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Monticello Artillery

military unit

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ17069764 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Monticello Artillery (1862–1865) was a Confederate Army artillery battery during the American Civil War. The unit was also known as: Owen's Battery, or Howell's Battery. Some post war records refer to the unit as the Drew Light Artillery because most original members were from Drew County, Arkansas.

Organization

Based on the earliest dates of enlistment, the battery was apparently "organized at Monticello, Drew County, Arkansas, on February 8, 1862." The battery is occasionally referred to as either the Drew Light Artillery or "Drew's Battery", based on the units association with Drew County, Arkansas, but these references only appear in post war pension records and other articles.

Captain James A. Owens served as commander of the battery from February 8, 1862, until his resignation on October 11, 1864, at which time Senior First Lieutenant William C. Howell assumed command. A total of 188 men served with the Monticello Artillery during the war. The vast majority of the men were from Drew County, with smaller numbers from the neighboring counties of Ashley, Bradley and Desha. In the summer of 1863, a small number of Mississippians from Chickasaw, Lowndes and Monroe counties were recruited by the Monticello Artillery.

The battery was reorganized for the war on May 15, 1862. In the first quarter of 1864, the battery was armed with five 6 pdr bronze smoothbores and one 3.3" rifle.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Monticello Artillery” as military unit. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1862, 1865, 1864, 1863—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Monticello, Artillery and military can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as military unit. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17069764. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1865, 1864 and 1863.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Monticello Artillery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.