Robert Davison Gardner

Robert Davison Gardner was born in Montgomery County, Virginia in December 1830 to Alexander and Nancy Shanklin Gardner. His father, a millwright, descended from Scots-Irish forebears who settled in the valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains well before the American Revolution. His mother’s paternal grandfather was born in Ireland and had come to Virginia before 1720 and her father was a prosperous farmer and militia captain in Montgomery County. Robert had deep roots there.

He was not yet 16 when he enlisted in November 1846 for Mexican War service as a Private in the Grenadier Company commanded by Captain James F. Preston, a wealthy planter in the county. His company became part of the First Virginia Volunteers (Jubal Early, Major) and they joined the rest of the American Army at Buena Vista in Mexico in April 1847. He served with them to the end of the war in June 1848.

He returned home, made a living as a carpenter, and in November 1856 married Elizabeth J. Haney, a 24 year old tailor’s daughter from neighboring Pulaski County. At the 1860 Census he was a carpenter of modest means living with her in Newbern, the Pulaski county seat.

On April 17, 1861 Virginia delegates voted an Ordinance of Secession and the same day Gardner enrolled as First Lieutenant of Captain James A. Walker’s Pulaski Guards. He went with them to Harpers Ferry in May for rigorous training under Colonel Thomas J Jackson and the Guards were designated Company C of the new 4th Virginia Infantry, with Gardner’s former captain, James Preston, Colonel. On July 14, at Winchester, the 4th Regiment was brigaded with the 2nd, 5th, 27th, and 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiments forming the First Virginia Brigade, afterward named for their first commander, then-Brigadier General T.J. Jackson.

Gardner and the brigade had their introduction to combat on Henry House Hill near Bull Run on Sunday, July 21, 1861, where they held the line in the face of prolonged artillery fire and against repeated infantry attack, which led to the now legendary cry attributed to Brig. Gen. Bernard Bee: “Look, men! There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” That afternoon Jackson sent the 4th and 27th Virginia in a bayonet charge which “pierced the enemy’s center, and … soon placed the field essentially in our possession.” Four days later Gardner was elected Captain of his company to replace Walker, who transferred to the 13th Virginia as Lieutenant Colonel.

By the Spring of 1862 the 4th Virginia, led by Col. Charles A. Ronald, was down to about 300 men. Although few, they fought effectively as “foot cavalry” on Jackson's Valley Campaign - from Kernstown on March 23 to Port Republic on June 9th - Robert Gardner having been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on April 23.

He was in battle again at Gaines’ Mill near Richmond on June 27th and at the debacle on Malvern Hill on July 1. While Gardner was leading a wing of the regiment there and “doing all a man could do to get the men together,” his horse was killed by artillery fire and fell on him, pinning him to the ground; he was not seriously hurt.

After a brief rest, Gardner and the 4th Virginia were sent to meet Federal Brig. Gen. John Pope’s advancing army at Cedar Mountain on August 9th. At the start of the battle Jackson appointed Brig. Gen. Charles Winder to lead the division, Col. Ronald of the 4th Virginia moved up to command the Stonewall Brigade, and Gardner took over the regiment. He led the 4th Virginia again on August 30 and 31 at the Second Battle of Manassas, which ended in Confederate victory, but at a terrible cost: the regiment entered the battle with 180 men and suffered nearly 100 casualties, leaving fewer than 90 standing at the end.

Lt.Col. Gardner and his tiny regiment crossed the Potomac River into Maryland at White’s Ford on September 6, 1862 and camped near Frederick that evening. On the 10th they left town heading for Harpers Ferry, spent the night in Martinsburg, Virginia on the 12th, and arrived near the Ferry the next afternoon. On the 14th they deployed facing the strong Union infantry position along Bolivar Heights, but Confederate artillery did all the necessary work, and Brig. Gen. Julius White surrendered Harpers Ferry at 7 a.m. on September 15.

Gardner’s 4th Virginia and the rest of the Stonewall Brigade departed at 2 a.m. on the 16th and joined the the main body of the army at Sharpsburg. At their arrival the brigade was only a fraction of its former size - perhaps 400 soldiers, more than half of them in the 5th Virginia - the other three regiments, the 4th, 27th, and 33rd, brought an average of 60 men each; Colonel A.J. Grigsby of the 27th Virginia commanded the brigade.

At dawn on September 17 they were posted along the north edge of the West Woods at the left of the Confederate line and they took the brunt of the initial Union assault that morning [map], which forced them inexorably backward. Major Hazael J. Williams, 5th Virginia later reported:

It was during this severe contest that the chivalrous Starke, who had succeeded to the command of the division, in consequence of General Jones being disabled, fell, while cheering his men in the discharge of their duty. The command fell to no unworthy successor in the dauntless Grigsby ... the command of the brigade devolving upon Lieutenant-Colonel Gardner, Fourth Virginia.

Gardner gathered the survivors of his command in the West Woods, and, reenforced by Early’s Brigade and others, led them in a counterattack which regained the ground they held at the start of the day. During that fight Gardner was himself wounded and retired from the field, relieved in command of the brigade by Major Williams.

He returned from the hospital to lead his regiment at Fredericksburg on 13 December and was more seriously wounded there, shot through the lower jaw. He was never afterward well enough to rejoin his men in the field. In February 1864 a medical board found him “permanently disabled” and unable to chew solid food, and on April, 29, 1864 he was retired to the Invalid Corps and sent to command the CS Army depot at Dublin in Pulaski County. He was responsible for obtaining food and supplies for the army, recruiting and conscripting new soldiers, and guarding deserters and “disloyal” citizens imprisoned at the depot. He served there to the end of the war.

In 1870 he was appointed Clerk of the 15th Circuit and Pulaski County Courts in Newbern, posts he held to at least 1889, but his life was very hard in the early 1870s, starting with bankruptcy in May 1871. His wife Elizabeth died a week after having their second child, John, in November 1871, and infant John died the following July. Their first child Mary followed her brother in October 1873, just 7 years old.

Things improved after he married again in February 1876: Isabella M. Cook, 15 years his junior, a carpenter’s daughter from nearby Wytheville. She bore daughter Elizabeth in November 1876 and son Lawrence in May 1878. By 1880 and to at least 1900 he was also a practicing lawyer in Newbern, while Belle made ladies’ hats and had a shop in town. Robert Gardner died in Dublin, Virginia at age 75 on July 12, 1906.

His service and battle record from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3, the ORs,2 and Robertson,3 source also of his picture, the original from the collection of the late Dr. R. Earle Glendy of Roanoke. The picture may well have come down in the family to Dr Glendy (1902-1983): his father Cloyd Darst Glendy (1880-1956) married Gardner’s daughter Elizabeth, then a 25 year old widow, in 1901. There were three Darsts in Company C of the 4th. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1870-1900, Hardesty's Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia, Special Virginia Edition (1884), and Chataigne’s Virginia Gazetteer and Classified Business Directory for Pulaski County, 1888-89.

12/27/1830; Montgomery County, VA

07/12/1906; Dublin, VA; burial in Newbern, Pulaski County, VA