Catching Dogs and Hogs During the “Dog Days” of Summer (Charleston, South Carolina, 1865)

Meeting and Broad Streets near Line Street in Charleston, South Carolina, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in the distance (U.S. Navy, circa 1863-1865, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

There is no disputing that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had a long and storied history. Formed on August 5, 1861, the regiment not only served for the entire duration of the American Civil War; it continued its service to the nation for more than eight months after the end of that terrible conflict, becoming the only regiment from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana before it participated in Major-General Philip Sheridan’s tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia during the fall of 1864 and helped defend Washington, D.C. in the wake of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865.

As those war years unfolded, newspapers from Easton to Pittsburgh published updates on the regiment’s travels, along with excerpts from letters penned by its baby-faced recruits and wizened warriors. One of the more unusual news items was reported during the 47th Pennsylvania’s final months of service—while it was stationed in the Deep South of the United States of America during the early days of Reconstruction, following the end of the American Civil War. Assigned to keep the peace in the first state that had seceded from the Union, members of the regiment lived and primarily worked in Charleston, South Carolina, where they performed a wide range of provost (civil governance)-related tasks, including the prevention and prosecution of crimes against civilians and the re-establishment of newspaper publishing operations.

The Line Street area of Charleston, South Carolina, where a public pound was established in July 1865 to improve animal control and public safety (Thomas Fetters, The Charleston & Hamburg, public domain; click to enlarge).

During the summer of 1865, that “to do” list was expanded to include the “policing” of the city’s furrier denizens. According to The Charleston Daily Courier, Sergeant George Nichols (alternate surname spelling: “Nicholas”) of the 47th Pennsylvania’s E Company was ordered to supervise the operations of a new animal pound that had been established on Line Street in Charleston, “between Coming and Percy streets”:

Headquarters,
Charleston, S.C. July 20, 1865
[GENERAL ORDERS, No. 64.]

I. A POUND IS HEREBY ESTABLISHED ON LINE-STREET, between Coming and Percy-streets, and Sergeant GEO. NICHOLAS, Co. “E,” 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, temporarily detailed as pound-keeper.

II. Hereafter all cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and dogs found running at large in the City South of Line-street, shall be taken to the public pound and there detained until the penalty prescribed by this Order, together with the charges of the pound-keeper and the actual expense of maintaining said animals while in the pound, shall be paid.

The penalties for each violation of this Order to be as follows:

Cattle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5.00 per head
Sheep, goats, hogs and dogs . . . . . . . $1.00

The amount to be turned into the City Treasury.

III. All animals, except dogs, remaining in the public pound for the space of six (6) days without being claimed and the penalties and charges therefor [sic] paid, shall be sold at public sale by the pound-keeper. The proceeds to be turned over to the owner of such animals, after deducting the fines and pound fees.

All dogs remaining unclaimed for the space of one week shall be shot.

The Provost Marshal and Chief of Military Police are charged with the execution of this Order.

By order Bt. Brig. Gen. W. T. BENNETT, Com’dg Post.
CHARLES G. CHIPMAN,
Capt. 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, A. A. D. C.
OFFICIAL: THOS. F. LAMBERT, 2d Lieut. 47th Pa. Vols., A. A. D. C.
July 21

The Confederate Steamer, Governor Milton, that was captured by Companies E and K, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, October 1862 (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, public domain).

By the time that he had received this duty assignment in 1865, Sergeant Nichols had already amassed a distinguished service history. In early October 1862, while still just a corporal, he was placed in charge of the Governor Milton, a Confederate steamship that had been captured by a detachment of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers as part of Union Army and Navy operations related to the capture of Saint John’s Bluff, Florida. He later preserved his memories of that day’s events with this diary entry:

“At 9 PM … October 7, discovered the steamer Gov. Milton in a small creek, 2 miles above Hawkinsville; boarded her in a small boat, and found that she had been run in there but a short time before, as her fires were not yet out. Her engineer and mate, then in charge, were asleep on board at the time of her capture. They informed us that owing to the weakness of the steamer’s boiler we found her where we did. We returned our prize the next day…..

I commanded one of the Small Boats that whent [sic] in after her. I was Boatman and gave orders when the headman jumped on Bord [sic] take the Painter with him. That however belongs to Wm. Adams or Jacob Kerkendall [sic]. It was So dark I could not tell witch [sic] Struck the deck first. But when I Struck the deck I demanded the Surrend [sic] of the Boat in the name of the U.S. after we had the boat an offercier [sic] off the Paul Jones, a Gun Boat was with us he ask me how Soon could I move her out in the Stream I said five minuts [sic]. So an Engineer one of coulered [sic] Men helped me. and I will Say right hear [sic] he learned Me More than I ever knowed about Engineering. Where we Started down the River we was one hundred and twenty five miles up the river. When we Stopped at Polatkey [Palatka] to get wood for the Steamer I whent [sic] out and Borrowed a half of a deer that hung up in a cut house and a bee hive for some honey for the Boys. I never forget the boys.’”

When the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers made their way back to their respective troop transports near Saint John’s Bluff, the captured steamer was left behind to enable a group of Union soldiers to repair its boiler. Overseeing those repairs was none other than Corporal Nichols, who had been temporarily detached from the 47th Pennsylvania’s E Company. Adding to his diary, he wrote:

“So hear [sic] we are at Jacksonville and off we go down the river again, and the Captain Yard Said you are detailed on detached duty as Engineer well that beats hell. I told him I did not Enlist for an Engineer. well I cannot help it he said. I got orders for you to stay hear [sic]. When the Boys was gone about a week orders came for us to come to Beaufort, S. Carolina by the inland rout over the Museley Mash Rout. So I Borrowed a twelve pound gun with amanition [sic] for to Protect our Selves with. But I only used it once to clear Some cavelry [sic] away. We Passed fort Palask [sic]. But that was in our Possession and we got Back to Beaufort all right. and I whent [sic] up to See the Boys and Beged [sic] captain to get me Back in the company, But he could not make it go.”

After completing his detached duty, Corporal Nichols was reunited with his regiment at its duty station in Beaufort, South Carolina that same October of 1862. He then went on to serve with the regiment for the remainder of its service to the nation, finally mustering out with his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day of 1865. An engineer with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad following the war, he died from pneumonia at the age of seventy at his home in Phillipsburg, New Jersey on March 2, 1908, and was laid to rest at the Phillipsburg Cemetery.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“General Orders, No. 64” (establishment and staffing of a public pound in Charleston, South Carolina). Charleston, South Carolina: The Charleston Daily Courier, 21 July 1865, p. 2.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

April 17, 1865: A Nation in Mourning Begins to Move Forward

Apr17

Andrew Johnson, photographed by Matthew Brady sometime between 1860 and 1875, was sworn in as president of the United States on April 15, 1865 (Matthew Brady Collection, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, is now President of the United States. The mysterious purposes of Divine Providence, far beyond the extremest perception of man’s mere judgment, in shaping the ends his wisdom deems to be wisest for our chastisement or in promoting our good, will chasten us while humbling us in the dust in the bereavement the People have sustained through that most wicked act, the bold and daring assassination of the President of the United States. Such an act of perfidy and atrocity has no parallel in the annals of deep and damning crime. The world will stand aghast in horror and detestation of the brutal murder, when the terrible tidings will have reached earth’s remotest extremity.

— The Constitutional Union newspaper, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Monday, April 17, 1865

That opening paragraph of Philadelphia’s Constitutional Union article, “The New President,” illustrates both the State of the Union and the state of mind of the average American during the first days after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln—the collective and individual states of bewilderment and grief while looking back and reflecting on Lincoln’s life and death while also worrying about what the future held as a new leader was introduced to the nation.

That new leader—President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), who had been quietly sworn in as the seventeenth president of the United States on the same day that Lincoln died—April 15, 1865—had worked his way up from an early-career job as mayor of a local town in Tennessee to a later-life election to the United States Senate, becoming the only senator from America’s Deep South to remain in service with the Senate when southern states began their secession from the Union in December 1860. Subsequently appointed by Lincoln as Tennessee’s military governor in March 1862, he had then been placed on the Republican ticket as Lincoln’s running mate during the pivotal presidential election of November 1864, and had been sworn in as the nation’s vice president in March 1865—just forty-two days before he succeeded Lincoln.

Like Lincoln and Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward, Andrew Johnson had also been the target of the assassination conspiracy that unfolded on April 14, 1865. But Johnson was luckier. George Atzerodt, the man who had been assigned to assassinate him, changed his mind as he reached Kirkwood House, the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel where Johnson lived, and, instead, left Washington, D.C., hoping to evade capture.

Shortly before sunrise, while still the sitting vice president, Johnson visited the unconscious, dying president at his bedside at the Petersen House, spent a few moments consoling Lincoln’s family, and then walked the short distance back to his residence to prepare for the possibility of being sworn in as the nation’s next president.

Depiction of Andrew Johnson being sworn as the seventeenth president of the United States, April 15, 1865. The ceremony, attended by only a handful of senior government officials, was a subdued affair due to the death earlier that day of President Lincoln. It was held at Kirkwood House in Washington, D.C., where Johnson had resided since his inauguration as vice president forty-two days earlier (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 6, 1866).

Less than four hours after Lincoln’s death, Johnson was administered the Oath of Office by Chief Justice Salmon Chase of the United States Supreme Court, as several members of Lincoln’s former cabinet and Johnson’s former fellow senators looked on:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

After speaking those words, President Andrew Johnson told the small group:

The duties of the office are mine; I will perform them—the consequences are with God. Gentlemen, I shall lean upon you; I feel I shall need your support. I am deeply impressed with the solemnity of the occasion and the responsibilities of the duties of the office I am assuming.

It was at that moment, during the morning of April 15, 1865, that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry entered its tenure of Reconstruction Era service under a new commander-in-chief.

Members of the regiment began that new phase of duty with heavy hearts and hope for a brighter day, according to C Company’s Henry Wharton. Writing to the editor of his hometown newspaper, the Sunbury American, from an unidentified “Camp Near Washington, D.C.” on April 24, Wharton mused:

It is true we have sustained a great loss in the death of our much beloved President, but as it has pleased Divine Power to remove him from our midst, we should be thankful that He has given us such a great and determined man in his stead (Andrew Johnson) to drive on the machinery of the Government. It was a wise thing in the framers of the Constitution when they put in that clause, where if we lose our President the wheels of the Government can never be stopped. This is done by the Vice President, a plain unpretending citizen, on the death of the Chief Magistrate, stepping forward so to take the oath administered by the Chief Justice, and at once takes the responsibility of the office. No flourish of trumpets, nor convulsion of nations, but by the simple power vested in a Judge, a fellow citizen assumes power. This little fact proves that our Republic can never die.

I cannot describe to you the feeling of the army when the news reached us that Abraham Lincoln had been murdered by the assassin. I will not attempt it, for in doing so, I would work myself into a state to make me miserable. One thing – if the boys had gone into a fight that morning no prisoners would have been taken – no quarters given.

In Washington, the train containing the remains of our late President, passed us near the Annapolis Junction. There was [sic, were] nine cars heavily draped in mourning. Our train stopped on a siding. It was a solemn time. The men all uncovered in respect, and stout men wept as the last of him they loved, passed them, to be conveyed to its resting place. Along the whole route, houses were draped in mourning, and the American flag hung at half mast [sic, half-mast] with mourning. This showed the deep hold Mr. Lincoln had in the hearts of our people.

Sources:

“Andrew Johnson’s Inauguration.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Park Service, retrieved online April 17, 1865.
“Andrew Johnson: The 17th President of the United States.” Washington, D.C.: The White House, retrieved online April 17, 1865.
“The New President” (announcement of President Andrew Johnson’s recent inauguration). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Constitutional Union, April 17, 1865.
“The Swearing in of Andrew Johnson.” Washington, D.C.: Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC) and the United States Senate, retrieved online April 17, 1865.
Wharton, Henry. Letters from the Sunbury Guards, 1861-1868. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American.

No Way to Treat a Widow: A Look at the U.S. Civil War Pension Battles Waged by Widows of Union Army Soldiers

Mar31

This image of Julia (Kuenher) Minnich, circa 1860s, is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.

Prove to us you were married to that soldier.

Prove to us that the children you claim to be his were actually fathered by that soldier.

Prove to us that you stayed faithful to that soldier by remaining a widow for the remainder of your life—depriving yourself of warmth, comfort and love, even though you were in your early twenties when he widowed you.

Those heartbreaking words exemplify the bureaucratic nightmares endured by many widows of Union Army soldiers as they battled with insensitive and sometimes surprisingly judgmental officials from the United States Department of the Interior to obtain U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pensions—the American Civil War-era form of general assistance that held the potential to help them keep rooves over the heads of their children as they struggled to adjust to their new roles as single mothers.

A closer look at the Civil War Widows’ Pension files of multiple women who were widowed when their soldier-husbands died while serving with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between 1861 and 1865 reveals that the quests of many of these women were bewildering, exasperating, heartbreaking, and long.

A Widow, Mother and a Civil War Nurse

At the time of her husband’s death in combat, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich was residing with the couple’s young son, George, at the family’s home in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Just two weeks after receiving word that her husband was dead, she was forced to put her grief aside, and move forward.

Appearing before a Lehigh County justice of the peace on November 3, 1864, Julia declared that she was the twenty-seven-year-old widow of Edwin G. Minnich, who had been the captain of Company B, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry when he was killed “whilst in the service of the United States and in the line of duty” during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864.

Juliann (Kuehner) Minnich’s 1864 Affidavit for Her Initial U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension, p. 1 (U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Required by federal and state officials to prove that she had actually been married to Edwin Minnich—a distressing procedure that would have felt disrespectful to any grieving wife whose husband had been killed in combat, she subsequently furnished a series of affidavits which stated and re-stated that her maiden name before marriage was “Juliann Kuehner,” that she had been united in marriage with Edwin G. Minnich on March 23, 1856 by the Rev. Daniel Zeller at the German Reformed Church in Allentown, and that she had one surviving child from the marriage, George E. Minnich, who had been born on May 15, 1857 and was under the age of 16—making him eligible for U.S. Civil War Pension support. She also noted for the record that there had been “no public or private record” of her marriage.

The Rev. Daniel Zeller backed up her testimony by providing his own affidavit in which he attested to the date of her wedding ceremony, as did Minnich family friends John D. Lawall and William H. Blumer, the president of the First National Bank of Allentown and a brother to Jacob A. Blumer, a bank cashier who was later appointed as the guardian of Julia’s minor son, George. All four men swore under oath that they had known Julia and her husband for more than five years and confirmed that the statements she had made in her affidavits were true.

Despite this evidence, no decision was made regarding Julia’s eligibility for a pension award; as a result, she was forced to find other ways to support herself and her young son, including serving as a Civil War nurse for the Union Army.

Finally awarded a U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension of twenty dollars per month on July 21, 1865, Julia (Kuehner) Minnich found herself in the position that many low-income women experience after struggling for months to make ends meet—having to build back her savings after digging herself out of a financial hole. In 1866, she made the difficult decision to send her son away to boarding school at the Home for Friendless Children for the City and County of Lancaster—one of the first privately run orphanages to receive funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to care for children who had lost one or both parents during the Civil War.

Seeking greater stability, she then remarried—to William Ruston, a native of England and employee of the Jordan Mill in Allentown—an act that would cause her greater hardship in the long run when her U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension was cancelled by federal government officials due to her remarriage and again when her second husband deserted her during the mid-1870s.

Forced to settle for work as a household servant in Philadelphia by 1880, she then remarried for a third time in 1887—to Charles Magill, who then also widowed her two weeks before Christmas in 1889.

Julia (Minnich) Magill’s June 3, 1896 Attestation Re: her 1863-1864 U.S. Civil War Nursing Service at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida (U.S. Civil War Nurses’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Soldiering on in the face of adversity, she felt a renewed sense of hope when the United States Congress approved a pension program for Civil War nurses on August 5, 1892. Applying for aid on March 4, 1896, she cited her 1865 nursing service with the Medical Department of the U.S. Volunteers at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. She then added, via a letter penned on her behalf, that she had also performed nursing duties for the Union Army at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida:

Bureau of Pensions
Dear Sir,

I served as Supt. Of Diet Kitchen in Key West – Florida from Dec. 1863 and remained there until Feb. 1864 in the 47th Pa. Regt. My husband was killed – Capt. Minnich on the 19th of October 1864 and it was after this that my service was rendered in Harewood Hospital. Harry Veand 47th Reg. Com. B Pa. Regt. if living could testify to my duty at Key West Fla. He is possibly living at Allentown Pa. If you could assist me in finding him he would remember me being at that place.

Julia Magill
her mark
No. 1314 Vienna St.
Phila Pa

Camelia Hancock [sic, possibly Cornelia Hancock]
witness to her mark

But that 1890s application process proved to be another difficult one. When her attorney advised her that pension officials had been unable to secure documentation of her nursing service, she began filing document after document with his help. But, although she was eventually gratified by an admission by federal officials that records documenting her nursing service actually did exist, she was still not awarded the nurse’s pension support that she so desperately needed and deserved.

It was only after the turn of the century—after changes were made to the federal pension system that allowed the resumption of assistance to remarried Civil War widows who had been stripped of their pensions—that her sacrifices and service to the nation were finally recognized with the restart of her Civil War Widow’s Pension payments of twenty dollars per month on April 5, 1901.

Sadly though, by this point in her life, Julia was in such dire straits, financially, that she had been forced to take a job as a cook at a hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for just two dollars per week. According to her son’s former guardian, during this period of her life, she “had no property, real or personal, and … had no means of support except her own daily labor.”

Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have not yet determined what ultimately happened to her.

A Widow Lacking English Language Proficiency

Hannah Kolb’s U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension Claim (Hannah’s Affidavit, February 14, 1865, p. 1, U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Following the premature death of her husband, Hannah (Imborly) Kolb also quickly realized that she faced a challenging future as a widow, single mom and head of a household that was in a precarious financial state. Putting her own shock and grief to the side, she too sought help from the federal government. After submitting her U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension claim on December 12, 1864, she was also forced to jump through multiple hoops before eventually gaining access to the pension support to which she was entitled.

Filing document after document with the court systems of both Lehigh and Montgomery counties, she appeared before justices of the peace and other county officials within those two counties to affirm that she had been married to, and had had children with, Private John Kolb, another 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantryman who had died in 1864 during his American Civil War service on behalf of the United States.

During one of her earliest appearances, Hannah testified before a judge of the General Courts, Lehigh County on February 14, 1865 “to obtain the benefit of the provision made by the act of Congress approved July 14, 1862.” During that deposition, she stated that she was a forty-five-year-old resident of Saegersville in Heidelberg Township, Lehigh County who was “the widow of John Kolb who was a Private in Company ‘K’ commanded by Captain C. W. Abbott in the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers who re-enlisted as a Veteran Volunteer in the fall of 1863, and died in the U.S. Genl. Hospital at Baltimore in the State of Maryland on the 21st day of October 1864 of Hemorrhoides [sic] while in the service of the United States.”

She added that she had been “married to the said John Kolb on the fourth day of August 1842 by Daniel Weiser at Montgomery; that her husband, the aforesaid John Kolb, died on the day above mentioned, and that she [had] remained a widow ever since that period,” noting that “her name before said marriage was Hannah Imboden,” and affirmed that there was “no public or private record” available of their marriage. She then further attested to the birth of their children, Hannah, who had been born on September 9, 1852, and Daniel, who had been born on January 17, 1853—dates of birth that also made them eligible to receive U.S. Civil War Pension support because they were still both under the age of sixteen.

Still residing in Heidelberg Township in 1866, she appeared that year before another Lehigh County justice of the peace on December 8 to re-state for the record that she was the widow of Private John Kolb, who “died in the Military Service of the United States on the 21st day of October 1864 at the United States General Hospital Baltimore MD. while a private in company ‘K’ Commanded by Capt. C. W. Abbott 47th Regiment Penna. Vols. Commanded by Col. T. H. Good in the war of 1861,” and reiterated that she had “remained a widow” since the death of her husband. In addition, she repeated the vital statistics related to her marriage and births of her children, who were still living at home with her. Adding that she was filing her 1866 affidavit “for the purpose of obtaining the benefit of the provisions made by the Second Section of the Act of Congress increasing the pensions for widows and orphans approved July 25, 1866,” she also stated for the record that she was appointing C. W. Bennett, Esquire of Washington, D.C., as her attorney to represent her in ongoing proceedings related to her pension claim.

The mark made by Hannah Kolb, in lieu of her signature, on one of her U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension claim affidavits (U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

One of the notable features of Hannah Kolb’s pension paperwork (which is also a notable feature of many of the pension files of other women mentioned in this article) is that she “made her mark” on documents that she was required to sign, signaling that she could not read or write English well enough to complete the federal pension application forms and required supporting documentation by herself. Since a significant percentage of the men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were German immigrants or Pennsylvania-born men of German heritage who still spoke German or Pennsylvania Dutch at home, it is reasonable to theorize that those times when she “made her mark” were an indication that she was most likely someone who also still only spoke German or Pennsylvania Dutch at home—a language barrier that put her at a disadvantage when trying to communicate with federal government officials who were far more proficient in English than they were in German.

Still battling to obtain the federal financial assistance she needed to keep her family housed and fed, Hannah next sought help from her husband’s former superior officer—Lieutenant-Colonel Charles W. Abbott. On August 31, 1867, Abbott submitted an affidavit to the county courts in which he attested that “John Kolb contracted a disease whilst in said service in the state of LA. [Louisiana] but however marched on with his said company [from] Richmond to Harrisonburg Va. and then from there he was sent to Jarvis U.S.A. G— Hospital at Baltimore Md. once Regt. reached Harrisonsburg [circa] 25th of Sept. 1864 and the said John Kolb reached that place [circa 27 September] and was the same day he reached there [was transferred to Jarvis Hospital].”

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles W. Abbott’s affidavit, filed in support of Hannah Kolb’s U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension claim, p. 1, August 1867, p. 1, U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Abbott then went on to present additional facts related to John Kolb’s illness and death and made clear to court officials that his subordinate’s illness and death were both directly related to his military service with the 47th Pennsylvania.

Less than three months later, on November 18, 1867, Hannah appeared before Lehigh County Justice of the Peace Samuel J. Kistler for the purpose of “explaining discrepancies between the Original Application” for her pension and the paperwork she had subsequently filed for an increase in that pension. The justice asked questions regarding the birth date of her daughter, which she confirmed. Her attorney then explained that errors on previous paperwork were not Hannah’s fault but were due to the representation she had received previously.

On February 1, 1868, Hannah made her next pension claim-related appearance—this time before a Lehigh County alderman—to attest, yet again, that she was a resident of Heidelberg Township who was “the widow of John Kolb who was a private in Co. ‘K’ – 47 Regt. Pa. Vols. In the war of 1861,” reiterating that she “was married to John Kolb on the 4th day of August A.D. 1842.”

This time, however, her attorney came better prepared.

Stating for the record that her marriage data “appear[ed] by a family Record in an old prayer Book now in my possession (which said Record reads as follows…),” he handed court officials an affidavit that presented, verbatim, in German, the text from Hannah’s prayer book which contained the vital statistics of her marriage. During that round of testimony, Hannah and her attorney also corrected the spelling of her maiden name, stating that it was “Imborly” and not “Imboden,” as had been written by her previous legal representative. Once again, she made an “X” mark in lieu of her signature.

On March 13, 1879, she appeared before Lehigh County Justice of the Peace Samuel Kistler to file a new claim that would enable her to restart her pension, the monthly payments of which had fallen into “arrears” (unpaid) status. Once again, she marked an “X” on the legal document in lieu of her signature.

Throughout this long process, as she cleared one hurdle after another, sapping the emotional energy she needed to raise her children, Hannah sought the help of the minister who had married her, the physician who had delivered two of her children, and multiple neighbors—each of whom attested that she was, indeed, who she said she was—the widow of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantryman John Kolb and was, most definitely, the mother of his children.

Finally awarded a U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension of eight dollars per month, she was then also granted an additional four dollars per month for the support of her minor children on February 19, 1868.

Researchers are still working to identify her year of death and burial location.

A Widow Pushed to the Brink of Madness

Excerpt from 1868 court petition by Caroline Herman’s father and brother to have her declared incompetent, p. 1 (U.S. Civil War Widows’ and Orphans’ Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

The mind of Caroline (Miller) Herman appears to have shattered after she received word that she had been widowed by her soldier-husband, Private William Herman, a member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ F Company who had died from disease-related complications following the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana. Struggling financially, her behavior became increasingly erratic after beginning her application process for a U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension.

A resident of Weisenberg Township, Lehigh County during the fall of 1866, the thirty-two-year-old was in a such a precarious position by the end of that year that Joshua Seiberling, the attorney helping her with her pension application, felt compelled to pen an appeal to the U.S. Pension Bureau in which he begged federal officials to speed up their review due to the severe hardships that she and her children were suffering.

Although her widow’s pension was eventually approved by the bureau, the examiner handling her case initially refused to grant the additional orphans’ pension support she had requested (an extra two dollars per month for each of her two children). In later testimony before the court, Seiberling described how Caroline’s life had continued to unravel:

Just about that time [when she received word that she would be receiving a widow’s pension] she fell into the hands of Henry Croll from Berks Co. He controlled her so that she Refused to execute another paper for me. I dropped the matter there, after the Father and Brother of Caroline Harman [sic, Herman] called on me and desired me to permit them to present my name to our court as Committee of Caroline that they had all else prepared. I permitted them to do so and as you will see I was appointed but before the [proceedings] of said court was closed Croll persuaded Mrs. Harman to come and live with him and thereby got her out of our county, and out of our power. About the same time he was appointed by our court as guardian of the two minor children of said Mrs. Harman and for two of the minor children of William Shaffer, also a deceased soldier.

When the court realized that Henry Croll was “insolvent” and unable to pay the surety bond that all court-appointed guardians were expected to furnish, the court revoked his guardianship and appointed Seiberling in his place.

On June 11, 1868, Caroline’s father and brother—Daniel Miller, Sr. and Daniel Miller, Jr.—petitioned the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, for help, stating that Caroline was so mentally ill that she was no longer capable of managing her finances or caring for her children. Asking the court to determine “whether the said Caroline Harman [sic, Herman] has or has not by reason of lunacy become incapable of managing her estate,” they also asked the court to order that a formal inquest be held.

Same day inquisition taken and returned finding the said Caroline Harman [sic, Herman] a lunatic and that she has been so for ten years and upwards—but that she enjoys lucid intervals—and that by reason of said lunacy she is incapable of managing her estate.

Her commitment was subsequently ordered by the court on September 25, 1868, and her children were enrolled by Seiberling in the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphans’ School in Womelsdorf, Berks County, which was known at that time, and is still known as the Bethany Orphans’ Home. Although “provided for at the expense of the State,” according to Seiberling, Seiberling continued to seek pension support for Caroline and her children.

Nearly thirty-one years to the day on which her husband died, Caroline (Miller) Herman passed away in Reading, Berks County (on July 27, 1895).

A Widow Accused of Adultery

Accusation of adultery made against Pauline (Wilt Ritter) Knauss by U.S Pension Bureau official (Pauline Ritter’s U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension File, Restoration Claim Rejection, 1887, p. 3, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Following the untimely death of her own husband, Pauline (Wilt) Ritter was just twenty-one years old when she became a single mother and head of her household. She filed for a U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension on December 4, 1863, assisted by attorney Edwin Albright, while also fighting to keep her young daughter, Mary Jane Ritter, housed, clothed and fed.

According to her pension file, Pauline and her daughter were also residents of Allentown. Her eventual pension award—eight dollars per month—was made retroactive to October 30, 1863—the date of her soldier-husband’s death.

But she was young—and she had a long life ahead of her. So, after roughly fifteen years of living as the grieving widow of Corporal James Ritter, she made the decision to remarry in a ceremony that took place on February 3, 1885 at the home of her second husband, Thomas M. Knauss, a veteran of the Civil War who had served with Company L of the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Before she took this step, however, she made an unusual decision for a widow—to stop cashing her pension checks. She did so, according to testimony that she provided for government officials, because she had been told by several neighbors that she was not entitled to receive Civil War Pension support because she had “a suitor.”

Several years later, when she realized that she had been misled, she filed a claim with the U.S. Pension Bureau, on July 26, 1886, to be compensated for the back payments that she believed had rightly been due her since 1879. She then filed an additional affidavit, on November 30, in which she explained to those same officials, that she “did not draw her pension during the period from June 4, 1879 to Feb. 3, 1885 because during said period her present husband was her suitor or beau and she was told that because of said fact she could no longer draw her pension, and that being so informed by her neighbors she failed to execute her vouchers and never made inquiry of the pension office … taking it for granted that she could no longer get her pension.”

An ugly dispute then ensued.

After the initial Pension Bureau examiner who was assigned to review Pauline’s claim rejected that claim, another bureau staffer who had been assigned to re-review her claim made a determination that the first examiner’s work wasn’t up to par. On July 27, 1887, that Board of Re-Review staffer issued this finding: “The Reviewer gives no grounds for rejecting this claim for restoration.”

Two days later, on July 29, A. T. Parsons wrote this shocking letter to the Chief of the Board of Reviewers:

The Reviewer does give grounds for rejecting claim for restoration; if a pensioner has overdrawn all pension to which she is entitled is not grounds for rejection of a claim for restoration, and sufficient ground for such action I fail to understand what can be more effective.

The facts in this case are the pensioner commenced to live with Thomas M. Knauss in 1865 and continued to live with him as his wife up to the present time having between 1866 and 1883 eight children by him. Feb. 3 1885 the ceremony of marriage was performed.

I could not reject on the grounds of remarriage prior to 1885. Neither could I reject on the ground of open and notorious adulterous cohabitation for as this all took place in the State of Pa. it is not the fact.

Parsons made these incendiary claims, despite attestations by Pauline’s longtime neighbors and son-in-law that she had not remarried since the death of her husband until she wed Thomas Knauss in February 1885.

That first Pension Bureau claims reviewer appears to have been in possession of contradictory evidence, however; according to the federal census enumerator who visited her home in 1870, Pauline was already using the Knauss surname that year and was describing herself as the wife of Thomas Knauss and the mother of Mary Ritter (aged nine), George (aged four) and Robert (aged two). By the time of the 1880 federal census, her household with Thomas Knauss had grown to include four more children: daughters Emma (aged nine), Agnes (aged eight), Effy (aged three), and Minerva (aged one).

Meanwhile, Mary Jane—her daughter from her first marriage—had begun her own married life with her new husband. (Sadly, Mary Jane’s life would prove to be a short one. She passed away in Allentown while just in her early forties.)

Despite the growing controversy and heartache, Pauline soldiered on, waging a war of words and paper with the U.S. Pension Bureau while also continuing to make a life in Allentown with her second husband and their large family. But then he also widowed her.

Having survived the deaths of her first husband (1863), her second husband (1900), her daughter from her first marriage, Mary Jane (1902), and two of her sons from her second marriage—George W. Knauss in 1918, and John Ellsworth Knauss, who had died suddenly from an abscessed appendix on February 11, 1922, Pauline (Wilt Ritter) Knauss died in Allentown from mesenteric thrombosis (a blood clot in one of her intestinal arteries) on February 27, 1922. Subsequently buried beside her second husband, she was survived by her daughter from her second marriage, Goldie Viola (Knauss) Landis (1883-1960).

The Often Heartbreaking Evidence

To view the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension records of these and other widows of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen who navigated the federal pension application process during and after the American Civil War, visit these pages of our project’s website:

Sources:

Caroline Herman, Daniel Miller (father), Catharine Welder (mother), and William Herman, in Death Records (Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Maxatawny Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, 1895). Berks County, Pennsylvania: Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Charles Magill, in Coroner’s Certificates. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Office of the Coroner, December 10, 1889.
Charles Magill and “Julian Ruston” [sic], in Certificate of Marriage. Camden, New Jersey: St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church, January 18, 1887.
Edwin Minnich, Juliann (Kuehner) Minnich, and George Minnich, in U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1865-1901.
Harman, Carolina [sic], in Death Records (City of Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, July 27, 1895). Reading, Pennsylvania: Clerk of the Orphans’ Court, Berks County.
Harman [sic], William and Caroline, in U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Herman, Caroline, widow of William Herman, in U.S. Census, Longswamp Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, 1890). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Judge Endlich’s Opinion” (ruling on the sanity of Carolina Herman). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Times, September 30, 1890.
Julia Magill, in “Prominent Army Nurses,” in “The National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: The Evening Times, Wednesday, October 8, 1902.
Knauss, Thomas, Pauline, George, and Robert, and Ritter, Mary, in U.S. Census (Allentown, First Ward, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1870). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Knauss, Thomas, Pauline, George, Robert, Emma, Agnes, Effy, and Minerva, in U.S. Census (Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1880). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Pauline Knauss, in Death Certificates (file no.: 15329, registered no.: 219; date of death: February 27, 1922). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
Kolb, Hannah and William, in U.S. Census (Heidelberg Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1870; note: shown as living next door to/near Hiram Kolb, who was Hannah’s son and William’s brother); Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Kolb, John and Hannah, in U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Minick, Julia A. (nee) Megill, Julia A.” [sic], in U.S. Civil War Pension General Index Cards, 1896. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Minnich, Capt. Edwin G. and Mrs. Julia (Kuehner) Minnich (images and military paperwork). Pennsylvania: Personal Collection of Chris Sapp.
Minnich, George E., in New Jersey State Census (1895). Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey Department of State.
Ritter, James and Paulina, in U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Todte Körper Heimgebracht” (“Dead Bodies Brought Home”). Allentown, Pennsylvania: Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, February 2, 1864.

Thoughts of Home at Christmas: The Influence of Thomas Nast’s Art During a 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer’s Lifetime

Dec23

“Christmas Eve,” 1862 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 7, pp. 8-9, Christmas edition, 1862, public domain; click to enlarge).

When thinking about what life was like for the Pennsylvania volunteer soldiers who served their nation during the American Civil War, the influence of nineteenth century artists on their lives would likely not be the first thing that comes to mind. The orders they received from their superior officers in the Army and the “trickle down” effect of the directives issued by state and federal elected officials to those Union Army officers, yes, but visual artists? Probably not.

But artists and their artwork—paintings and illustrations created during and after the 1860s—did leave their mark on the psyches of soldiers in ways that were profoundly illuminating and long lasting.

Many of the most powerful artworks that were likely seen and reflected on by members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were those drawn by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), a native of Germany who had emigrated to the United States from Bavaria with his mother and siblings in 1846. He spent most of his formative years in New York City, where he took up drawing while still in school. As he aged, he came to view America as his homeland, but still grew up experiencing many German traditions—as had many 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers during their own formative years. (Company K, for example, was established in August 1861 as an “all-German company” of the 47th Pennsylvania.)

Nast’s first depiction of the Christmas season (shown above) was created for the cover and centerfold of the Christmas edition of Harper’s Weekly 1862, shortly after he was hired as a staff illustrator.

“Santa Claus in Camp,” 1863 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, January 3, 1863, public domain; click to enlarge).

He then continued to create illustrations of Santa for Harper’s Weekly in subsequent years. According to journalist Lorraine Boissoneault:

You could call it the face that launched a thousand Christmas letters. Appearing on January 3, 1863, in the illustrated magazine Harper’s Weekly, two images cemented the nation’s obsession with a jolly old elf. The first drawing shows Santa distributing presents in a Union Army camp. Lest any reader question Santa’s allegiance in the Civil War, he wears a jacket patterned with stars and pants colored in stripes. In his hands, he holds a puppet toy with a rope around its neck, its features like those of Confederate president Jefferson Davis….

According to historians at Grant Cottage, “In 1868, newly elected 18th President U.S. Grant paid tribute to Thomas Nast by saying, ‘Two things elected me, the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast.’”

As a result, members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had ample time to become well acquainted with Nast’s artistry and his support for their efforts, as part of the United States Army, to end the Civil War and preserve America’s Union. An ardent abolitionist, Nast also actively supported the federal government’s efforts to eradicate the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida (Harper’s Weekly, 1864, public domain).

Nast’s first illustrations of Santa Claus and depictions of soldiers longing for family at Christmas would initially have been seen by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers while they were stationed far from home at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida—just two months after the regiment had sustained a shockingly high rate of casualties during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862. More than one hundred members of the regiment had been killed in action, mortally wounded, grievously wounded, or wounded less seriously, but still able to continue their service.

So terrible was the outcome that it would have been enough to make an impression even on individual 47th Pennsylvanians who hadn’t been wounded. They were not only now battle tested, they were battle scarred, according to comments made by individual members of the regiment in the letters they wrote to families and friends back home during that Christmas of 1862.

No matter how strong their capacity for overcoming adversity had been before that battle, their hearts and minds would never be the same. It would take time to heal and move forward—time they were given while stationed on garrison duty for more than a year.

Fort Jefferson (Harper’s Weekly, August 26, 1865, public domain; click to enlarge).

By the time that the American Civil War was ending its third year, the mental wounds of Pocotaligo were far less fresh than they had been the previous Christmas. Still stationed in Florida on garrison duty in 1863, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was now a divided regiment. While slightly more than half of the regiment was still on duty at in Key West, as companies A, B, C, E, G, and I remained at Fort Taylor, the remaining members of the regiment—companies D, F, H, and K—were now even farther away from home—stationed at Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost that was situated so far off of Florida’s coast that it was accessible only by ship.

Letters penned to family and friends back in Pennsylvania during the early part of 1863 capture a sense of sadness and longing that pervaded the regiment—as 47th Pennsylvanians mourned the loss of their deceased comrades and thought about how deeply they missed their own families.

Gradually, as the year wore on, those feelings turned to acceptance of their respective losses and, eventually, frustration at still being assigned to garrison duty when they felt they could and should be helping the federal government bring a faster end to the war by defeating the Confederate States Army through enough tide-turning combat engagements that the Confederate States of America would finally surrender and agree to re-unify the nation.

By early 1864, the wish of those 47th Pennsylvanians was granted by senior Union Army officials. They were not only given the opportunity to return to combat, but to return to intense combat as a history-making regiment.

The only regiment from Pennsylvania to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, the 47th Pennsylvanians repeatedly displayed their valor as the blood of more and more of their comrades was spilled to eradicate slavery across the nation while also fighting to preserve the nation’s Union. By the fall of 1864, they were participating in such fierce, repeated battles across Virginia during Union Major-General Philip Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign that President Abraham Lincoln was able to secure his reelection and the tide of the American Civil War was decisively turned in the federal government’s favor once and for all.

Ruins of Charleston, South Carolina as seen from the Circular Church, 1865 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

By April 1865, the Confederate States Army had surrendered, the war was over and President Lincoln was gone, felled by an assassin’s bullet that had too easily found its target. So, once again, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were in mourning.

Sent back to America’s Deep South that summer, they were assigned to Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, where they helped to reestablish functioning local and state governments, rebuild shattered infrastructure, and reinvigorate a free press that was dedicated to supporting a unified nation—all while other Pennsylvania volunteer regiments were being mustered out and sent home.

Finally, after a long and storied period of service to their nation, the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers were given their honorable discharge papers at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, and were then sent home to their own family and friends in communities across Pennsylvania in early January 1866.

Return to Civilian Life

“Santa Claus and His Works,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 29, 1866, public domain; click to enlarge).

Attempting to regain some sense of normalcy as their post-war lives unfolded over the years between the late 1860s and the early 1900s, many of the surviving veterans of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry resumed the jobs they held prior to the war while others found new and better ways to make a living. Some became small business creators, pastors or other church officials, members of their local town councils or school boards, beloved doctors, or even inventors. One even became the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Most also married and began families, some small, some large. Still others made their way west—as far as the states of California and Washington—in search of fortune or, more commonly, places where war’s Grim Reaper would never find them again.

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 25, 1886, public domain; click to enlarge).

As the years rolled on, they saw more and more of Thomas Nast’s work as it was published in Harper’s Weekly, particularly at Christmas. But the Santa Claus of war was now transformed by Nast as the Saint Nicholas of his childhood in Germany—kind, altruistic, loving, and jolly.

Over time, those illustrations collectively formed the “mind pictures” that the majority of American children and adults experienced when they imagined Santa Claus. So powerful has Nast’s influence been that, even today, when Americans encounter the many variations of Santa used to promote products in Christmas advertising campaigns, they see images that are often based on Nast’s nineteenth century drawings—drawings that had their genesis as beacons of light and hope during one of the darkest times in America’s history.

Like Abraham Lincoln, Nast has been helping Americans to summon and follow “the better angels of our nature” for more than one hundred and sixty years. May the power of his art help us all continue to do so this year and for the remainder of our days.

Sources:

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2018.
“Drawn Together: The Friendship of U.S. Grant and Thomas Nast” (video). Wilton, New York: Grant Cottage, May 14, 2022.
“Santa Claus,” in “Thomas Nast.” Columbus, Ohio: University Libraries, The Ohio State University, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
“Santa Claus in Camp (from ‘Harper’s Weekly,’ vol. 7, p. 1).” New York, New York: The Met, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
Vinson, J. Chal. “Thomas Nast and the American Political Scene,” in American Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, Autumn 1957, pp. 337-344. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Oct27

Captain Richard A. Graeffe, Company A, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1862 (public domain).

Upon mustering in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in August and early September of 1861, the men who had enrolled for military service with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were assigned to their respective companies and issued standardized uniforms—the same style of dark blue, wool uniforms that were worn by the regular officers or enlisted members of the U.S. Army. The uniform of Captain Richard Graeffe (pictured at right) shows the typical details of a company commander’s uniform with shoulder bars, hat and sword.

Initially equipped with Mississippi rifles, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were then provided with basic training in light infantry tactics through mid-September. Presented with the regiment’s First State Color on September 20, 1861 by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, they were subsequently marched to Harrisburg’s train station, and were transported to Washington, D.C., where they participated in the first of multiple duty assignments that would take them from the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to the Western and Trans-Mississippi theaters between early 1862 and March of 1864 before being transported back to the Eastern Theater for the fateful and tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which unfolded during the summer and fall of 1864.

Army of the United States, Corps Badges, 1865 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

Along the way, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry would be attached to the:

U.S. Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”) in the Eastern Theater (1861);
U.S. Army’s Tenth Corps (X Corps) in the Western Theater (Occupying force duties and battles in Florida and South Carolina, early winter 1862 through early winter 1864);
U.S. Army’s Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Trans-Mississippi Theater (Red River Campaign, spring and early summer 1864);
U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Eastern Theater (Battle of Cool Spring and Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, summer and fall 1864);
U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Eastern Theater (Defense of Washington, D.C., late winter 1864 through the immediate aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865);
Selected units of the U.S. Army’s former Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps (Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, June through late December 1865); and
Camp Cadwalader (final discharge, early January 1866).

Each time that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were attached to a different Union Army corps, they were issued specific insignia that were then sewn onto their uniforms. The chart pictured above shows the different insignia that were worn by the various Union corps’ members.

The Demographics of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Oct13

Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, second-in-command, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, with officers from the 47th at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Florida, circa 1863 (public domain).

Recruited primarily at community gathering places in their respective hometowns, the majority of soldiers who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were enrolled at county seats or other large population centers within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The youngest member of the regiment was a 12-year-old drummer boy; the oldest was a 65-year-old, financially successful farmer who would attempt to re-enlist, at the age of 68, after being seriously wounded while protecting the American flag in battle.

Roughly 70 percent were residents of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, including the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton and surrounding communities in Lehigh and Northampton counties. Company C, which was formed primarily of men from Northumberland County, was more commonly known as the “Sunbury Guards.” Company D and Company H were staffed largely by men from Perry County. Company K was formed with the intent of creating an “all-German” company that would be composed of German-Americans and German immigrants.

In point of fact, a number of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were immigrants or first-generation Americans. A significant percentage of each of the regiment’s companies were men whose families still spoke German or “Pennsylvania Dutch” at their homes and churches more than a century after their ancestors emigrated from Germany in search of religious or political freedom. Others traced their roots to Ireland; one had been born on Spain’s Canary Islands, and at least two were natives of Cuba.

In early October of 1862, several African American men who had been freed from enslavement on plantations near Beaufort, South Carolina, joined the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania, followed by the April 1864 enrollment of other formerly enslaved men in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Their final resting places span the nation, from Maine to California and from the State of Washington to Florida.

Alpha and Omega: The First and Last Duty Stations of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Oct12

Camp Curtin (Harper’s Weekly, 1861; public domain).

Established just north of the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in Harrisburg by Pennsylvania’s Civil War-era governor, Andrew Gregg Curtin, on April 18, 1861—just three days after the fall of Fort Sumter to Confederate States Army troops—and initially named “Camp Union,” Camp Curtin was a key staging and training point for the United States Army at the dawn of the American Civil War. Within a few short months of its creation on eighty acres of land that had previously been used for Dauphin County’s Agricultural Fairgrounds, this camp site became the largest military facility in Pennsylvania and the nation during the war.

It was here, in mid-August of 1861, that new recruits and seasoned soldiers, who had just recently completed their Three Months’ duty, came together to form the newly-created 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

After completing weeks of grueling, basic training in light infantry tactics, the members of the 47th Pennsylvania were personally given their regiment’s First State Color by Governor Curtin on September 20, 1861. An American flag emblazoned with the regiment’s state name and volunteer unit number, that flag was kept safe by the regiment’s color-bearer unit, Company C, from that moment until the regiment returned home to Pennsylvania nearly five long years later.

Camp Cadwalader and the German Hospital, 1876 (David Johnston Kennedy, courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, public domain).

Arriving at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia in early 1866, the majority of the surviving 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were given their final discharge papers on January 9, 1866, after having been officially mustered out from the regiment at its duty station in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day in 1865.

This latter camp was named after Major-General George Cadwalader (1806-1879), a native of Philadelphia who had been appointed by Governor Curtin as Major-General of the Pennsylvania Volunteers at the beginning of the American Civil War.

To learn more about each of these Union Army facilities, read these camp profiles:

Camp Curtin (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania); and
Camp Cadwalader (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Research Update: More New Details Regarding the Lives of Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Sep3

Union Army at Morganza Bend, Louisiana, c. 1863-1865_USLOC, pubdom

Union Army base at Morganza Bend, Louisiana, circa 1863-1865 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Researchers investigating the lives of nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War recently uncovered new details about two of those soldiers.

In addition to finding more data related to the immediate post-war life of Aaron French (learn more about him in this article here), including how and why he ended up settling in Mississippi following the Civil War, researchers have also now found important information about the life of Hamilton Blanchard—who enrolled with Bullard on the same day.

Born into slavery in Natchitoches, Louisiana sometime around 1843, Hamilton Blanchard was able to secure his freedom twenty-one years later when the United States Army arrived in town as part of an expedition led by Union Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks. Determined not to be forced back into bondage after the Union troops moved on in their ill-fated quest to capture the city of Shreveport, he chose to enlist with one of the units serving under Banks—the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry—the only regiment from Pennsylvania that was involved in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.

After enrolling in the military, Hamilton Blanchard was then assigned to Company D at the rank of “Cook” on 5 April 1864.

Crop_Bullard, Aaron and Hamilton Blanchard_Co. D, 47th PA_Muster Roll

Muster roll entries for Aaron Bullard and Hamilton Blanchard, Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

The official muster-in of Blanchard, Aaron Bullard, and three other young Black men who enrolled that day did not take place immediately, however, because the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ordered to move out shortly after their arrival, and were quickly drawn into intense combat with enemy troops commanded by Confederate Major-General Richard Taylor (a plantation owner and son of Zachary Taylor, former President of the United States). Battered badly during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads near Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April and in the Battle of Pleasant Hill the next day (9 April), they fought the Confederate Army again on 23 April near Monett’s Ferry in the Battle of Cane River and on 16 May in the Battle of Mansura near Marksville.

Continuing on toward the southeastern part of Louisiana, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched for Morganza, which had been held in Union hands since the fall of 1863 and was now the site of a major Union Army encampment. While there, the officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry officially mustered in all nine of the formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania in Beaufort, South Carolina (1862) and Natchitoches, Louisiana (April 1864)—a process which took place between 20-24 June 1864.

From that point on, those nine men traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania as it returned to the East Coast and engaged in multiple battles associated with Union Major-General Philip Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia, the protection of the nation’s capital following the April 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and the early days of Reconstruction in Georgia and South Carolina.

On Christmas Day in 1865, Hamilton Blanchard then joined his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in mustering out from their final duty station in Charleston, South Carolina.

Post-War Life

Having been honorably discharged from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry when the regiment mustered out, at least two of the nine formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the regiment evidently made their way north—possibly when the other members of their former regiment returned home to Pennsylvania. (It is also possible, however, that they made the journey independently of their former regiment because both men appear to have resettled in the Washington, D.C. area, post-war, while the other 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were transported by ship directly to New York City and then by train to Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they were given their final discharge papers on 9 January 1866.)

Blanchard-Bullard_Madison Co., MS_Freedmen's Bureau Contract, Feb-Dec 1866, p. 1

Freedmen’s Bureau contract between Madison County, Mississippi farm owner John P. Arvile [sic] and farm laborers Hamilton Blanchard, Aaron Bullard, et. al., Washington, D.C., 16 February 1866 (excerpt, p. 1, U.S. National Archives).

What is known for certain is that Hamilton Blanchard and Aaron Bullard made contact with a representative of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands sometime in late 1865 or early 1866. They then signed a contract with the Freedmen’s Bureau during the early winter of 1866 in which they both agreed to join a large group of formerly enslaved Black men, women, and children who would be providing farm labor to a man named John P. Avrill (alternate spellings: “Averile”, “Averill”, “Arvile”, “Arville”, or “Avrille”) at his property in Canton, Madison County, Mississippi.

That Freedmen’s Bureau contract was slated to be in effect between 16 February and 16 December of 1866, and begins with a cover page which states:

Washington D.C.
February 1866
Contract No.
John P. Arvill
With (66) Freedmen

John Arville
Contract with
46 Farm Hands

The main body of the document goes on to reveal the following details of the contract:

Articles of Agreement made and concluded this the Sixteenth day of February 1866 between John P. Arvile of Canton P.O. County of Madison State of Mississippi party of the first part and

Charles Matthews, Henry Long, Joseph Thompson, Samuel Johnson, Robert Johnson, John Thomas … Charles Ford, Caroline Carter, Agnes Fitzhugh and child (infant), Benjamin Smith, Anna Smith, Thomas Reed [sp?], Aaron Bullard, Hamilton Blanchard, Isaiah Wiggins, James Lewis, Charles K. [illegible], Baily Taylor, William Carter, and Andy Hampton [sp?].

The next paragraph lists Hamilton Blanchard and Aaron Bullard a second time, along with multiple names from the aforementioned group of farm laborers. Subsequent paragraphs spell out further points of the agreement:

All of Washington City, County of Washington, District of Columbia, parties of the second part, the said Charles Matthews, Henry Long, Joseph Thompsen, Samuel Johnson, Robert Johnson, John Thomas … Aaron Bullard, Hamilton Blanchard, Isaiah Wiggins, James Lewis … Field Laborers, agree to enter the service of the said John P. Averile as Laborers and that they will faithfully and diligently apply themselves and perform the duties of Laborers on the premises of said John P. Averile for and during the period of time from the Sixteenth day of February 1866 until the sixteenth day of 1866; and they further agree that their employer shall retain one half their monthly wages until the expiration of their term of service.

And the said John P. Arvile hereby agrees to employ them (the said Field laborers) for the period of time aforesaid. Viz from the Sixteenth day of February 1866 until the sixteenth day of December 1866; and to pay for their services the sum set opposite their respective names per month, monthly (one half of which shall be retained each month) and all stoppages and arranged promptly, paid at the expiration of their respective terms of service to wit…..

In equal monthly payments; and the said John P. Arvile further agrees to furnish said Freed laborers … quarters, fuel, full substantial and healthy rations, and all necessary attendance and supplies in case of sickness, in addition to the compensation … named, and that he will assist and encourage efforts for the education of the children of his employees, and it is further agreed by the said John P. Arvile, that in case he at any time fails to perform his part of this contract agreement he will pay to each of the said laborers the full sum of One hundred ~~and twenty~~ dollars [strikethrough made by someone’s hand to original contract], as fixed, agreed and liquidated damages. This contract can be annulled by the mutual consent of the Employer and the employee, but only in the presence of an Authorized Agent of the Bureau of Refugees Freedmen and Abandoned Lands and such annullment [sic] on the part of the Employer and anyone [sic] employee shall in no wise affect the validity of the Contract in respect to the employer and the other employees and should either party violate this contract then the other party shall make complaint to the nearest authorized agent of the Bureau Refugees Freemen & Abandoned Lands.

The contract continues on, specifying that both Aaron Bullard and Hamilton Blanchard were to each be paid a wage of $10 per month, and stating that some of the other men on the list would be paid as much as $12 per month while others would be paid $8 per month. (Teenaged boys and women on the list were to be paid even less—$6 per month.)

In all cases, the reality was far different. Per the contract, they were initially paid only half of what their monthly wages were because the Freedmen’s Bureau agent in charge of looking out for the welfare of these formerly enslaved men, women, and children allowed the white farmer—their “employer”—to “retain one half their monthly wages until the expiration of their term of service.”

No further data has been uncovered from Freedmen’s Bureau records about the status of those unpaid wages or the outcome of that contract, but because these Black men, women, and children were essentially returned to an unequal system of servitude by the Freedmen’s Bureau agent (as evidenced by the manner in which this contract was drafted—favoring the White “employer” over the Black “field laborer” and including multiple after-the-fact revisions, such as word insertions and strikethroughs)—it is highly unlikely that Hamilton Blanchard, Aaron Bullard, or the other Black men, women, and children mentioned in the contract were ever paid the full amount they were entitled to for what was most assuredly very hard labor.

Blanchard-Bullard-Chapman_Treasury Inquiry, 10 Nov 1866

Letter of inquiry from J. H. Chapman on behalf of Hamilton Blanchard to E. B. French, second auditor, U.S. Treasury Department, 10 November 1868 (Freedmen’s Bureau records, U.S. National Archives).

This hypothesis posed by researchers investigating the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry is backed up by a letter of inquiry penned on 10 November 1868 by J. H. Chapman, a Sub-Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau working at an office in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to E. B. French, Second Auditor of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C.

In this letter, Chapman asks French that he “be informed what disposition has been made of the claim of Hamilton Blanchard, late of Co. “D” 47 Penn Vol. Inft., his discharge was received by J. R. Schuchard [sp?]” of the “Freedmen’s Aid Commission, March 15, 1866.” Chapman added that he was requesting this update on Blanchard’s behalf “for the purpose of prosecuting his claim against the Gov.” He then also requested “information concerning the claim of Aaron Bullard (Col.) who belonged to same company & regiment.”

* Note: An unidentified individual added an undated notation to the bottom of this letter in handwriting that is clearly different from that of the original letter writer, Chapman. That notation correctly states: “The 47th Pa was not a colored regt. See Form R enclosed. A.M.R. 103.” (The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry became an integrated regiment on 5 October 1862, but its African American members were not considered to be part of the U.S. Colored Troops, also known as the USCT.)

Researchers have not yet located the “Form R” referred to in the notation to Chapman’s letter, but will be pursuing this lead, as well as investigating the claims filed by Hamilton Blanchard and Aaron Bullard, and searching for additional information regarding what happened to Hamilton Blanchard during and after the 1870s.

An additional avenue of inquiry will be the potential relationship that may have developed between Aaron Bullard and E. B. French during or after this time—a new theory being considered in light of the discovery of French’s name on this letter. (Aaron Bullard changed his surname, “Bullard,” which had been associated with his enslavement in Louisiana, to “French” sometime between his 1868 appeal to E. B. French in the U.S. Treasury Department and the day he was visited at home in Issaquena County, Mississippi by an enumerator of the 1870 U.S. Census—possibly indicating that he wanted to both shed his “slave name” and honor someone who had been helpful to him.)

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Civil War Muster Rolls, in Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs (Record Group 19, Series 19.11). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1861-1865.
Civil War Veterans’ Card File. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
“Records of the Field Offices for the District of Columbia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870” (NARA Series Number: M1902; NARA Reel Number: 18; NARA Record Group Number: 105; NARA Record Group Name: Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1861 – 1880; Collection Title: District of Columbia Freedmen’s Bureau Field Office Records 1863-1872: Aaron Bullard and Hamilton Blanchard, 1866 and 1868). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

Black History Month: New Details Uncovered Regarding the Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Feb24

Research regarding the lives of the nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1862 and 1864 has continued to progress—even in the middle of a pandemic that has forced the closure of numerous local, state, and national archives.*

In addition to uncovering details about the life of the soldier from South Carolina who was mistakenly listed on muster rolls for the 47th Pennsylvania as “Presto Gettes” (learn more about him in this article here), researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have been able to determine more about what happened to two of the other men post-war, and have also located records which seem to indicate that there may have been two or three other Black men who enlisted with the regiment (potentially bringing the total number of Black enlistees in the regiment to twelve).

Aaron French (enlisted as Aaron Bullard):

Muster roll entries for Aaron Bullard and Hamilton Blanchard, Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

1864 was a life-changing year for Aaron Bullard and four other young Black men in Louisiana. After enlisting with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on April 5 while the 47th was stationed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, Samuel Jones, Hamilton Blanchard (also known as John Hamilton), and Aaron, James, and John Bullard traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania as it participated in the multiple battles associated with the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana. On or about June 22, they were formally mustered into the regiment at Morganza, Louisiana.

Sometime later (possibly post-war), Aaron Bullard changed his surname to French. After the American Civil War, he married, became a land-owning farmer—and a dad.

Post-Civil War, Aaron French and his family resided in Issaquena County, Mississippi (U.S. Census, 1870, public domain).

In August of 1870, Aaron French and his wife, Amanda, lived with their eight-month-old daughter, “Simpy” (also known as Cynthia or Cyntha) in Skipworth Precinct, Issaquena County, Mississippi. Still residing in Issaquena County a decade later when the June 1880 federal census was taken, Aaron and Amanda were the proud parents of three daughters: Cynthia (who would go on to marry Samuel L. Dixon on March 20, 1890), Jesanna (also known as Jessie/Jesse), and “Arctavia” (also known as Octavia). Jessie, who later went on to wed John B. Cobb on January 28, 1892, made a life with her husband and son in Mayersville, Mississippi, where she was a teacher in the local schools. Octavia married Frank Childress on March 20, 1894.

U.S. Civil War Pension Index Card for Aaron French, who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in Louisiana in 1864 (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

Sadly, Aaron French did not live to see his two youngest daughters marry because he died in Mississippi on January 30, 1891. He was just 40-43 years old, according to U.S. Census records and other data, which indicate that he was born in Louisiana sometime between 1848 and 1850.

Hearteningly, though, an even more intriguing piece of data has recently been uncovered about the later life of Aaron French—one that indicates that he had become active in politics prior to his death. According to the Vicksburg Evening Post, Aaron was appointed as a delegate from Issaquena County to the Republican Congressional Convention for the Third District, which was held in Greenville, Mississippi on August 7, 1886. Researchers are continuing to search for further details about his political activities and untimely death, as well as the exact location of his gravesite.

Thomas Haywood (alternate spellings of surname: Hayward, Haywood, Heywood) and Jack Jacobs:

Muster roll entries of Thomas Haywood and Edward Jassum, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

Born into slavery in South Carolina sometime around 1832, Thomas Haywood enlisted for a three-year term of service as an Under Cook with Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry at Beaufort, South Carolina on November 1, 1862. He and three other formerly enslaved Black men—Abraham and Edward Jassum and “Presto Gettes”—who had previously enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania at Beaufort in October of 1862, then traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania as it participated in multiple military engagements, including the 47th’s garrisoning of Fort Taylor and Fort Jefferson in Florida in 1863 and 1864, the battles of the Union’s spring 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, and the battles of Sheridan’s tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia in the fall of 1864.

On or about June 22, 1864 all nine of these Black soldiers were formally mustered into the regiment at Morganza, Louisiana; Thomas Haywood and seven of the eight others all successfully completed their tours of duty, and were honorably mustered out upon expiration of their respective terms of enlistment. In Thomas Haywood’s case, that honorable discharge was awarded on October 31, 1865.

Post-war, it appears from various Freedmen’s Bureau records that he may have entered into yearly contracts with several men who had previously been plantation owners in the Beaufort, South Carolina area. In exchange for agreeing to plant and cultivate cotton for those men on three to five-acre parcels of land that had been leased to him by those white men, he was allowed to keep portions of the cotton sales (the largest portions of which went to the former plantation owners who had also most likely been slave owners prior to and during the Civil War).

U.S. Civil War Index Card for Thomas Haywood, who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in South Carolina in 1862 (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

His body warn out from years of slavery prior to the war, difficult military service during the war, and harsh sharecropping experiences post-war, Thomas Hayward applied for, and was awarded a U.S. Civil War Pension on April 30, 1888. That pension was subsequently renewed by the federal government in 1907 at the rate of $15 per month (roughly $415 per month in today’s U.S. dollar equivalency).

By 1890, Thomas Haywood was living in Sheldon Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina. After a long life, he died on January 13, 1911. Unfortunately, his burial location has also not yet been identified by researchers.

In 1890, Thomas Haywood lived near Hanna Jacobs, the widow of Jack Jacobs, who may have been another Black soldier who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. Census, 1890, Sheldon Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina, public domain).

One other piece of tantalizing data that has recently been discovered is that a woman named “Hanna Jacobs” lived near Thomas Haywood in 1890. This information may be significant because Hanna was described on the 1890 U.S. Census of Union soldiers and widows as the widow of “Jack Jacobs,” who had served in the same company with Thomas Haywood (according to that special census).

Researchers currently believe that Jack Jacobs may, in fact, have been another formerly enslaved Black man who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania when it was stationed near Beaufort in 1862, and are currently conducting a Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds to purchase the Civil War military and pension records of Hanna and Jack Jacobs, as well as the nine known formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1862 and 1864.

Jackson Haywood:

General Index Card for Jackson Haywood, who may have been a Black soldier who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

According to the “Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Pennsylvania,” which was created by staff at the U.S. National Archives, a General Index Card was created for yet another mystery man—a soldier named “Jackson Hayward.”

To date, researchers have only been able to determine that he may have enlisted with Company K of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry as a cook—a rank similar to that at which the known nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania were entered on the muster rolls of the regiment.

Researchers hope, with time and the continued financial support of the followers of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, to be able to confirm the dates of military service and race of this individual, as well as that of “Jack Jacobs.”

As always, we appreciate everyone’s help in ensuring that the service to the nation of these soldiers will never be forgotten. They helped to preserve our Union and deserve to be recognized more fully for their heroism and dedication.

* Our most important goal continues to be the purchase of the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) and U.S. Civil War Pension records for each of these remarkable men in order to document and freely share their stories with the widest possible audience. We continue to await word from staff at the U.S. National Archives regarding the timeframe for their resumption of digitization and reproduction services that have temporarily been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. As soon as those services have resumed, we will request an update regarding their estimated timeframe for fulfilling our records requests. In the interim, we will seek out further details about each of these soldiers via local and state archival resources across the nation, and will post updates as we confirm more data.

Sources:

Bullard, Aaron, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
Bullard, Aaron and French, Aaron, in U.S. Civil War Pension Index Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890-1891.
Bullard, Aaron, Presto Garris, Thomas Haywood, et. al. in U.S. Civil War Muster Out Rolls (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1865-1866 (available via Ancestry.com).
French, Aaron, in “Proceedings of the Third District Republican Convention.” Vicksburg, Mississippi: Vicksburg Evening Post, August 9, 1886.
French, Aaron and Family, in U.S. Census Records (Issaquena County, Mississippi): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1870-1910.
Haywood, Jackson, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
Haywood, Thomas, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Civil War Pension Index Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1888, 1907.
Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Veterans’ Administration Pension Payment Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1888, 1907.
Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Census (Beaufort County, South Carolina): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890.
Hanna Jacobs, widow of Jack Jacobs, in U.S. Census (Beaufort County, South Carolina): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890.

His First Name was “Presto?” A Black History Month Mystery

Feb14

Roster entry: Presto Garris,” Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, Vol. 1, 1869 (public domain; double click to enlarge).

“Presto?” The first name stood out like a sore thumb on the roster of my great-grandfather’s Civil War regiment—one with a rank and file populated largely by soldiers with Germanic surnames: “Acher,” “Bachman,” “Bauer,” “Bauman,” “Burger,” “Dachrodt,” “Diehl,” “Eisenbraun,” “Eppler,” “Fritz,” “Grimm,” “Guth,” “Handwerk,” “Hertzog,” “Keiser,” “Knecht,” “Knorr,” “Koenig,” “Laub,” “Metzger,” “Münch,” “Rehrig,” “Reinert,” “Richter,” “Sauerwein,” “Schmidt,” “Schneider,” “Strauss,” “Ulrich,” “Volkenand,” “Wagner,” “Weiss,” and “Zeppenfeld.”

Many of their given or middle names were equally as Germanic—“Adolph,” “Bernhard,” “Gottlieb,” “Friedrich,” “Heinrich,” “Levi,” “Matthias,” “Reinhold,” “Tilghman,” “Tobias,” and “Werner.” In addition, one of the regiment’s component units—Company K—had even been founded by a German immigrant with the intent of creating “a new German company” staffed entirely by German-Americans who had been born in the Lehigh Valley, as well as recent émigrés from Germany.

So, “Presto” as a given name seemed like it warranted further investigation. Did the spelling of this soldier’s given name signal that he had emigrated from a different part of the world—possibly Italy? There was, after all, another member of the 47th Pennsylvania’s ranks with a seemingly Italian surname—Battaglia (later proven to be an immigrant of Switzerland). Plus, there were also multiple men with Irish surnames who had also enlisted with the 47th.

Or, maybe this soldier had been employed as a magician prior to enlisting in the military? (Probably not, but strange discoveries are surprisingly common with genealogical research.)

A more likely scenario? A harried Union Army clerk, in his haste to process new enlistees, simply omitted the “n” at the end of this soldier’s name—making him “Presto” for posterity’s sake rather than “Preston.”

I just had to know. Who was Presto?

Listing for “Presto Garris,” Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866, Pennsylvania State Archives (public domain).

It turned out that this 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer wasn’t a magician, and he wasn’t an immigrant from Italy, but he was someone whose first and last names were badly mangled by multiple “mis-spellers” over decades of data entry.

Upon further investigation, it became clear that he was a formerly enslaved, 33-year-old black man who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on October 5, 1862 while the regiment was stationed near Beaufort, South Carolina—meaning that my great-grandfather’s regiment had become an integrated one at least three months before President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Totally “wowed” by this discovery, I searched for even more information about this very important enlisted man, but my quest wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be because the regimental clerk who had entered “Presto” on the roster for Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Regiment in the Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers had spelled his name incorrectly—an error that was then perpetuated by historian Samuel P. Bates in his History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5.

Possible name variants for an African American member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, U.S. Civil War General Pension Index Cards (National Archives, public domain).

Fortunately, this soldier’s listing in the U.S. Civil War General Pension Index Card system was slightly more helpful, providing multiple “alias” (alternate) spellings of his name: “Presto Garris,” “Bristor Geddes,” and “Bristor Gethers,” as well as a potential spelling for the name of his wife, “Rachel Gethers,” and a possible place of residency and year of death—1894—because his widow had filed for a U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension from South Carolina on July 27, 1894.

Despite those hints, it took quite some time to pick up this soldier’s trail again. Eventually, though, that pension index card data helped me to find a Freedmen’s Bureau contract for him which confirmed that he had indeed settled in South Carolina post-war. Dated February 12, 1868, this document also confirmed that he had been signed to a contract with 14 other Freedmen by the Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina office of the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau to provide labor for the Whitehouse Plantation.

List showing “Brister Geddis,” et. al. on an 1868 Freedmen’s Bureau contract with the Whitehouse Plantation in South Carolina (public domain; double click to enlarge).

But, in another seemingly frustrating turn of events, that contract caused further confusion surrounding his name—this time spelling it as “Brister Geddis.” Fortunately, this new variant was repeated in the 1870 federal census—a sign that it was either the correct spelling or at least a closer approximation of how this soldier had pronounced his own name. Describing him as a 42-year-old black male residing in Beaufort, South Carolina, that same census also noted that he lived in Beaufort Township with his wife “Rachel,” a 24-year-old black woman (estimated birth year 1846), and son “Peter,” a 6-year-old black child, and confirmed that all three had been born in South Carolina. And that census record also noted that both “Brister” and “Rachel” were involved in farming land valued at $1,500.

Unfortunately, the 1880 federal census taker created still more confusion by illegibly writing the name as “Geddes, Brista” or “Geddis, Bristor”—and gave rise to two new puzzles by omitting son Peter’s name and also radically altering the estimated birth year of wife “Rachel”—changing it from 1846 to 1820 by stating that she was a 60-year-old who was four years older than her husband (rather than younger as she had reportedly been in 1870).

Even more frustrating? The special veterans’ census of 1890 altered the spelling of his name yet again—this time to “Brister Gedders.”

At that point, I made the decision to do everything humanly possible to right the wrong of this 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer’s forgotten military service by launching a GoFundMe campaign to support the purchase of this his full set of his military and pension records from the National Archives (as well as those of the other eight African American men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry).

If just three of you who regularly read the content on this website and follow our Facebook page donate $10 each to this campaign, we will be able to purchase the entire Compiled Military Service File for this forgotten member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and make it publicly available (free of charge) to other family history researchers and historians. If just four of you donate $20 each, we would also be able to purchase the entire Federal Military Pension Application File for that same soldier—a file that may very well contain critical vital statistics about this soldier’s birth, life and death, as well as vital statistics for his widow and son.

We might just even be able to determine when and where Brister/Bristor was buried and whether or not a gravestone marks his final resting place. If we find that no marker exists, or that the existing one has been damaged, or that the gravestone carver spelled his name incorrectly, we can then fix that wrong as well by asking the appropriate county, state and federal authorities to erect a suitable veteran’s headstone for him.

Please help us honor the military service of this unsung hero by making your donation today to our GoFundMe campaign, “Honor 9 Black Soldiers of the American Civil War.”

With Sincere Gratitude,

Laurie Snyder, Managing Editor
47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story

Sources:

1. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers: 1861-5, Vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.

2. “Garris, Presto,” in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.

3. “Garris, Presto” (alias “Geddes, Bristor”, alias “Gethers, Bristor”), in U.S. Civil War General Pension Index, 1890-1894. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

4. “Roll of Co. F., 47th Regiment, Infantry,” in Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives, retrieved online February 10, 2020.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

ONE CIVIL WAR REGIMENT'S STORY

Category Archives: Reconstruction, War’s End and Post-War

Catching Dogs and Hogs During the “Dog Days” of Summer (Charleston, South Carolina, 1865)

April 17, 1865: A Nation in Mourning Begins to Move Forward

No Way to Treat a Widow: A Look at the U.S. Civil War Pension Battles Waged by Widows of Union Army Soldiers

Thoughts of Home at Christmas: The Influence of Thomas Nast’s Art During a 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer’s Lifetime

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

The Demographics of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Alpha and Omega: The First and Last Duty Stations of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Research Update: More New Details Regarding the Lives of Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Black History Month: New Details Uncovered Regarding the Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

His First Name was “Presto?” A Black History Month Mystery