CAPTAIN ROBERT S. POOLE

COMPANY A, 24TH REGIMENT TEXAS CAVALRY

© Karen McCann Hett  All Rights Reserved 2013

Dr. Robert S. Poole was born in Virginia in about 1826 and migrated first to Louisiana. He then moved to Galveston, Texas, in 1856. According to a history submitted by Linda McBee to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1999, Poole set up practice as a doctor in the Brown Drug Store and lived at the Galveston Hotel.

He moved to Montgomery County, Texas, in about 1859. On January 11, 1860, he married Harriet Amelia Jones in Montgomery County, the daughter of Charles L. S. Jones and Maria C. Cartwright.

In 1860, he was a physician in the town of Montgomery, where he paid taxes on a lot valued at $1250 and two horses. The lot held the doctor's office which he had purchased from Dr. Arnold. It was located on Main Street, and there he set up his practice. His father-in-law purchased Dr. Arnold's home and gave it to the couple.

In 1861, Poole was elected First Lieutenant of Beat 2, Montgomery County, 17th Brigade,Texas State Troops. This is recorded in the Texas Archives correspondence files of the Seventeenth Brigade, Texas State Troops: At an Election held on Saturday the 19th of Oct in Montgomery Beat No. 2 in the town of Montgomery and Montgomery County for the purpose of Electing officers to organize the militia of said Beat.

In December 1861, Poole was recruited at the town of Montgomery by George Washington Carter of Chappell Hill. Poole joined Carter's Second Texas Lancers, which was formed near Hempstead. This mounted regiment was later designated the Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry and was dismounted by the Confederacy.

Poole and his men were mustered in at Camp Carter at Hempstead on April 4, 1862.

Poole�s company was composed only partly of Montgomery County men. No records exist to reveal how the companies were formed once the men reported to Camp Carter. It is probable that Poole took some of his Montgomery County men to camp to be mustered with him, and that the others were assigned to his command to bring it up to the required number.

Officers in Carter�s Brigade, as in most Confederate units, were elected. Once the requisite number of men were assigned to the company, an election for officers was held, and Poole was elected captain. J. W. Maddox was elected First Lieutenant, C C. Hope was chosen Second Lieutenant, and William H. Hensley became Junior Second Lieutenant.

Poole was not the only captain of the Second Lancers from Montgomery County, nor was he the only physician. Dr. Samuel D. Wooldridge was the captain of Company B of the Lancers under Colonel Carter. A history of Wooldridge's Company B can be found at Co. B, 24th Regiment, Texas Cavalry.

Poole and his mounted men of Company A marched to Arkansas with the three thousand soldiers of Colonel Carter's Brigade in May and June, 1862. Poole was counted present on the muster rolls through October, 1862. By that time, two of Carter's regiments had been dismounted and had been sent on foot to defend Arkansas Post.

Captain Poole did not take part in the Battle of Arkansas Post on January 11, 1863. He apparently was on detached service in Louisiana and Texas beginning in about November, 1862, chasing deserters. His compiled service records show that he was paid a bounty for catching and turning over deserters.

On January 24, 1863, within two weeks after the Battle of Arkansas Post, Major General J. G. Walker at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, issued Special Order No. 10. This order specified that Captain Poole was charged with the duty of collecting the officers and men of the 24th Regiment, by inference those who for some reason had not been captured at Arkansas Post, and organizing them into companies. He was to requisition the funds necessary to carry out this order. Though the order as published specified that the men were to report to Poole at Hempstead, Texas, Poole set up his headquarters at Rusk, Texas, and published the order in Texas newspapers with the instructions to rendezvous at Rusk by March 22, in order to march back to Arkansas.

By November, 1863, he had set up camp at "Camp Morgan at Sessums Lake" in Montgomery County and was sending reports to General Magruder regarding his activities. He wrote, "I started on Monday Evening Last with a detachment of my company to arrest deserters in the thicket."

A short newspaper article published in the Tri-Weekly Telegraph on December 4, 1863, stated that there was a desperate gang of deserters and runaway negroes infesting “The Big Thicket” in San Jacinto bottom. On November 19, a detail of men was sent to find their camp. Captain Poole was fired on by one of the gang, and a ball passed through his hat.

Apparently, there was some sentiment in favor of the deserters, and a letter written by Poole was published in the Tri-Weekly Telegraph of December 23, 1863, wherein he defended his activities “in arresting deserters under orders from Gen. Magruder.”

In an article published in the Houston Telegraph and headlined Moscow, Polk County, January 4, 1864, Captain. R. S. Poole, commanding a detachment of the 24th Texas Cavalry, was said to be hotly pursuing deserters from Sabine Pass. The author commented, “On Thursday night Capt. Poole, with the 29 prisoners and guard of forty men stopped in this place over night.� The citizens of Moscow desire to bear testimony to the gentlemanly conduct and soldierly bearing of Captain Poole and his brave command�”

On February 10, 1864, Poole was named captain of an unattached company of Texas cavalry and was headquartered at Camp Groce at Hempstead, Texas. This company was designated as Company A of the 24th and 25th Regiments Consolidated under Colonel C. C. Gillespie. Its officers were Captain Poole, First Lieutenant Creed T. Woodson of Montgomery County, Second Lieutenant M. M. Uzzell, and Junior Second Lieutenant P. L. Cartwright.

From this point, Poole was responsible for the men of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Cavalries who, for any reason, had returned to Texas. They were to report to his camp, and he would then assign them to duty.

At the same time, Poole's name appears on the returns of the 24th Cavalry as Co. A 24 Cav. in the Trans-Miss. Dept.

Poole is mentioned once in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. His name appears in a report of General J. B. Magruder for April 1864, showing that he was captain of a company of unattached cavalry which had four officers and 54 privates, and that he was headquartered at a camp near Livingston, Texas.

The company was assigned as Co. A, Mann's (formerly Bradfords) Regt. Texas Cavalry per special Order 207 by the Headquarters District Texas New Mexico and Arizona, on July 25, 1864.

In some cases, individual soldiers who escaped the war and somehow made it home were loathe to report to Captain Poole at Camp Groce. In those cases, it was Poole�s duty to send a posse of provost marshals to bring those men into camp and to see that they complied with their commitment as Confederate soldiers. This was the case with Poole's fellow Montgomery Countians James McIntyre and James Lindley, both of whom were rounded up by Poole's men and taken to Camp Groce.

In late 1864, Poole's Company A was part of Bradford's Regiment. In December, he was ordered to report to Gillespie's Regiment at the District Headquarters. Poole served until January, 1865, when he was dropped from the rolls for an unknown reason.

One last return of Bradford's Regiment, dated March 1865, shows Poole permanently attached.

There is no Parole of Honor in Poole's file, but we may assume he surrendered as required.

Poole seems to have been a renegade to the end, however. In the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph published June 9, 1865, Col. Gillespie posts information for the officers and men of his command, stating that he has all muster rolls with the exception of those of the companies of Captains Poole, Montgomery, Singletary and Goode. He requests that the rolls be forwarded to him at his office to be turned over to the proper authorities.

We assume Poole never complied, as there are no rolls in existence for Captain Poole's detached company.

In 1869, Poole was a resident of Bryan Precinct, Brazos County. On September 18, he attended a meeting of the Conservative party of the precinct for the purpose of selecting delegates to a county convention. He was elected as an alternate delegate.

His wife is said to have died in 1868, and he married Mrs. Sarah Bustin in 1869. By the time of the 1870 census, Poole and his family were enumerated in Precinct 5 of Robertson County, in the town of Bremond. His wife's name was Eliza A., but no record for his marriage to Eliza has been located. He may have died before 1880, as no further records for him have been found.

© Karen McCann Hett  All Rights Reserved 2013

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