The new unit was organized Sunday, May 8, at Camp Dennison (Cincinnati, Ohio) with 838 men under the command of Colonel Harley H. Sage for one hundred days' service.
On June 29, it went into an entrenched camp at Norfolk, where it remained until July 27 as a part of the Army of the James.
Volunteers, and two sections of the 8th New York Independent Battery) left Norfolk for Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
The troops marched the forty miles or so south to Elizabeth City to capture horses, cotton, tobacco and other contraband.
The remaining 80 active men of Company H ranged in age from a 15-year-old boy (the musician) to a 44-year-old sergeant.