Press "Enter" to skip to content

Cobbs Creek was the site of a Civil War skirmish

Mathews County had a bit of a skirmish on the Piankatank River during the Civil War, according to Earl Soles of Deltaville.

A Mathews native and a member of the Mathews County Historical Society, Soles recently did some research and found Union reports concerning Mathews and the Piankatank River in the “Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the war of the Rebellion,” which are held in the National Archives.

The records he found were in Series 1, Vol. 5 of the records, titled “Operations: Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, December 7, 1861-July 31, 1865. Atlantic Blockading Squadron, April 4-July 15, 1861.”

On April 28, 1862, Lt. R.H. Wyman, commander of the Potomac Flotilla of the U.S. Navy, reported to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that on April 27, while making a “thorough examination of the Piankatank River,” his boat crew was “fired upon quite sharply from the shore in the vicinity.”

Soles said that, accordin...

To view the rest of this article, you must log in. If you do not have an account with us, please subscribe here.