Over the years I’ve (somewhat inadvertently) built a bit of a Battle of the Crater collection.  

Pieces include: several badges connected to the 56-58th Mass, all of whom lost heavily at the crater, a 29th Mass vets badge, ID’d to a Crater MoH recipient, a dug IX Corps badge that belonged to a KIA member of the 46th and a medal group to a New York officer who was shot while scouting a location for the infamous mine. 

But one piece I’ve never been able to track down is the silver badge you see pictured. Made for veterans of Mahone’s Brigade.  Mine is engraved to Joseph F. Brownley, 16th Virginia Infantry.

Joseph F Brownley enlisted in the 16th VA in 1861 at age 18.  Their early service would be garrison duty in Norfolk.  Reassigned to the Virginia Peninsula in the summer of 1862, the 16th’s first battle was at Malvern Hill. From then on, Private Brownley and the 16th would take part in nearly every major engagement of Lee’s army.  But Mahone’s Brigade is most famous for their charge at the Crater. General Mahone rallied the dazed survivors of the initial explosion and led his brigade into the breech. Pushing the federals to the Crater and saving the day for the Confederacy.  

Brownley was wounded at some point during the Petersburg Campaign (postwar documents claim it was at the Crater) and also face a court martial for straggling.  In April 1865, Brownley was captured in the retreat from Petersburg. He took the oath of allegiance in June and returned to Portsmouth. He would marry and pass away in 1889.  Brownley was a member of Mahone’s Brigade Association.  The association had multiple reunions from 1875 to Brownley’s death in 1889. Often on the anniversary of the Crater. 

Mahone’s Brigade Badge - Joseph F Brownley, 16th Virginia Infantry