Flags of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"), Part 1: Banner of the Petersburg City Guard, Company A

Caption:  Flag of the Petersburg City Guard, Company A, 12th Virginia Infantry

Credit:  Virginia Historical Society

Captain John Pegram May, an attorney, raised the Petersburg City Guard in 1852.  The company formed part of the 39th Regiment, Virginia State Militia, at the time of John Brown’s raid.  The City Guard served in the security detail at Charles Town, Virginia, for Brown's hanging on December 2, 1859.  The company departed Petersburg for Norfolk with the rest of the Petersburg Battalion on April 20, 1861.  The Petersburg Battalion was the nucleus of the 12th Virginia Infantry, which became known as "the Petersburg Regiment" because most of its companies came from Petersburg.  Over the course of the Civil War, four of May's brothers joined the City Guard.  Captain May, elected the regiment's major in May 1862, perished at Second Manassas on August 30, 1862.  Two of his brothers were wounded there, one mortally and the other so seriously that he was disabled.  Another brother who joined the company later was mortally wounded at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864.  The last brother with the company was captured on June 6, 1864 at Cold Harbor, but after his exchange surrendered at Appomattox.  The casualties among this relatively wealthy family (three dead, one disabled, another captured out of five) contradict the opinion of some that it was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight.