Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Major Charles H. Beeres of Aurora, Illinois
Major Charles H. Beeres is one of those Civil War figures whose story begins with a problem of spelling. In the Official Records of the Union and Confederate armies, the officer tied to the 16th Illinois Cavalry and the Jonesville operation appears as Charles H. Beeres. In Illinois roster material, he appears as Charles H. Beers, a major from Aurora who mustered on June 10, 1863, and resigned on June 28, 1865. The matching rank, regiment, service dates, and military context make it almost certain that Beeres and Beers were the same man.
That spelling issue is more than a small clerical problem. It explains why Beeres can be difficult to follow across the record. His personal biography is thin in the easily available sources, but his military service appears clearly at several important points. He was an Illinois cavalry officer whose wartime trail ran through Kentucky, Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia, placing him in the middle of the Appalachian border war around Cumberland Gap.
From Aurora into the 16th Illinois Cavalry
The strongest state record identifies him as Charles H. Beers of Aurora, Illinois. The roster of field and staff officers for the 16th Illinois Cavalry lists him as major, with June 10, 1863, as both his date of rank and muster. It also records that he resigned June 28, 1865, near the end of the war.
The 16th Illinois Cavalry was not a quiet home-guard regiment. It entered service during a period when the Union army needed mounted troops for scouting, garrison duty, communication, pursuit, and counter-guerrilla work across the western and border theaters. By late 1863, part of the regiment was tied to the Union occupation of Cumberland Gap, the mountain pass that had been fought over since the beginning of the war.
For Beeres, that assignment brought him into the Appalachian war. He was not an Appalachian by residence, at least not in the Illinois roster, but his place in history is tied to a rugged military corridor where Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee met. His command was asked to operate in a country of narrow valleys, rough roads, divided loyalties, and hard winter marches.
Cumberland Gap and Mountain Duty
Cumberland Gap was one of the most important mountain passes in the Civil War. It connected military movement between Kentucky, East Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. When Union troops held the Gap, they had a foothold at the edge of Confederate-held country. When Confederate forces threatened it, Union commanders had to watch the roads and valleys that led toward the pass.
The National Park Service biography of Paul Vandervoort, a soldier in Company M of the 16th Illinois Cavalry, helps place Beeres in that setting. It states that Vandervoort’s battalion, under Major Charles H. Beeres, was assigned the important duty of garrisoning Cumberland Gap after the regiment moved through Camp Nelson and toward the mountain region. The same account describes the weeks that followed as hard mountain service that tested men and animals alike.
This is the Beeres story that matters for Appalachian history. He was not simply a name attached to a battle. He was a cavalry major responsible for men in one of the most difficult military landscapes of the war. His battalion had to guard a strategic pass, scout into enemy country, and respond to Confederate movement in Powell Valley and Lee County.
The Officer Sent Toward Jonesville
In early January 1864, Confederate Brigadier General William E. “Grumble” Jones moved toward the Cumberland Gap region with a mounted force. Union commanders learned that Confederate troops were active near Jonesville, the county seat of Lee County, Virginia. Major Beeres was ordered forward with his battalion of the 16th Illinois Cavalry and artillery support.
This is where Beeres usually enters the historical record most clearly, but the focus should stay on him as an officer rather than on the battle alone. The order to Jonesville shows the trust placed in him. He was sent ahead of the main Union position with a detached force, operating in hostile country, during winter, against an enemy whose full strength was not yet known.
The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies summarizes the situation by noting that Union commanders at Cumberland Gap sent the 16th Illinois Cavalry, under Major Charles H. Beeres, to locate the Confederate force. Beeres entered Jonesville on January 2, 1864, and drove out Confederate cavalry under Auburn L. Pridemore before camping in the area.
Command in a Dangerous Position
The Dickinson-Milbourn House nomination gives a useful picture of the ground around Beeres’s command. The house stood near the western limits of Jonesville, the county seat of Lee County, on a hill overlooking what is now U.S. Route 58. The nomination states that Beeres’s force consisted of more than three hundred troopers of the 16th Illinois Cavalry and three guns from the 22nd Ohio Battery. It places most of his command near the Dickinson-Milbourn property, with a smaller force posted toward the eastern end of town.
As an officer, Beeres faced a classic cavalry problem. He had enough men to probe, occupy, and hold for a short time, but not enough to withstand a much larger Confederate movement if one closed around him. His men had artillery, but artillery could also slow movement and become a prize if the command was cut off.
Confederate forces did close around him. Jones attacked from the west on January 3, while Pridemore’s men threatened from the east. The result was not just a sudden defeat. It was a long fight in which Beeres’s command tried to recover from surprise, use the buildings and ground for cover, and resist until ammunition and position gave out.
The Defeat That Followed Him
Jonesville became the defining episode of Beeres’s wartime reputation. The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies states that the Confederates captured 383 Union soldiers, three artillery pieces, and twenty-seven wagons. The same account notes that Beeres eventually surrendered after being caught between Jones to the west and Pridemore to the east.
For an officer, that kind of defeat could easily become the only thing later writers remembered. Yet the record does not show Beeres as a man who simply collapsed at first contact. Even Confederate and later summaries describe a command that fought through the day before surrendering. The better reading is that Beeres had been placed in a dangerous forward position, encountered a larger Confederate movement, and was trapped in the winter geography of Lee County.
John McElroy, who served as a private in Company L of the 16th Illinois Cavalry and later wrote Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, gives the enlisted man’s view of the expedition. McElroy wrote that Major C. H. Beer’s third battalion, four companies of about seventy-five men each, was sent into Powell Valley to drive out Confederates and open the valley for Union foraging teams. His spelling differs again, but the military context is the same.
McElroy’s account is important because it shows Beeres through the eyes of the men who marched under him. It is a postwar memoir and should be read carefully, but it helps explain what the official reports cannot fully show. To the soldiers in the ranks, the Jonesville operation was not a neat line in a report. It was a cold expedition into enemy country that ended in capture and imprisonment.
Prisoners, Memory, and Responsibility
The capture of Beeres’s command had consequences far beyond the field at Jonesville. Many of the men taken with him entered the Confederate prison system. The National Park Service account of Paul Vandervoort states that Vandervoort was one of the prisoners captured after Beeres’s force was surrounded, and that he was later held at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby Prison. It also notes that nineteen troopers of Company M died in Confederate prisoner-of-war camps.
That aftermath shaped how the event was remembered. For Confederate reports, Jonesville was a success that brought prisoners, guns, and wagons. For Union soldiers and families, it became the beginning of prison suffering. For Beeres, it became the episode most likely to appear beside his name.
This is why a Beeres-focused article should not retell Jonesville as if the battle itself is the subject. The more useful question is what Jonesville reveals about him. It shows him as a field officer caught in the hard reality of Appalachian cavalry warfare. It also shows how one decision, one order, and one winter day could define a man’s historical footprint.
Beeres After Jonesville
Beeres did not vanish from the military record after Jonesville. Later Official Records order-of-battle material lists the 16th Illinois Cavalry under Major Charles H. Beeres in the Cavalry Corps, Sixth Division, First Brigade. One listing places the regiment under Brigadier General Richard W. Johnson’s Sixth Division and Colonel Horace Capron’s First Brigade.
That later appearance matters. It shows that the Jonesville defeat did not remove Beeres from the army’s rolls or erase his command identity. The Illinois roster records that he remained in service until his resignation on June 28, 1865.
The available public record still leaves many personal questions unanswered. It does not give, from the strongest military sources, a full portrait of Beeres’s early life, family, postwar career, or personal reflections on Jonesville. What it does give is a soldier’s outline. He was a major from Aurora in the 16th Illinois Cavalry, he served in the Cumberland Gap region, he commanded the battalion captured at Jonesville, and he remained connected to the regiment until near the end of the war.
Why Beeres Belongs in Appalachian History
Major Charles H. Beeres belongs in Appalachian history because his story crosses into the region at one of its most contested Civil War gateways. Cumberland Gap was not just a landmark. It was a military hinge between Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Lee County was not just the site of an isolated cavalry fight. It was part of the same borderland where local Confederate units, Union garrisons, mountain roads, and divided communities shaped the war.
Beeres’s story also reminds us that Appalachian history is not only the story of people born in Appalachia. Sometimes it is the story of outsiders whose lives were changed by the region’s terrain and conflicts. Illinois cavalrymen came into Powell Valley because the war made the mountains strategically necessary. Some left as prisoners. Some died far from the valley where they were captured. Their officer’s name survived in reports, rosters, prison memoirs, and battlefield memory.
The two spellings of his name fit that larger problem. Beeres, Beers, and Beer all appear in different records and recollections. The man behind those spellings was a Union major whose Appalachian moment became the most visible part of his historical identity. To follow him is to follow the paper trail of a Civil War officer through state rosters, official reports, prisoner memory, and the mountain war around Cumberland Gap.
Sources & Further Reading
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 32, Part 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth152618/
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 45, Part 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000625514
United States Adjutant General’s Office. Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army for the Years 1861, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65. Part VI, Indiana and Illinois. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865. https://archive.org/details/cu31924092911126
Illinois Adjutant General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois. Vol. 8. Springfield: Phillips Bros., 1901. https://civilwarindex.com/armyil/rosters/16th_il_cavalry_roster.pdf
IllinoisGenWeb Project. “Roster of Field and Staff, 16th Illinois Cavalry.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://illinoisgenweb.org/civilwar/fs/cav016-fs.html
Illinois Secretary of State. Regimental and Unit Histories: Illinois Adjutant General’s Report. Springfield: Illinois State Archives. Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.ilsos.gov/content/dam/departments/archives/databases/reghist.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. Military Service Records: A Select Catalog of National Archives Microfilm Publications. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/ref-info-papers/rip109.pdf
FamilySearch. “Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Illinois.” Catalog entry. Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/92181
Edwards, David A., and John S. Salmon. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Dickinson-Milbourn House, Lee County, Virginia. Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1993. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/245-0004_Dickinson-Milbourn_House_1993_Final_Nomination.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Dickinson-Milbourn House.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/245-0004/
National Park Service. “Dickinson-Milbourn House.” National Register of Historic Places, NPGallery. Accessed May 10, 2026. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/93000825
McElroy, John. Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons. Toledo, OH: D. R. Locke, 1879. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3072/3072-h/3072-h.htm
National Park Service. “Paul Vandervoort.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/people/paul-vandervoort.htm
Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech. “Battle of Jonesville.” Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia. Accessed May 10, 2026. https://civilwar.vt.edu/programs/drivingtour/battleofjonesville.html
McKnight, Brian D. Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/116/
Civil War Index. “16th Illinois Cavalry in the American Civil War.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://civilwarindex.com/armyil/16th_il_cavalry.html
Civil War in the East. “64th Virginia Infantry Regiment.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://civilwarintheeast.com/confederate-regiments/virginia/64th-virginia-infantry-regiment/
Find a Grave. “Charles H. Beeres.” Memorial ID 97983927. Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/97983927/charles-h-beeres
My Long Hunters. “The Battle of Jonesville, 1864.” Accessed May 10, 2026. https://www.mylonghunters.info/battle-jonesville
Author Note: This article follows Major Charles H. Beeres through a difficult paper trail where federal records call him Beeres and Illinois rosters call him Beers. His story matters here not because he was from Appalachia, but because his Civil War service became tied to Cumberland Gap, Lee County, and the hard mountain war along the Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia border.