On the Road to Atlanta: Hooker at Kolb’s Farm, June 22, 1864.

After deploying just west of the Valentine Kolb Farm, General Knipe sent forward the 425 officers and men of the 123rd New York to skirmish alongside Colonel Gallup’s 14th Kentucky. Both regiments were soon engaged in the timber to the east.[1]
Gallup’s orders were to “ascertain if the enemy [is] in force in our front,” and if so, “assume the defensive [and] hold my position as long as possible.” Gallup pushed east, initially facing skirmishers of Ferguson’s combined Alabama and Mississippi brigade. They soon found enemy infantry, capturing about 30 Rebel skirmishers from the 58th and 60th North Carolina of Col. Robert Trigg’s (formerly A. W. Reynolds’s) Brigade in Stevenson’s Division. Subsequently, as they neared Mt. Zion Church, Gallup’s men discovered “a heavy force of the enemy in line of battle” about 800 yards farther on. Gallup halted, sending word back to Strickland and General Hascall, who in turn relayed that news to Hooker.[2]
Though General Alpheus Williams admired “impetuous Joseph, surnamed Hooker,” he also found his corps commander alarming. “He is not so reckless of his men as the world thinks but is exceedingly reckless of his own safety. You will always find him in the front [where] he sometimes drags us division commanders a little farther on to the advance picket or beyond than we would think it judicious to go.” That was the case now. At 3:00 p.m., “hearing . . . rumors of an attack,” Williams rode forward to the Kolb farmyard, where he found Hooker, who had just come from Hascall. The XX Corps commander immediately ordered Williams “to deploy my division in one line and throw up breastworks without delay. . . . The whole of Hood’s Corps . . advancing to attack us.”[3]
[1]Dennis Kelly Maps, “The Battlefields of Kennesaw Mountain and Kolb’s Farm, Georgia,” KMNBP; Bauer, Soldiering, The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull, 129. The 123rd New York numbered 443 officers and men on June 1st, suffering ten casualties for the month prior to June 21st. See OR 38, pt. 2, 49.
[2]OR 38, pt. 2, 655.
[3]OR 38, pt. 2, 31; Quiafe, From the Cannon’s Mouth, 334.