GLIMPSES OF THE GUARD

The People, Units, and Stories of Virginia Military Service

This website provides Commonwealth History Fund reviewers with an advance preview of Glimpses of the Guard: The People, Units, and Stories of Virginia Military Service before its scheduled opening on November 4, 2026, at the Museum of the Virginia National Guard at Waller Depot.

The site will be continually updated as exhibition texts, artifact labels, and interpretive materials are finalized. Initial artifact images are drawn from the Museum’s collection records and do not reflect final display arrangements. As installation progresses, the site will be updated with photographs of artifacts, graphics, and exhibit spaces in place. After the exhibition opens, the website will be updated with installation photographs and made publicly available to all.

Project Status

Last updated: October 14, 2026

Exhibition Development

• All “big picture” texts are drafted and being added to the website.

• All artifacts are selected.

• Artifact labels and individual “glimpse” stories are being added to the website on a rolling basis as time allows.

Artifact Preparation

• Museum Registrar is collecting the remaining artifacts from storage on October 19.

• Museum Registrar will begin installing artifacts on October 22.

Design and Installation

• Display cases were delivered from storage on October 6.
• The Science Museum of Virginia’s loaned walls are being delivered on October 16 and installed on October 19.

• All graphics and texts will be sent to printing on October 23.

• Final graphics installation to be complete no later than October 30. 

• Exhibition reception rehearsal is on October 28.

Glimpses of the Guard explores Virginia military service through the experiences of the people and units who served. From early militia companies and volunteer organizations to today’s Virginia Army National Guard and Virginia Air National Guard, the exhibition connects major events in American history to the lives of Virginians called to train, mobilize, deploy, and support their communities.

Rather than attempt to tell every part of this long history, the exhibition offers focused glimpses: a uniform, guidon, letter, photograph, personal object, or remembered moment that opens a window to a larger story. These individual experiences help explain how national and global events—including wars, mobilizations, technological change, and social transformation—affected Virginia’s Soldiers, Airmen, families, and communities.

The exhibition also examines change over time. It distinguishes among early militia service, volunteer organizations, federal military service, and the modern National Guard and Air National Guard while identifying documented connections among units where they exist. Some stories follow organizations whose lines remain in today’s Virginia Guard; others preserve the experiences of units and individuals whose service remains important even when no current Guard organization carries their lineage.

Above all, Glimpses of the Guard invites visitors to see Virginia military history not only through campaigns and dates, but through the people who served during these events.

During the Mexican–American War, the First Regiment Virginia Volunteers served far from home in northern Mexico, performing garrison and security duties that illustrate the Citizen-Soldier tradition that preceded today’s Virginia National Guard.

The Mexican American War followed disputes over Texas’ boundary after the United States annexed the Republic of Texas. From 1846 to 1848, U.S. forces invaded Mexico and captured several major cities. The war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, through which Mexico ceded a vast area of territory that included all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and other states.

Organized in Richmond in early 1847, the First Regiment Virginia Volunteers sailed two months later for Brazos Island, Texas, before continuing to northern Mexico. The regiment arrived after the major battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista, but its soldiers helped sustain the U.S. occupation that followed.

The Virginians performed garrison, security, and supply-route duties at Monterrey and Saltillo, in the region of the Buena Vista battlefield. Divided into two battalions, they guarded important towns and lines of communication while U.S. forces held northern Mexico.

Major Jubal A. Early, later a Confederate general, was one of the regiment’s officers. During the war, he served as acting governor of Monterrey and as acting inspector general of Brigadier General Caleb Cushing’s brigade.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in February 1848; ratifications were exchanged on May 30, formally ending the war. The Virginians then began their long journey home, traveling on foot, by steamship, and aboard USS Ohio by way of the West Indies. They reached Fortress Monroe at Old Point Comfort, on Hampton Roads in southeastern Virginia, in July 1848 and mustered out on August 1.

Prewar Virginia militia and volunteer companies entered Confederate service, while postwar reorganization rebuilt the Commonwealth’s state military forces and created documented organizational links to selected units in today’s Virginia National Guard.

The Civil War began after Virginia and other Southern states seceded from the United States in 1861. Virginia joined the Confederacy, and many of the Commonwealth’s established volunteer militia companies entered Confederate service as infantry, artillery, and other military organizations. Their relationships to today’s Virginia National Guard are documented through specific organizational lineages.

The 276th Engineer Battalion (First Virginia) perpetuates the broader regimental lineage of the former 1st Virginia Infantry. The 180th Engineer Support Company separately carries the lineage of the Richmond Grays, including the two Civil War companies formed from that organization.

Together, these lines show how a single prewar regiment could produce both a broader regimental continuation and distinct company-level descendants.

The Richmond Howitzers provide another example of a distinct artillery line. Before the war, the Howitzers were Company H of the 1st Regiment of Virginia Volunteers. In 1861, they left the regiment to form an artillery battalion and served in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Their lineage is documented in Battery A, 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment, Virginia Army National Guard.

The Norfolk Light Artillery Blues also followed a changing wartime path. They entered Confederate service as Company H, 16th Virginia Infantry, before becoming Captain Charles R. Grandy’s Virginia Light Artillery battery in 1862. Their later Guard lineage divided into separate branches: Battery B, 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment, and the 229th Military Police Company both trace their history to the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues.

Some Civil War-era organizations no longer serve under their historic names or in their original military roles, but their official lineage continues in today’s Virginia National Guard.

The Richmond Light Infantry Blues served as Company A, 46th Virginia Infantry, during the Civil War. After the war, the Blues reorganized and continued through a series of Virginia military organizations. In 1996, the Blues ceased to exist as a named infantry unit, but their Company M lineage was reorganized for personnel and transportation missions. Today, that lineage is carried by the 1710th Transportation Company, Virginia Army National Guard.

These histories show both continuity and change in Virginia’s citizen-soldier tradition. Prewar volunteer organizations could divide into separate wartime units, later reorganize or consolidate, and ultimately be represented by more than one modern Guard organization—or by a line no longer carried by an active unit.

When Virginia entered the Civil War in 1861, the Richmond Grays expanded from one prewar volunteer company into two related companies. Their soldiers did not serve together for the entire war. Instead, they followed two distinct paths through the Confederate Army.

The First Company, Richmond Grays initially served as Company A of the 1st Virginia Infantry before becoming Company G of the 12th Virginia Infantry. With the 12th Virginia, the company served in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign, at Second Manassas and Gettysburg, during the long siege of Petersburg, and in the final Appomattox Campaign.

The Second Company, Richmond Grays served as Company H of the 1st Virginia Infantry. It fought with that regiment at First Manassas and later in campaigns from Williamsburg through Gettysburg, followed by operations around Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign.

Although the two companies served in different regiments, both came from the original Richmond Grays. Their shared history is carried today by the Virginia Army National Guard’s 180th Engineer Company (Guard of the Commonwealth).

Virginia’s militia system had to be rebuilt after the Civil War. After Virginia was formally readmitted to representation in Congress in 1870 and federal occupation forces withdrew, the Commonwealth began rebuilding its state military establishment under the supervision of the Adjutant General. By 1871, the Commonwealth’s organized military companies were being reconstituted as the “Virginia Volunteers.”

Unlike Virginia’s earlier enrolled militia system—which legally obligated large numbers of adult men to serve periodically for local defense—the Virginia Volunteers consisted of smaller, organized volunteer companies whose members chose to join, elected or received officers, trained more regularly, acquired standardized uniforms and equipment as they were available, and operated as the Commonwealth’s primary organized military force during the late 1800s.

In 1881, a group of Union veterans in Trenton, New Jersey (known as the Grand Army of the Republic, Aaron Wilkes Post, Number 23) chartered a steamboat to attend the centennial of the British surrender at Yorktown. They wrote in advance to the Centennial organizers asking if any Confederate veterans in Richmond would be willing to meet with them. They were welcomed with such respect by the Richmond Howitzers, the Otey Battery, and the First Virginia Regiment that the Trenton veterans vowed to return bearing gifts.

After returning to Trenton, they commissioned a set of three porcelain punch bowls created by Isaac Davis and decorated by Jesse Dean with images of the capitols of Virginia and New Jersey and various emblems and insignia of the units. Once they were complete, they returned to Richmond to present them as ceremonial gifts.

For a detailed analysis of this history, see the book Craft and War: Makers, Objects and Armed Conflicts since 1850 (Bloomsbury, 2025) for Dr. Sarah Burgos’ chapter “Rose-Colored Reunion: Craft in Post-Civil War White Veteran Reconciliation.”

During the Spanish–American War, Virginia sent four volunteer infantry regiments into federal service, including the all-Black 6th Virginia Volunteers. Although Virginia’s regiments saw little or no combat, their training, deployment, and exposure to disease reveal how the Commonwealth’s state volunteer force—the predecessor to today’s Virginia National Guard—responded to a new national war.

The war began in 1898 as the United States intervened in Cuba’s war for independence from Spain. The conflict was brief, but it expanded U.S. power in the Caribbean and Pacific and led to U.S. control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

Virginia’s state volunteer forces provided 5,326 Soldiers for federal service. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiments were mustered in response to the war. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th were white regiments. The 6th Regiment was formed from two existing African American Virginia militia battalions: the 1st Battalion from Richmond, led by Major Joseph B. Johnson, and the 2nd Battalion from Petersburg, led by Major William H. Johnson. Some of their companies had first organized as early as 1870.

Virginia’s regiments did not fight in the war’s major battles. The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th remained in the United States, where they trained and performed military duties in camps in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. The 4th Virginia deployed to Cuba after the fighting with Spain had ended. Disease, rather than combat, caused most Virginia deaths connected to the war.

Among the organizations discussed here, the Richmond Light Infantry Blues have the clearest documented connection to today’s Virginia National Guard. During the Spanish–American War, the Blues served as Companies H and M of the 4th Virginia Volunteers. The Department of the Army’s official lineage record follows the Company M branch through later Virginia National Guard infantry units, including the 183d Infantry.

In 1996, the Richmond Light Infantry Blues stopped operating as a unit with that name and as an infantry company. This did not end the organization’s official history. Instead, the Virginia National Guard reorganized and renamed the Company M line for new missions: first as the 183d Personnel Service Detachment, then as the 1173d Transportation Company, and later as the 1710th Transportation Company.

Today, the 1710th Transportation Company carries forward the official organizational lineage of Company M of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues. Its Soldiers now perform transportation duties rather than infantry service, but the unit’s documented history remains connected to the Blues.

Current research has not yet verified a similar direct Virginia National Guard lineage for the other companies of the 4th Virginia Volunteers, for the 4th Regiment as a whole, or for the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiments.

[Incoming artifact photographs and labels:]

Discharge paper for Captain Clarence Wyatt, Company H, 4th Virginia Infantry, Spanish American War, 1899.
Label TBD, pending 4th VA Volunteers research.

Uniform Coat Attributed to Sergeant J. Ranson Guy
Richmond Light Infantry Blues / 4th Virginia Volunteer Infantry
1898–1899

This coat is attributed to Sergeant J. Ranson Guy of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues. Before entering federal service in 1898, the Blues served as Company B in Virginia’s state volunteer force. During the Spanish–American War, the unit became Company M, 4th Virginia Volunteer Infantry.

Company M mustered into federal service in Richmond on May 24, 1898, and mustered out in Savannah, Georgia, on April 27, 1899. The coat represents the service of a Richmond volunteer company that moved from state militia duty into the federal force raised for the war.

Company M Insignia
3rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry
Virginia Volunteers, 1898

This insignia belonged to Company M of the 3rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry, one of the local companies that made up Virginia’s state volunteer force during the Spanish–American War. Company M entered federal service on May 20, 1898, and mustered out on November 5, 1898.

Although the 3rd Virginia did not fight in the war’s major battles, its Soldiers joined thousands of Virginians called into federal service during the conflict. The insignia represents the many community-based companies that formed the Virginia Volunteers, the state military force that preceded today’s Virginia National Guard.

The service of the 6th Virginia Volunteers reveals the racial discrimination African American Soldiers faced. Virginia initially sent three white regiments in response to the first federal call for volunteers. After a second call, the state organized the 6th Virginia, but conflict over its leadership, unequal treatment, and Jim Crow conditions shaped the regiment’s experience.

The unit was mustered out in 1899, and Virginia then disbanded its Black militia organizations; no Black Soldiers served in the Virginia National Guard again until the 1960s.

In 1916, Virginia mobilized approximately 3,000 Guardsmen for duty on the Texas–Mexico border after Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Although they did not enter Mexico or fight in the Punitive Expedition, their service provided vital security and training experience just before the United States entered World War I.

In March 1916, forces led by Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. President Woodrow Wilson responded by sending Regular Army troops into northern Mexico to pursue Villa.

The federal government also mobilized National Guard units from across the country to protect the United States–Mexico border.

Virginia’s Guardsmen did not cross into Mexico. They served on the Texas side of the border during a period of raids, political instability, and military preparation.

Approximately 3,000 Virginia Guardsmen mobilized at Richmond in June 1916 and deployed to Brownsville, Texas. The force included the 1st and 2d Infantry Regiments; 1st Battalion Field Artillery; Separate Battery C; 1st Squadron Virginia Cavalry; Company A, Signal Corps; Company A, Engineers; and Field Hospital No. 1.

The border mission brought together units with different military functions. Infantry and cavalry provided security forces for a possible emergency. Artillery units maintained and trained with field guns. Engineers supported the construction and maintenance of camps and other military facilities. Signal Soldiers operated military communications, while the field hospital provided medical support.

Across the force, Virginia Guardsmen trained, guarded the border, helped maintain order, and worked to prevent arms from reaching Mexican forces.

The campaign gave many Virginia Guardsmen their first extended period of federal active-duty service. They trained in large camps, conducted field exercises that included trench warfare, and worked alongside Regular Army and National Guard units from other states.

The 1st Infantry returned to Virginia in January 1917, the 2d Infantry returned in February, and the remaining Virginia organizations returned in March. Within months, the United States entered World War I and mobilized the Guard again.

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