Major Niemeyer, with his command, retreated from Forrest Entrenchment, near Hall's Corner, in Western Branch, Norfolk county, on the 10th of May, 1862, the day Norfolk and Portsmouth were evacuated, which he noted in his diary, ‘The saddest day of my life,’ and marched to Suffolk. On the 11th day of May he left for Petersburg via Weldon, where he arrived on the 13th, and assumed command of the city and the Department of Appomattox for a short while. On the 22d day of May, 1862, the officers of the line assembled at Jarrett's Hotel, in Petersburg, under supervision of Major George W. Grice, Assistant Quartermaster, and elected field officers of the Sixty-first Virginia Regiment Infantry, as follows:
Lieutenant-Colonel William F. Niemeyer.
And their commissions were issued on the 15th of July, 1862, by George W. Randolph, Secretary of War, to date from the 22d day of May, 1862.
Detachments of the Sixty-first Virginia Regiment were sent from Petersburg to City Point, Port Walthall, and Point of Rocks, on the Appomattox river below the city of Petersburg.
