Drex wrote: Kennon: I wonder if your Grandfather ever asked his Dad about that experience. Perhaps he saw Armistead mortally wounded and certainly he had the vision of that fight that occurred around the guns not to mention the actual charge of the Division. You have some memorable antecedents!
Martin claimed he was there and his description is quoted by some historians but you have to take it with a grain of salt. He wrote about the fighting in a letter August 11, 1897 saying "I was disabled at Armistead's side a moment after he had fallen, on the Federal side of the rock fence." He also says in another letter in 1908 describing Armistead fall and meeting with Hancock. The problem with these is they were written well after the Civil War and after everyone had heard the stories so often their memories probably blurred them together with their own.
Most of the reports from members of the 53rd Virginia which included most of the people who made it to the gun taken list only seven or eight people around the gun with General Armistead. Those named were Col. Martin, Lt. H. L. Carter, Thomas Tredway (another relative of mine), and James C. Colerman. Lt. Carter was the other officer from Company I that was Lt. Whitehead's company. Company I was the color company for the 53rd during the attack. Lt. Carter had taken the 53rd's colors when the color bearer fell at the stone wall and taken it to the gun where Armistead was. Since almost everyone in the Chatham Grays which later became Company I are related to me or I to them, I had a bunch of relatives up there at the wall almost all of which ended up in Union prisons.
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