Please Be on the Lookout for Letters from Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey or his Brothers

If anyone knows where letters of Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey or his brothers Isadore and Camille are located, please let me know.

Currently I'm at work on an article that will contain the little we know about one of the War of the Rebellion's most remarkable officers, Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey.  His brief career provides the only instance in the Confederate States Army of a promotion from captain to brigadier general.  His death at the age of 27 before the Confederate Senate could confirm that promotion deprived the Army of Northern Virginia of his sorely needed leadership.  His outstanding achievements have attracted relatively little attention.  Though he had ties with Georgia, he joined what became an entirely Georgia brigade from a Louisiana unit and served in the Georgia brigade as a staff officer rather than a line officer except for less than two weeks before his death.  Line officers misallocated or disputed credit for some of his most remarkable exploits.  Evidence exists that Girardey, and not the brave but ailing Brig. Gen. Ambrose Ransom "Rans" Wright, led Wright's brigade to the top of Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863.

Victor Jean-Baptiste Girardey

Credit:  Francis Trevelyan Miller and Robert S. Lanier, The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols.) (New York, 1910), 10:157.

Girardey left letters.  At least one of them was auctioned off by Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas, February 20-21, 2006, with The Henry E. Luhrs Collection of Important Manuscripts & Historical Autographs, Manuscripts, and Rare Books.  The letter concerns the battle of the Crater, where Girardey earned his unique promotion by his timing of the Confederate counterattack.  A catalogue of the auction is listed as available on Amazon but the listing is in error and the catalogue is unavailable, as I learned when I tried to purchase a copy.

Map by Hampton Newsome

Gierardey has figured in all my books.  His activity at the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21-23, 1864) figures in my work-in-progress, Grant Lays Siege to Lee:  Petersburg, June 18-July 1, 1864.  His leadership at the battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864) plays a role in The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War:  A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  His death  in The Siege of Petersburg:  The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The current draft of my article on Girardey runs to about 4,000 words, including notes.  If anyone knows of where more of his or his brothers' letters are located, please let me know.  Isadore lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Camille in New Orleans, Louisiana.