Sharpshooter Alonzo Ballard.

Alonzo Ballard.
1843-1911.

1st Regiment, US Sharpshooters (Regular Army)
Rank Private & corporal, Company C.
In civilian life was a merchant.

When the Civil war broke out. Alonzo Ballard answered the first call for volunteers, enlisting in Company C, First United States sharp shooters. This regiment was known as Burdan's Sharpshooters and was made up of companies from various States. It is well known fact that the mission of the sharpshooter keeps him constantly on the danger zone of military operations, and the First United States was no exception to this rule. The first real battle in which the regiment participated was at Yorktown and later Williamsburg. From here they went to White House Landing, where Mr. Ballard was stricken with fever and sent to the hospital at Yorktown and later Portsmouth, R. I.

He returned to his regiment just after the second battle of Bull Run and joined it at Alexandria, Va. He was at the battles of Antietam, Blackman's Ford, Manassas Gap and Fredericksburg. They shortly afterwards went into winter quarters at Brandy Station, and in the following spring participated in the battle of Chancellorsville, which was one of the hardest fought battles of the war. Lee then made his famous invasion of Pennsylvania and the First United States was one of the hundreds of regiments that met the flower of the Confederacy at Gettysburg, and the world knows what happened. During this battle Mr. Ballard was with his regiment in the peach orchard fight; also at Little Round Top, where he was under the cover of the Union guns and watched the great charge of Pickett as his columns swept across the field to destruction.

He participated in the skirmishing with Lee's retreating army and was at the engagements at Wappin Heights, Auburn, Kelley's Ford, Locust Grove and Mill Run. They then went into winter quarters near Culpeper, Va., remaining here until spring, when General Grant took command, and during the campaigns of that season he was in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, North Ann and Cold Harbor. The Union army then made a flank movement across the peninsula and here fought Lee's army in front of Petersburg for thirty or forty days in an effort to capture the Weldon railroad and thus cut off Lee's supplies. They also took part in the fight at Deep Bottom on the James river. His regiment was in other skirmishes too numerous to mention, and on August 20, 1864, he was honorably discharged from the United States service.