Battle of Wytheville

Battle of Wytheville. St. John’s Lutheran Church Cemetery. On July 13, 1863, Union Colonel John T. Toland led 872 officers and men of the 34th Regiment Mounted Ohio Volunteer Infantry from Camp Piatt, West Virginia, into Southwest Virginia to attack the railroads, telegraphs, and salt and lead mines essential to the Confederate cause. The number of casualties resulting from Toland’s raid on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad in Wytheville, as well as the resting places of the Union dead, are uncertain. Northern newspapers claimed that 75 Southerners were killed, but the Confederates admitted to only two. Several Federals may have been buried here at St. John’s Lutheran Church Cemetery. , Besides Toland, Union Capt. Dennis Delaney was killed. According to one Union report, in addition to the two officers, “9 brave men ... met death in their country’s service.” Federal Lt. Col. Freeman E. Franklin claimed 14 enlisted men died, but Confederate Gen. Samuel Jones reported “7 privates killed.” Confederate artillerist Maj. Thomas M. Bowyer, Jones’ chief of ordnance, wrote that besides Toland and Delaney, “nine others were left dead in the streets.” On July 21, 1893, the 30th anniversary of the battle, an anonymous Wytheville Dispatch reporter wrote that “seven of the attacking forces lay in the streets dead” the following morning, and that “Colonel Toland and one other officer [were] buried at the Catholic cemetery, and the other Federal dead men were interred at the Lutheran cemetery, by St. John’s Church.” According to the various reports, there are between seven and fourteen Union soldiers buried here.