862, in the 4th Texas Cavalry, Co. D, San Andres

Light Horse Co., and fought with Sibley’s Texas Brigade in the victorious Battle of

Valverde, the first clash with Union troops in New Mexico.

Sibley, a U.S. Military Academy graduate, was commissioned by Confederate States of

America President Jefferson Davis to seize the New Mexico Territory, conquer the

American west and control its gold and silver mines. Confederate troops could not be

spared so Sibley mustered three regiments of volunteers.

Among the more than 3,000 men joining him at San Antonio were four companies of

volunteers from Milam, Falls and Williamson counties. In Milam County, Charles M.

Lesueur resigned from the Texas Legislature, where he served Milam and Williamson

counties, to organize Company D 4th Texas Cavalry. Charles Buckholts — a Cameron lawyer,

former Milam County clerk and brother to the town of Buckholts’ namesake John Abel

Buckholts — organized Company E, 4th Texas Cavalry in Cameron.

Volunteer soldiers such as Whittington supplied their own weapons and mounts.

Sibley’s Brigade troops were expected to subsist off the land and seize supplies when

possible from Union troops posted in New Mexico. Sibley’s sharpshooting soldiers were

armed with squirrel guns, bear guns, sportsman guns and shotguns both single and double

barrel, according to a soldier’s diary.

Ultimately, the New Mexico Campaign failed at the Battle of Glorietta Pass and has gone

down in history as the Gettysburg of the West. Whittington was among those in Sibley’s

Brigade who were captured by the Union Army, made prisoners of war and released under a

POW exchange in December 1863 in Louisiana.

Whittington, returning home to Milam County after the Civil War, ensured posterity for

the local men who fought in the Battle of Valverde, N.M., by donating land for a church

and cemetery in a west Milam County community and naming the settlement Val Verde, words

that translate from Spanish to English as “Green Valley.”

Whittington died in 1909 and is among the nearly 700 people buried in the immaculate and

orderly Val Verde Cemetery, a pioneer graveyard adjacent to the picturesque, white

framed and steepled, First Baptist Church of Val Verde. A Texas Historical Marker stands

sentinel today in front of the church as a tacit proof that Milam County residents were

involved in a major event of U.S. and Texas history. Norinne Holder Holman’s “170 Years

of Cemetery Records in Milam County, Texas” stated that the first burial in Val Verde

Cemetery was in 1873, while the earliest recorded gravesite is from 1889.

The Handbook of Texas On-Line described Val Verde in one short paragraph, including its

founding and later history. In 1903, Val Verde boasted a one-teacher school that served

26 students. Val Verde School consolidated with Sharp in 1941, but withdrew for

unrevealed reasons from Sharp in 1961 and divided the district between Holland and

Rogers in Bell County.

One newspaper account from 1930 reveals that the community curiously once answered to

two names: Val Verde on public school grounds; and Crush on the opposing side of the

road where a general store stood.

Although the town of Crush — named in honor of a teacher who sought to sink permanent

roots in the Blackland soil by establishing a town with store and post office named

after him — fought for recognition, it withered and died. Val Verde, however, has beaten

ghost town status.

Boasting 25 proud residents in the 2000 U.S. Census, Val Verde today is recognized on

websites as one of Texas’ small communities where nothing ever happened to put it in the

state spotlight. Whittington, however, ensured this backroads community would at least

have a name no one would easily forget.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

Photo by Shirley Williams
A Confederate verteran donated land for a church and cemetery in exchange for this Milam County village to be named Val Verde in honor of a Civil War battle

.