Ron --

Your brigade assignment is correct, but during most of that period this command was known as Ketchum's Alabama Battery. James Garrity became captain after Ketchum resigned on Dec. 10, 1862. During the 1850s the Alabama State Artillery was the only active Alabama artillery command, participating in competitions with the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. They dressed in Revolutionary War-style uniforms and were known in Mobile as the Continental Artillery, or the Continentals.

An Irish immigrant from New York, James Garrity operated a small bookstore in Mobile before the war.