Monday, July 21, 1997

CONFEDERATE CHARGER BURIED A CENTURY LATER

Stonewall's Little Sorrel Can Finally Rest in Honor

By Christina Nuckols
The Roanoke Times

Lt. Col. Keith Gibson looked relieved as the last mourners in their gray woolen uniforms tossed handfuls of dirt into the grave of Stonewall Jackson's beloved war horse.

As director of the Virginia Military Institute Museum, Gibson was in charge of what was quite likely the burial of the last Civil War veteran, reinterments aside.

Little Sorrel died 111 years ago, but the walnut coffin containing his remains was not lowered into the red clay on the VMI campus until Sunday afternoon.

There's always the danger of missing something when more than a century lapses between the date of death and the funeral. But Gibson was satisfied that Little Sorrel will finally be able to rest all of his bones.

"Right down to the last tooth," he said.

It was, in fact, an incisor that was almost left behind.

Little Sorrel's skeleton has been at VMI since 1948. It stood on display in a biology classroom until 1989, when it was dismantled and stored in three boxes at the museum.

During his stay in the biology department, Little Sorrel had a tendency to spit out a tooth on occasion. Usually, the stray teeth were promptly glued back onto the skull. However, three days before Sunday's interment ceremony, a retired biology professor arrived at the museum with an incisor that had never been replaced.

It was too late for emergency dental work. The rest of Little Sorrel's bones had already been cremated. So Gibson simply dropped the tooth into the coffin along with the 35 pounds of ash.

Although the horse's bones are now buried, visitors to VMI can still get a look at the famous Confederate charger. Little Sorrel's hide was mounted on a plaster of paris mold at the horse's death in 1886. The taxidermist who preserved the hide was given the skeleton as partial payment for his work.

For years, Little Sorrel's skin and bones were separated by the Mason-Dixon Line. The skeleton was on display at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, while the mounted hide remained at the Old Soldier's Home in Richmond, where Little Sorrel died.

VMI obtained both shortly after World War II. When the United Daughters of the Confederacy learned that the skeletal portion of the remains were no longer on display, they decided to pay a visit to the museum and, more particularly, to the horse.

"We petted his nose and told him he was going to be laid to rest," said Juanita Allen, president of the Virginia division of the UDC. "I felt so sorry for him that he'd never been laid to rest. Everything should be buried. It's just the Christian thing to do."

Nearly 400 people and a dozen horses attended Sunday's ceremony. Perhaps the oldest horse in attendance was 17-year-old Buddy, a member of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry. Buddy scarcely blinked during a rifle volley that lifted most people off the ground.

"He's doing good," said Buddy's owner, Jason Jenkins of Roanoke, as the grizzled horse nuzzled him on the shoulder.

Jenkins joined the cavalry unit a year ago, but his horse is a 10-year veteran of re-enactments. Like Little Sorrel, Buddy is a gentle horse with an easy gait, Jenkins said.

"He knows what to do and gives me a chance to learn what I have to do," he said.

Jenkins, now 22, was diagnosed with cancer as a child. Although the disease has been in remission for years, it kept him out of school frequently and got in the way of making friends, said Jason's mother, Linda.

"This has been the very best thing that has happened to him," she said.

George Moore, chairman of the U.S. Cavalry Association's memorial mounted unit, came all the way from Brooksville, Fla., with his horse, Sam's Blazing Star.

Moore, a tall man with a familiar bushy beard, drew stares throughout the burial ceremony. The feeling that Jackson himself was present for the occasion only increased when Moore's brown steed began twirling and prancing as a drum and fife corps played a military tune. Little Sorrel himself was known to dance to military music even after the aging horse's legs were so stiff he couldn't bend them.

Moore dismounted to say a prayer and leave two horseshoes on the grave of Little Sorrel.

"So that he'll always be shod everywhere that he goes," he explained.