THE CIVIL WAR
ARTILLERY PAGE

The Story of an Artillery Horse:
Loomis Battery's Sam

The Coldwater Light Artillery had been a crack militia unit well before the commencement of the Civil War, and when hostilities began, this unit from Branch County, Michigan, was one of the first to offer its services for the cause of the Union. The people of Coldwater were justifiably proud of their Battery, and donated everything needed to complete the equipment of the unit. Among these donations was the use of Old Sam, a horse owned by Mr. Clark, a local innkeeper. Old Sam had been employed for several years as a cab horse, bringing passengers from the train station to the inn. When the Battery left Coldwater in May, the thoughts of those left behind were all of the men; few could have spared concern for a horse. But the men themselves had apparently already adopted Old Sam as something of a pet, the sight of him pulling his cab down the old post road being familiar to them all.

This is not the place to tell the entire history of Loomis's Battery, save to say that it was often found where fighting was the thickest, and that the toll on the Battery's horses was even more fearsome than the toll on the men. In savage fighting at Perrysville 33 horses were killed or disabled. The Battery was again heavily engaged at Murfreesboro, losing nearly 40 horses. Finally, in the debacle at Chickamauga, the Battery lost five of its guns and nearly 50 horses. In the course of the War, many others were lost to disease, or simply wore out their lives in the hard work and scant forage that were the lot of the artillery horse.

But somehow, through all of this, Old Sam plugged along. His seemingly charmed life made him a symbol of survival to the men of Loomis's Battery, and he continued to be a reminder of the home they had left behind so many months before.

After mustering out, the men of the Battery were sent home to Coldwater, and so was Old Sam. When the ramp from his railroad car was lowered, Sam needed no one to tell him that he had reached his old familiar station. Not waiting to be bridled, he simply trotted down the ramp and went directly to his old stable, his empty stall waiting for him. Again like the soldiers with whom he had spent four years, he returned to the work he had known before the War. He retired to a local farm a few years later, but continued to be a special participant in every Decoration Day parade and GAR encampment.

When at last his time had come to an end, the veterans with whom he'd served had long since come to regard Old Sam as one of them, and were loathe to part with him, even in death. Though the law forbade his being buried in the local cemetery, those veterans felt there was a higher law to be followed. Local legend, passed on from father to son for over a century, says that they buried Sam in an unplotted area of the town's cemetery. There are still a few descendants and relatives of those men who can point to a large shallow depression in a disused corner of the cemetery as the final resting place of Old Sam, the artillery horse.

For more information on Loomis's Battery (Battery A, 1st Michigan Light Artillery) see: Matthew C. Switlik, Loomis' Battery: First Michigan Light Artillery, 1859-1865 (1975)


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