An accurate accounting of Civil War casualties is often difficult, especially when record keeping was spotty at best. Newspaper articles, personal reminisces, and official reports are exaggerated and unreliable. This seems particularly true for the Action at Righter’s House, which was among the first deadly exchanges in the Civil War.
On Friday, June 21, 1861, Capt. David F. Cable and men from Company I, 20th Ohio Infantry Regiment surrounded an irregular Confederate force at the home of Peter Baker Righter in what is today Marion County, West Virginia near the Harrison County line. In the ensuing fight, Cable claimed to have killed four, wounded four to six, and captured seven. His own casualties were four wounded. Some accounts said one wounded Union soldier later died.
But who were they?
According to the Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, Vol. 1, three members of Company I, 20th Ohio were wounded in the fight: Pvt. William Glero, Pvt. Andrew Hutterly, and Pvt. Albert Zook. A local Unionist named John Nay was also wounded. None are listed as killed.
One man, Banks Corbin, was among those taken prisoner, but he tried to escape and was shot dead. This was the only death I can verify.
In letters to the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, a man named “Harry”, who claimed to have interviewed locals in the area following the incident, named the other three dead men as “the brothers Pill” and “Davis”.
Doing a search on Ancestry.com for anyone who died in West Virginia on June 21, 1861 returns five results, three of which are variations on Banks Corbin. One was a month old when he died, and the other was a woman named Ruhanna.
This deepens the mystery, because “Harry” corroborated Capt. Cable’s assertion that four men died. If four men were killed that day, however, why can we only find a record for one? The other three men must have had family and friends, people who cared for them and returned their bodies home for burial. Right?
A letter from D.S. Morris, appearing in the July 5, 1861 edition of the Rockingham Register, laments and vows revenge for the murder of Banks Corbin. Morris, in exile from Northwest Virginia, calls Corbin “an uncle by marriage.” So it’s understandable for him to focus on his death in particular. But Morris doesn’t mention any of the other men killed alongside Corbin.
If Union troops had killed four men, wouldn’t including their deaths make it that much more outrageous?
Likewise, Henry Haymond’s History of Harrison County, West Virginia (1910) only mentions the death of Corbin in relation to the action at Righter’s House.
So what happened? Did the deaths of at least three people get lost in the fog of war? Or did Capt. Cable and others simply imagine them in the heat of the moment? Solving this mystery isn’t a trivial matter, it’s a matter of correcting the historical record and passing down an accurate account of events to future generations.
Spirit of '61 