Spartan Band diarist William H. Hill celebrated his thirtieth birthday on Monday, Sept. 7, 1863. It was a clear and warm day and he spent it pleasantly enough.

That evening, however, the 13th Regiment received orders to “cook 3 days of rations…and be ready to move at daylight in the morning.”

“We are to march very early,” 17th Mississippi diarist Robert A. Moore wrote. “Many are the conjectures as to where we will go.”

Humphreys’ Brigade broke camp the next morning in a warm, heavy fog. Hill recorded that they marched twenty miles, crossing the North Ana at the Davenport Birdge, and the Virginia Central Railroad at Beaver Dam Station. They camped beside the tracks of the Central Virginia R.R. five miles from Beaver Dam Station on the road to Hanover Junction.

“We were expecting to get on the cars at Bever Dam Station,” Moore wrote, “but will have to march through to the Junction.”

“It has become well settled with the souldiers” Moore concluded, that Humphreys Brigade was leaving Virginia again, this time bound for Chattanooga, Tennessee.