DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Fayette County, in the year 1861, a man named Edmund Creuzbaur looked out at a landscape he'd adopted as his own and decided it needed some artillery. Creuzbaur wasn't just any man with a fondness for cannons — he was a former Prussian artillery officer, and when a Prussian artillery officer organizes a battery, you get organized.
Around 150 men answered the call. Four cannons. Seventy-two horses and thirty-nine mules.
All of it pulled together right there in Fayette County. They'd come to call them the Big Guns of Fayette, and friends, that name was not accidental. The battery served as both light and heavy field artillery — a useful combination, that — at Fort Brown, at Sabine Pass, and at other points scattered across Texas and Louisiana.
They covered ground, and they covered it with iron. But if you want the moment the legend got its teeth, you're looking for Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana, May of 1864. Two Union gunboats on the water.
The battery opened up, and what happened next unfolded over seventy-five minutes that nobody present ever forgot. When the smoke cleared, one of those ships had been hit sixty-five times. Sixty-five.
One Union gunboat, sixty-five hits, in a fight that lasted barely more than an hour. Both vessels were captured. The cost was real, though — Wm.
Kneip was killed in that fight, and of the men who were wounded, three more died afterward. You don't walk away from Calcasieu Pass without counting what it cost. Not long after that engagement, Captain Creuzbaur resigned his command.
And the man who stepped into his place was Captain Charles Welhausen — Creuzbaur's own brother-in-law. The Big Guns of Fayette didn't go quiet. They just changed hands within the family.
What the marker says
Organized in Fayette County, 1861, by Edmund Creuzbaur, a former Prussian artillery officer, and composed of around 150 men, 4 cannons, 72 horses, 39 mules. It served as both light and heavy field artillery at Fort Brown, Sabine Pass and other points in Texas and Louisiana. The unit at Calcasieu Pass, La., May 1864, attacked and captured two Union gunboats. In the 75-minute fight, one ship was hit 65 times; Wm. Kneip was killed; of the wounded, three later died. Capt. Creuzbaur soon after resigned and his brother-in-law, Capt. Charles Welhausen, assumed the command. (1965)