Boatmen. Soldiers. Railroad conductors who ensured smooth journeys for generations of travelers while marching forward through time on their own respective paths in life, John and Thomas Callahan were the sons of an Irish immigrant and a native Pennsylvanian. Their stories essentially began atop a hill in northeastern Pennsylvania — a site where so many others before them had unwillingly departed from life during America’s Revolutionary War era.

Formative Years 

Born in Pennsylvania on 20 February 1838 and on 16 October 1844, respectively, John Callahan (1838-1907) and Thomas Callahan (1844-1908) were sons of Patrick Callahan (1802-1854), who was a native of County Westmeath in Ireland (alternate birthplace: County Clare, Ireland; alternate birth year: 1791). Their father, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1829 (prior to the Great Famine) to escape the crushing poverty and growing cultural and religious division there, had married Unity McCarty (1802-1870) at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Haycock Run, Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the United States of America on 24 July 1837, and had then settled with her in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he supported his growing family on the wages of a laborer.

* Note: According to historians John W. Jordan, Edgar Moore Green and George T. Ettinger, “Thomas Callahan, a respected and worthy citizen of Easton, Pennsylvania, who, for thirty-five years has been an efficient and trusted employee of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, serving during that long period of time in various capacities, was born October 16, 1844, in Easton, Northampton county, Pennsylvania, on what was known as Gallows Hill. This section of the city, on which the Roman Catholic Church is now located [in 1905], derived its name from the number of public executions which took place there during the early period of its history.

“Patrick Callahan, father of Thomas Callahan, was born in Westmeath, Ireland, in 1802. He was raised to manhood in his native country, received the education afforded by the schools of that day and in 1829 emigrated to the United States and settled in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was united in marriage to Unity McCarty, and they were the parents of four [sic, “five”] children — John; Rose, deceased [before 1905]; Elizabeth; and Thomas Callahan.” (According to U.S. Census records, Unity Callahan also gave birth to a third son, James Callahan.)

Although Jordan, Green and Ettinger stated in their book, Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania, that John Callahan was born in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania in 1837, birth and baptismal records at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Haycock Run, Bucks County, Pennsylvania documented that he was born in Bucks County on 20 February 1838 and was then baptized as a Catholic at that church on 2 March 1838. According to the Reverend John McCann, the author of the 1920 journal article, History of Catholicity in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, from the Earliest Times to the Present, A.D. 1737-1920: 

“Catholicity has always been both a fact and a factor in Northampton County. This is true of the earliest days, as the county was originally constituted in 1752, and of today when it is delimited by the latest partition, that of 1843. For while it was yet a part of Bucks County, and as early as 1737, Catholics were living within the confines of Northampton County.

“It is recorded in the Bucks County legal records that Thomas and Richard Penn sold 500 acres of land at the eastern base of Haycock Mountain, Bucks County, contiguous to the present Northampton County lines, to Nicholas, Thomas, and Edward McCarthy, whose Catholic descendants still are a credit to the Church both in Bucks and Northampton Counties.

“These early Catholic settlers came to these parts with the influx of southern Irish mentioned by Logan in his report to Gov. Loud. An old deed in possession of Henry Mc Carthy, shows that under warrants dated March 11, 1737, land was also conveyed to Edward McCarthy, April 19, 1738, described as bounded by land of Thomas McCarthy et al. A tombstone in St. John Baptist’s cemetery at Haycock bears witness that Nicholas McCarthy, there buried, died in 1750 at the age of 80 and his wife in 1754 at the age of 70. Henry McCarthy, mentioned above, is the great great grandson of the pioneer Edward McCarthy. There is also a record of a deed made out to Felix McGee August 2, 1745. It was in the home of these McCarthys and of their descendants that Catholic services were conducted in earlier times and thither Catholics of the lower sections of Northampton county repaired to hear Mass and receive the sacraments till missions and stations were founded throughout Northampton county by the missioners from Goshenhoppen, in Berks County, subsequent to 1752 when Northampton County came into being. Up to 1829, when St. Bernard’s churchyard and burial grounds at Easton were procured by Rev. John FitzPatrick, Catholics brought their dead to Haycock for interment. There the earlier colonists of the lower end of Northampton county rest in the Lord, in ground donated by the McCarthys for church and burial purposes.”

Reverend McCann further explained that:

“The first Catholic born and baptized in these parts was John McCarthy, while Northampton county was still a part of Bucks. He was the son of Edward McCarthy, to whom Thomas and Richard Penn sold land in Haycock, March 11 I737 – He was baptized at Haycock, May 27, 1742, ten years before the new county of Northampton was carved out of Bucks. The baptismal record appears in the register preserved at the Blessed Sacrament Church, Goshenhoppen, now Bally, Berks county, from which place all northeastern Pennsylvania was cared for spiritually by Rev. Theodore Schneider, S.J., from 1741 until his death in 1764; here may be found the birth and baptismal records of all Catholics born within the confines of Northampton county, and baptized up to 1828. In that year priests from Milton came, and in 1833 all Northampton, then including the present Monroe and Carbon counties, was constituted one parish with Bucks; and all subsequent records were kept at St. John the Baptist’s Church, at Haycock, Bucks County. St. Bernard’s, Easton, was dedicated in 1836, and private records were kept by priests serving it and the county. As separate parishes were organized, new sets of records were of course opened. Those preserved at St. Bernard’s, Easton, date back to 1847, but those from March, 1888, to January, 1893, are missing entirely. The Goshenhoppen record is entitled by Father Schneider, ‘A Book of Those Baptized, Married and Buried at Philadelphia, Maxetani, Magunshi and Tupelhuken, Begun, A.D. 1741.’”

Raised in Easton with their siblings, James Callahan (born circa 1838; died before 1907), Rose Callahan (born circa 1839; died before 1905) and Elizabeth Callahan (born circa 1841; died before 1907), John and Thomas Callahan were educated in the common schools of their community. According to Reverend McCann:

“The early schoolmasters in Allentown and other Northampton county towns, in earlier times, were Irish refugees whose only crime in the land they fled was that they attempted to impart an education to the youth of their native land, which under the English Penal code was treason. Whatever education was procured by the youth of Northampton county in earlier times was secured through these refugees who were furnished with only primitive equipment.”

Sadly, the relatively stable lives of the Callahan siblings would suddenly be reshaped, radically, by the unexpected death of their father, Patrick Callahan, when he passed away in Easton in 1854. Sometime afterward, all three of Patrick’s sons took it upon themselves to secure jobs in order to help their mother and their siblings survive. According to Jordan, Green and Ettinger, Thomas Callahan “was employed by Mr. Rinicks on the rope walk.”

Residents of Easton’s West Ward when the federal census was enumerated there in June 1860, clan Callahan was now headed by its matriarch, Unity (McCarty) Callahan, who was described as a fifty-year-old “washerwoman.” Residing with her were her children: John, a twenty-seven-year-old blacksmith; James, a twenty-two-year-old boatman; eighteen-year-old “Rosean” [sic, “Rose Callahan”]; and Thomas, a fifteen-year-old who was employed as a boatman when he wasn’t attending school. Their lives would soon be altered again, however, as their nation entered into a secession crisis that quickly devolved into a civil war.

* Note: Although Unity’s daughter, Elizabeth Callahan, was not listed as a member of Unity’s household on the 1860 federal census, she was listed as a member of Unity’s household on the federal census that was enumerated in Easton in early July of 1870.

American Civil War — 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers

Two days before President Abraham Lincoln issued his 15 April 1861 call for volunteer troops to help defend the nation’s capital (following the fall of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces), residents of the counties of Lehigh and Northampton in Pennsylvania “called a public meeting at Easton ‘to consider the posture of affairs and to take measures for the support of the National Government,’” according to Alfred Mathews and Austin N. Hungerford, authors of History of the Counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Worried about the worsening relations between America’s North and South, the citizens voted to establish and equip an entirely new military unit, one that would be readied for duty as quickly as possible — a decision that proved to be remarkably prescient.

Several of the men in attendance that evening, including Charles Heckman and Samuel Yohe, had already begun recruiting local militia members and other volunteers to fulfill that charge and protect the nation’s capital if needed. Yohe, the owner-operator of a local distillery, mill and store in Easton who had also served his community as an associate judge, county treasurer and prothonotary, was the commanding officer of the Washington Grays, an Easton-based militia unit. The same day that President Lincoln called for volunteer troops, those same community leaders reached out to Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin to volunteer the support of their local recruits to the Keystone State and nation.

Three days later, the Washington Grays and other Easton residents, including John Callahan, left hearth and home to head for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s capital city, Harrisburg, which was located in Dauphin County. Upon their arrival at the train station there, they disembarked and marched to Camp Curtin, a military training camp that had been hastily erected on land that was owned by the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society in northern Harrisburg. On 20 April 1861, they were officially enrolled and mustered for military service. According to historians John W. Jordan, Edgar Moore Green and George T. Ettinger, John Callahan entered at the rank of private and “was the second man to sign the roll in Company C, First Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Captain W. H. Armstrong, commanding.”

* Note: While Yohe’s Washington Grays were forming Company C of that new regiment and Yohe was being commissioned as the 1st Pennsylvania’s new colonel, Tilghman H. Good and Thomas W. Lynn were receiving commissions as lieutenant-colonel and major, respectively. George W. Alexander and William H. Gausler, captains of the Reading and Jordan Artillerists, were then placed in charge of the 1st Pennsylvania’s G and I companies, respectively. (Good, commanding officer of the 4th Regiment, Pennsylvania National Guard at the time of his appointment to the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers’ command staff, had previously served as captain of the Allen Rifles, a long-time Lehigh County militia unit. He would later go on to form his own regiment — the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers — during the summer of 1861 and would then also be elected to three terms as a post-war mayor of Allentown. G. W. Alexander would be commissioned as a lieutenant-colonel and named as Good’s second-in-command with the 47th Pennsylvania, while William Gausler would serve as a major and its third-in-command.)

Transported by Northern Central Railway cars with their regiment to Cockeysville, Maryland, the 1st Pennsylvanians spent time at Camp Scott near York, Pennsylvania before they were ordered to guard railroad lines between Pennsylvania and Druid Park in Baltimore, Maryland from 14-25 May.

From there, the 1st Pennsylvanians were assigned to Catonsville (25 May) and Franklintown (29 May) before being ordered back across the border with their regiment and stationed at Chambersburg (3 June). There, they were attached to the 2nd Brigade (under Brigadier-General George Wynkoop), 2nd Division (under Major-General William High Keim), in the Union Army corps commanded by Major-General Robert Patterson.

Ordered on to Hagerstown, Maryland on 18 June and then to Funkstown, Goose Creek and Edward’s Ferry, the regiment remained in that vicinity until 22 June, when it was ordered to Frederick, Maryland. Assigned with other Union regiments to occupy the town of Martinsburg, Virginia from 8-21 July (following the Battle of Falling Waters earlier that month), the 1st Pennsylvanians were ordered to Harpers Ferry on 21 July. Following the completion of their Three Months’ Service, they honorably mustered out on 23 July 1861.

American Civil War — 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Realizing that the war was far from over, John Callahan opted to re-enlist for a second tour of duty — but with an entirely different regiment — the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry — in Easton on 25 August 1861. His younger brother, Thomas Callahan, then also enrolled for military service in Easton — on 9 September. A week later, they mustered in together for duty — on 16 September at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg.

Due to his prior service with the Union Army, John Callahan was awarded the rank of sergeant while Thomas Callahan entered at the rank of private. Both were assigned to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ E Company, which John had been “instrumental” in forming, according to historians Jordan, Green and Ettinger. Military records at the time described him as a twenty-two-year-old furrier and resident of Easton who was five feet, seven and one-quarter inches tall with red hair, gray eyes and a light complexion, while his brother, Tom, was described as a nineteen-year-old ropemaker and resident of Easton who was five feet, seven inches tall with light hair, blue eyes and a light complexion.

* Note: Company E was commanded by Captain Charles Hickman Yard, who had been a second lieutenant with Company C of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers and a superior officer of John Callahan during their initial period of Three Months’ Service at the beginning of the war. According to Lewis Schmidt, author of A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers:

“Capt. Yard had been enrolling men at Yard’s Saloon in Easton and took part of his company to Harrisburg on Friday, August 23, to be attached to Col. Good’s ‘Zouaves’ (a title that did not remain long with the 47th). The Captain had been recruiting men since August 13, and a number of men were still needed to fill the unit which would become Company E in the 47th.… By Monday the 26th, an additional 40 men were ready and another group left for Harrisburg. But the company was still not filled and the Captain planned to return to recruit the remaining members.

“These groups were ‘sworn’ (probably enrolled) into the state service on the 28th, and placed in the hands of 1st Lt. Bonstein [sic, “Lawrence Bonstine”] for instruction in the drill, while the Captain returned to Easton to ‘shanghai’ some more recruits at Yard’s Saloon.

“It was not until the following Monday, September 2 that an additional group of 24 men had been recruited and Capt. Yard left with these men in the morning, planning to return and complete the enrollment of the unit later.”

Nine more men mustered into E Company on 19 September (with another, James Huff, joining as a private on 1 November for a total of ninety-three — a number that remained static until 1862). Also according to Schmidt, the men of E Company were issued:

“1 light blue overcoat, 1 extra good blouse, 1 pair dark pantaloons, 2 white flannel shirts, 2 pair drawers, 2 pair socks, 1 pair shoes, 1 cap, 1 knapsack (suspended from shoulder), 1 haversack (suspended from waist), 1 canteen, and received 71 rifles on the 19th.”

Following brief training in light infantry tactics at Camp Curtin, the men of Company E and their fellow 47th Pennsylvanians were transported by rail to Washington, D.C. Stationed roughly two miles from the White House, they pitched tents at “Camp Kalorama” on the Kalorama Heights near Georgetown, beginning 21 September. Henry D. Wharton, a musician with C Company, penned the following update to the Sunbury American on 22 September:

“After a tedious ride we have, at last, safely arrived at the City of ‘magnificent distances.’ We left Harrisburg on Friday last at 1 o’clock A.M. and reached this camp yesterday (Saturday) at 4 P.M., as tired and worn out a sett [sic] of mortals as can possibly exist. On arriving at Washington we were marched to the ‘Soldiers Retreat,’ a building purposely erected for the benefit of the soldier, where every comfort is extended to him and the wants of the ‘inner man’ supplied.

“After partaking of refreshments we were ordered into line and marched, about three miles, to this camp. So tired were the men, that on marching out, some gave out, and had to leave the ranks, but J. Boulton Young, our ‘little Zouave,’ stood it bravely, and acted like a veteran. So small a drummer is scarcely seen in the army, and on the march through Washington he was twice the recipient of three cheers.

“We were reviewed by Gen. McClellan yesterday [21 September 1861] without our knowing it. All along the march we noticed a considerable number of officers, both mounted and on foot; the horse of one of the officers was so beautiful that he was noticed by the whole regiment, in fact, so wrapt [sic] up were they in the horse, the rider wasn’t noticed, and the boys were considerably mortified this morning on dis-covering they had missed the sight of, and the neglect of not saluting the soldier next in command to Gen. Scott.

“Col. Good, who has command of our regiment, is an excellent man and a splendid soldier. He is a man of very few words, and is continually attending to his duties and the wants of the Regiment.

“…. Our Regiment will now be put to hard work; such as drilling and the usual business of camp life, and the boys expect and hope an occasional ‘pop’ at the enemy.”

On the 24th of that same month, the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry finally became part of the U.S. Army when its men were officially mustered into federal service. The next day, 25 September, George Washington Hahn of E Company, David Huber and F. J. Scott described their early days via a letter from Camp Kalorama to the Easton Daily Evening Express:

“A]fter a ride of about twenty-four hours in those delightful cattle cars, we came in sight of the Capitol of the U.S. with colors flying and the band playing and everyone in the best of spirits…. We have one of the best camps in the Union; plenty of shade trees, water and food at present; we have had no ‘Hardees’ [hardtack] yet in this camp, but no doubt we will have them in abundance by and by. But we can cook them in so many different ways, they are better than beef. We soak them over night, fry them for breakfast, stew them for dinner, and warm them over for supper…. The way we pass our time in the evening is as follows: first, after supper, we have a good Union song, then we read, write, crack jokes and sing again. We are ‘gay and happy’ and always shall be while the stars and stripes float over us.

“…. We have a noble Colonel and an excellent Band, and the company officers throughout are well drilled for their positions. Our boys are well and contented; satisfied with their clothing, satisfied with their rations, and more than all satisfied with their officers, from Captain to the 8th Corporal. Our boys will stand by the Captain till the last man falls….

“This morning we … visited Georgetown Heights; we stood on top of the reservoir and from there had a fine view of the Federal forts and forces on the other side of the Potomac. It looks impossible for an enemy to enter Washington, so strongly fortified is every hill and the camps connect for miles along the river. We saw General McClellan and Professor Lowe taking a view of the Confederate army from the balloon. The rebels are now only four miles from here….”

On 27 September — a rainy day, the 47th Pennsylvania was assigned to the 3rd Brigade of Union Brigadier-General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, which also included the 33rd, 49th and 79th New York regiments. By that afternoon, the 47th Pennsylvania was on the move again. Ordered onward by Brigadier-General Silas Casey, the Mississippi rifle-armed 47th Pennsylvania infantrymen marched behind their regimental band until reaching Camp Lyon, Maryland on the Potomac River’s eastern shore. At 5 p.m., they joined the 46th Pennsylvania in moving double-quick (one hundred and sixty-five steps per minute using thirty-three-inch steps) across the “Chain Bridge” marked on federal maps, and continued on for roughly another mile before being ordered to make camp.

The next morning, they broke camp and moved again. Marching toward Falls Church, Virginia, they arrived at Camp Advance around dusk. There, about two miles from the bridge they had crossed a day earlier, they re-pitched their tents in a deep ravine near a new federal fort under construction (Fort Ethan Allen). They had completed a roughly eight-mile trek, were situated close to the headquarters of General William Farrar Smith (nicknamed “Baldy”), and were now part of the Union’s massive Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”). Under Smith’s leadership, their regiment and brigade would help to defend the nation’s capital from the time of their September arrival through late January when the men of the 47th Pennsylvania would be shipped to the nation’s Deep South.

Once again, Company C Musician Henry Wharton recapped the regiment’s activities, noting, via his 29 September letter home to the Sunbury American, that the 47th had changed camps three times in three days:

“On Friday last we left Camp Kalorama, and the same night encamped about one mile from the Chain Bridge on the opposite side of the Potomac from Washington. The next morning, Saturday, we were ordered to this Camp [Camp Advance near Fort Ethan Allen, Virginia], one and a half miles from the one we occupied the night previous. I should have mentioned that we halted on a high hill (on our march here) at the Chain Bridge, called Camp Lyon, but were immediately ordered on this side of the river. On the route from Kalorama we were for two hours exposed to the hardest rain I ever experienced. Whew, it was a whopper; but the fellows stood it well – not a murmur – and they waited in their wet clothes until nine o’clock at night for their supper. Our Camp adjoins that of the N.Y. 79th (Highlanders.)….

“We had not been in this Camp more than six hours before our boys were supplied with twenty rounds of ball and cartridge, and ordered to march and meet the enemy; they were out all night and got back to Camp at nine o’clock this morning, without having a fight. They are now in their tents taking a snooze preparatory to another march this morning…. I don’t know how long the boys will be gone, but the orders are to cook two days’ rations and take it with them in their haversacks….

“There was a nice little affair came off at Lavensville [sic, Lewinsville], a few miles from here on Wednesday last; our troops surprised a party of rebels (much larger than our own.) killing ten, took a Major prisoner, and captured a large number of horses, sheep and cattle, besides a large quantity of corn and potatoes, and about ninety six tons of hay. A very nice day’s work. The boys are well, in fact, there is no sickness of any consequence at all in our Regiment….”

Sometime during that phase of duty, as part of the 3rd Brigade, the 47th Pennsylvanians were moved to a site they initially christened “Camp Big Chestnut” in reference to a large chestnut tree located nearby. The site would eventually become known to the Keystone Staters as “Camp Griffin,” and was located roughly ten miles from Washington, D.C.

On 11 October, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in a Grand Review at Bailey’s Cross Roads. In a mid-October letter to his family back in Pennsylvania, Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin (the leader of C Company who would be promoted in 1864 to lead the entire 47th Regiment) reported that companies D, A, C, F and I (the 47th Pennsylvania’s right wing) were ordered to picket duty after the left wing companies (B, G, K, E, and H) had been forced to return to camp by Confederate troops. In his letter of 13 October, Henry Wharton described their duties, as well as their new home:

“The location of our camp is fine and the scenery would be splendid if the view was not obstructed by heavy thickets of pine and innumerable chesnut [sic] trees. The country around us is excellent for the Rebel scouts to display their bravery; that is, to lurk in the dense woods and pick off one of our unsuspecting pickets. Last night, however, they (the Rebels) calculated wide of their mark; some of the New York 33d boys were out on picket; some fourteen or fifteen shots were exchanged, when our side succeeded in bringing to the dust, (or rather mud,) an officer and two privates of the enemy’s mounted pickets. The officer was shot by a Lieutenant in Company H [?], of the 33d.

“Our own boys have seen hard service since we have been on the ‘sacred soil.’ One day and night on picket, next day working on entrenchments at the Fort, (Ethan Allen.) another on guard, next on march and so on continually, but the hardest was on picket from last Thursday morning ‘till Saturday morning – all the time four miles from camp, and both of the nights the rain poured in torrents, so much so that their clothes were completely saturated with the rain. They stood it nobly – not one complaining; but from the size of their haversacks on their return, it is no wonder that they were satisfied and are so eager to go again tomorrow. I heard one of them say ‘there was such nice cabbage, sweet and Irish potatoes, turnips, &c., out where their duty called them, and then there was a likelihood of a Rebel sheep or young porker advancing over our lines and then he could take them as ‘contraband’ and have them for his own use.’ When they were out they saw about a dozen of the Rebel cavalry and would have had a bout with them, had it not been for…unlucky circumstance – one of the men caught the hammer of his rifle in the strap of his knapsack and caused his gun to fire; the Rebels heard the report and scampered in quick time….”

On Friday morning, 22 October 1861, the 47th engaged in a divisional review, described by Schmidt as massing “about 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and twenty pieces of artillery all in one big open field.” Less than a month later, in his letter of 17 November, Henry Wharton revealed more details about life at Camp Griffin:

“This morning our brigade was out for inspection; arms, accoutrements [sic], clothing, knapsacks, etc, all were out through a thorough examination, and if I must say it myself, our company stood best, A No. 1, for cleanliness. We have a new commander to our Brigade, Brigadier General Brannen [sic], of the U.S. Army, and if looks are any criterion, I think he is a strict disciplinarian and one who will be as able to get his men out of danger as he is willing to lead them to battle….

“The boys have plenty of work to do, such as piquet [sic] duty, standing guard, wood-chopping, police duty and day drill; but then they have the most substantial food; our rations consist of fresh beef (three times a week) pickled pork, pickled beef, smoked pork, fresh bread, daily, which is baked by our own bakers, the Quartermaster having procured portable ovens for that purpose, potatoes, split peas, beans, occasionally molasses and plenty of good coffee, so you see Uncle Sam supplies us plentifully….

“A few nights ago our Company was out on piquet [sic]; it was a terrible night, raining very hard the whole night, and what made it worse, the boys had to stand well to their work and dare not leave to look for shelter. Some of them consider they are well paid for their exposure, as they captured two ancient muskets belonging to Secessia. One of them is of English manufacture, and the other has the Virginia militia mark on it. They are both in a dilapidated condition, but the boys hold them in high estimation as they are trophies from the enemy, and besides they were taken from the house of Mrs. Stewart, sister to the rebel Jackson who assassinated the lamented Ellsworth at Alexandria. The honorable lady, Mrs. Stewart, is now a prisoner at Washington and her house is the headquarters of the command of the piquets [sic]….

“Since the success of the secret expedition, we have all kinds of rumors in camp. One is that our Brigade will be sent to the relief of Gen. Sherman, in South Carolina. The boys all desire it and the news in the ‘Press’ is correct, that a large force is to be sent there, I think their wish will be gratified….”

On 20 November, the Callahan brothers and their fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in The Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia. According to National Portrait Gallery historian James Barber:

“For three hours some 70,000 polished troops marched passed the reviewing stand, where the president, members of his cabinet, and Washington dignitaries were in attendance. It was the largest military assemblage up to that time in North America. ‘The Grand Review went off splendidly,’ wrote McClellan that night in a letter to his wife, ‘not a mistake was made, not a hitch. I never saw so large a Review in Europe so well done—I was completely satisfied & delighted beyond expression.’ 

“Among the 20,000 spectators to witness the Grand Review was the poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, who was visiting the Washington area with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.

“After leaving the review, during the carriage ride back to Washington, she heard troops singing the song ‘John Brown’s Body.’ A companion suggested that she should write new lyrics to the song, the melody of which lingered in her mind that night in her room at Willard’s Hotel in Washington. She awoke ‘in the gray of the morning twilight’ with the song still in her head and ‘the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.’ She arose quickly and in the dimness of the early hour she began scribbling the verses on stationery ‘almost without looking at the paper.’

“Her poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862; the magazine paid her five dollars. Soon thereafter her verse was set to music and her inspirational song became a wartime favorite….”

The next day, according to Schmidt, the regiment participated in a morning divisional headquarters review that was overseen by the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, followed by brigade and division drills all afternoon. According to Schmidt, “each man was supplied with ten blank cartridges.” Afterward, “Gen. Smith requested Gen. Brannan to inform Col. Good that the 47th was the best regiment in the whole division.” As a reward for their performance — and in preparation for even bigger adventures and honors to come, Brannan obtained brand new Springfield rifles for every member of the 47th Pennsylvania.

1862

Ordered to move from their Virginia encampment back to Maryland, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers left Camp Griffin at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22 January 1862. Marching through deep mud with their equipment for three miles in order to reach the railroad station at Falls Church, they were then transported by rail to Alexandria, before sailing the Potomac River aboard the steamship City of Richmond to the Washington Arsenal. While there, they were reequipped before being marched off for dinner and rest at the Soldiers’ Retreat in Washington, D.C.

The next afternoon, the 47th Pennsylvanians hopped aboard cars on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and headed for Annapolis, Maryland. Arriving around 10 p.m., they were assigned quarters in barracks at the United States Naval Academy. They then spent that Friday through Monday (24-27 January 1862) loading their equipment and other supplies onto the steamship Oriental. During that phase of duty, E Company Sergeant John Callahan was reduced to the rank of private (on 25 January).

* Note: Regimental historian Lewis Schmidt was unable to find a definitive explanation for that significant demotion of Sergeant John Callahan on 25 January 1862, but theorized that it may have been an indicator that Sergeant Callahan had either failed to prevent two E Company privates from deserting and evading capture around that same time, or because members of the 47th Pennsylvania had been caught drinking alcohol. (Whatever it was that had unfolded had been serious enough that John Callahan would never again be promoted while serving with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.) 

While all of that was unfolding with Company E, the officers of Company I were also having a serious problem with one of their subordinates that also disrupted the loading of the Oriental. According to Schmidt and letters that were subsequently sent to family members by other 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, those preparations ceased on Monday, 27 January, at 10 a.m. when:

“The regiment was formed and instructed by Lt. Col. Alexander ‘that we were about drumming out a member who had behaved himself unlike a soldier.’ …. The prisoner, Pvt. James C. Robinson of Company I, was a 36 year old miner from Allentown who had been ‘disgracefully discharged’ by order of the War Department. Pvt. Robinson was marched out with martial music playing and a guard of nine men, two men on each side and five behind him at charge bayonets. The music then struck up with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as the procession was marched up and down in front of the regiment, and Pvt. Robinson was marched out of the yard.”

After that public shaming, the remaining 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen then resumed their duties. Finally finished with the loading of weapons, ammunition, food, and other supplies onto the Oriental by the afternoon of 27 January 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were then ferried to the big steamship by smaller steamers, and began boarding the Oriental for the final time (enlisted men first, followed by their officers). Per the directive of Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, they then steamed away for the Deep South at 4 p.m. and headed for Florida which, despite its secession from the Union, waa still strategically important to the Union due to the presence of Fort Taylor in Key West and Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

Florida and South Carolina

The Callahan brothers and their fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers arrived in Key West, Florida and disembarked from the Oriental in early February in 1862. Initially directed to pitch their tents on the beach, they were then assigned to garrison duties at Fort Taylor. During the weekend of Friday, 14 February, the regiment officially introduced its presence to locals by parading through the city’s streets. That Sunday, a number of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers also attended services at area churches.

They were now diplomats, as well as soldiers. In addition to defending the fort, they were also charged with inspiring area residents to support the efforts of the United States government to end the secession crisis and civil war. By April 1862, according to Schmidt, E Company Captain Charles H. Yard had been placed in charge of three regiments that were responsible for “clearing land and cutting roads” and creating a “fine military road … cut by the brigade from Fort Taylor directly through the island.”

Drilled daily in heavy artillery and light infantry tactics, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers also continued to work on strengthening the fortifications at Fort Taylor. But as their stay there lingered on, the quality of water available to them for drinking and bathing became increasingly problematic — just as Florida’s punishing heat and humidity worsened. As a result, multiple members of the regiment fell ill with dysentery or typhoid fever. Far too many died. Others lived, but found it harder and harder to perform their duties because they were weakened by the weather or disease.

Next ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina from mid-June through July, the Callahan brothers and their fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers made camp near Fort Walker before relocating to the Beaufort District, Department of the South, roughly thirty-five miles away. Frequently assigned to hazardous picket detail north of their main camp, which put them at increased risk from enemy sniper fire, the 47th Pennsylvanians became known for their “attention to duty, discipline and soldierly bearing,” and “received the highest commendation from Generals Hunter and Brannan,” according to historian Samuel P. Bates.

On 9 and 10 July, respectively, detachments from the regiment were assigned to the Expedition to Fenwick Island and the Demonstration against Pocotaligo.

Capture of Saint John’s Bluff

During a return expedition to Florida beginning 30 September, the 47th Pennsylvania joined with the 1st Connecticut Battery, 7th Connecticut Infantry, and part of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry in assaulting Confederate forces at their heavily protected camp at Saint John’s Bluff overlooking the Saint John’s River area.

Backed by the U.S. gunboats Cimarron, E.B. Hale, Paul Jones, Uncas, and Water Witch and their twelve-pound boat howitzers, the fifteen hundred-strong Union Army force commanded by Brigadier-General Brannan advanced up the Saint John’s River and inland along the Pablo and Mt. Pleasant Creeks on 1 October 1862 before disembarking and marching for the battery atop Saint John’s Bluff.  The next day, Union gunboats exchanged shellfire with the Rebel battery while the Union ground force continued on. When the 47th Pennsylvanians reached Saint John’s Bluff with their fellow brigade members on 3 October 1862, they found an abandoned battery. (Other Union troops discovered that the Yellow Bluff battery was also Rebel-free.)

Companies E and K of the 47th Pennsylvania were then led by Captain Yard on a special mission with other Union Army soldiers in the reconnaissance and recapture of the city of Jacksonville, Florida on 5 October 1862. A day later, after receiving intelligence that a Confederate steamer — the Governor Milton — had been engaged in furnishing troops, ammunition and other supplies to Confederate Army units scattered throughout the region, and was reportedly docked near Hawkinsville, men from the 47th Pennsylvania’s Companies E and K boarded the Union gunboat Darlington (a former Confederate steamer) — and set out in search of the Governor Milton. Traveling two hundred miles along the Saint John’s River — with protection from the Union gunboat Hale — th 47th Pennsylvanians found their prize, captured it and steamed it back down the river to place it safely behind Union Navy lines. According to Schmidt, Corporal George R. Nichols of E Company was one of the men involved in that steamer’s capture and later described that mission:

“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….

“I commanded one of the Small Boats that went 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. 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 [sic] 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 went out and Borrowed a half of a deer that hung up in a [sic] out house and a bee hive for some honey for the Boys. I never forget the boys.”

Integration of the Regiment

Meanwhile, back at its South Carolina base of operations, the 47th Pennsylvania was making history as it became an integrated regiment. On 5 and 15 October 1862, respectively, the regiment added to its muster rolls several young Black men who had endured plantation enslavement in the Beaufort vicinity, including sixteen-year-old Abraham Jassum, twenty-two-year-old Edward Jassum and thirty-three-year-old Bristor Gethers — all of whom would go on to successfully complete their three-year periods of enlistment and be honorably discharged in October 1865.

Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina

From 21-23 October, under the brigade and regimental commands of Colonel Tilghman H. Good and Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, members of the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry joined with other Union regiments to engage the heavily protected Confederate forces in and around Pocotaligo, South Carolina.

Harried by snipers en route to the Pocotaligo Bridge, which had been targeted for destruction during that expedition (in order to further disrupt the Confederacy’s ability to transport troops and ammunition), they met resistance from yet another entrenched, heavily fortified Confederate battery which opened fire on the Union troops as they entered an open cotton field.

Those headed toward higher ground at the Frampton Plantation fared no better as they encountered artillery and infantry fire from the surrounding forests. But the Union soldiers would not give in; grappling with Rebels wherever they met them, they pursued the enemy for four miles as the Confederate Army retreated to the bridge. Once there, the 47th Pennsylvania relieved the 7th Connecticut. Unfortunately, the enemy was just too well armed. After two hours of intense fighting in an unsuccesful attempt to take the ravine and bridge, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were finally forced to withdraw by their depleted ammunition, and retreated to Mackay’s Point.

Losses for the regiment were particularly high. Captain Charles Mickley of G Company was killed, and Captain George Junker of Company K was mortally wounded. Privates Henry A. Backman, Nathan George, Samuel Minnich, George B. Rose and fourteen other enlisted men died; a total of one hundred and fourteen had been wounded in action.

On 23 October, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers returned to Hilton Head, where several members were appointed later that month to serve as the honor guard for the funeral of Major-General Ormsby M. Mitchel, the commander of the U.S. Army’s 10th Corps and Department of the South who succumbed to yellow fever on 30 October. (The Mountains of Mitchel, a part of Mars’ South Pole discovered by Mitchel in 1846 while working as a University of Cincinnati astronomer, and Mitchelville, the first Freedmen’s town created after the Civil War, were both later named for him.) The men selected from the 47th Pennsylvania for that special detail were given the high honor of firing the salute over his grave.

1863 

Having been ordered back to Key West on 15 November 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers then spent the entire year of 1863 garrisoning federal installations in Florida as part of the U.S. Army’s 10th Corps, Department of the South. Once again, the men of E Company joined with Companies A, B, C, G, and I in guarding Key West’s Fort Taylor while Companies D, F, H, and K garrisoned Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas off the coast of Florida.

According to the U.S. Army’s records collection known as “Returns from Military Posts,” sometime shortly after returning to Key West, Company E’s First Lieutenant Lawrence Bonstine was assigned to special duty as post adjutant — a position he continued to hold from at least 10 January 1863 through the end of December 1863. Reporting directly to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Tilghman Good, he was essentially Good’s right hand, and was responsible for ensuring that regimental records and reports to senior military officials were kept up to date.

On 5 March 1863, Private William H. Eichman was promoted to the rank of corporal, and exactly one month later, on 5 April 1863, Second Lieutenant W. Scott Johnston was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant and also appointed as adjutant with the central regimental staff.

As with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ previous assignments, officers and enlisted members of the regiment soon came to realize that disease would again be their constant companion and foe — making it all the more remarkable that, during that phase of service, the majority of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers chose to re-enlist when their three-year service terms were up, including Private Thomas Callahan, who was promoted to the rank of corporal at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida on 10 October 1863.

1864 

In early January 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was ordered to expand the Union Army’s reach by sending part of the regiment north to retake possession of, and rehabilitate, Fort Myers, which had been abandoned in 1858 following the U.S. government’s third war with the Seminole Indians. Per orders issued earlier in 1864 by Major-General D. P. Woodbury, Commanding Officer, U.S. Department of the Gulf, District of Key West and the Tortugas, that the fort be reclaimed to facilitate the Union’s Gulf Coast blockade, Captain Richard Graeffe and a group of men from Company A were assigned to the duty of raiding cattle herds in northern Florida in order to provide food for the growing Union troop presence in the state. Graeffe and his men subsequently turned the fort into both their base of operations and a shelter for pro-Union supporters, men, women and children who were escaping slavery, Confederate Army deserters, and others fleeing Rebel troops.

Meanwhile, the men from E Company and the other members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were preparing to embark on the regiment’s history-making journey to Louisiana. Boarding yet another steamer — the Charles Thomas — on 25 February 1864, the men from Companies B, C, D, I, and K of the 47th Pennsylvania headed for Algiers, Louisiana (across the river from New Orleans), followed on 1 March by other members of the regiment from Companies E, F, G, and H who had been stationed at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Upon the second group’s arrival, the now almost fully reunited regiment moved by train on 28 February to Brashear City (now Morgan City, Louisiana) before heading to Franklin by steamer through the Bayou Teche. There, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry joined the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division of the Department of the Gulf’s 19th Army Corps, and became the only Pennsylvania regiment to serve in the Red River Campaign of Union Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks. (Unable to reach Louisiana until 23 March, the men from Company A were effectively placed on a different type of detached duty in New Orleans while they awaited transport to enable them to catch up with the main part of their regiment. Charged with guarding and overseeing the transport of two hundred and forty-five Confederate prisoners, they were finally able to board the Ohio Belle on 7 April, and reached Alexandria with those prisoners on 9 April.)

Red River Campaign

The early days on the ground in Louisiana quickly woke the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers up to just how grueling that new phase of duty would be. From 14-26 March, most members of the regiment marched for Alexandria and Natchitoches, Louisiana, by way of New Iberia, Vermilionville (now part of Lafayette), Opelousas, and Washington.

From 4-5 April 1864, the regiment added to its roster of young Black soldiers when Aaron Bullard (later known as Aaron French), James Bullard, John Bullard, Samuel Jones, and Hamilton Blanchard (also known as John Hamilton) enrolled for military service with the 47th Pennsylvania at Natchitoches. According to their respective entries in the Civil War Veterans’ Card File at the Pennsylvania State Archives and on regimental muster rolls, the men were then officially mustered in for duty on 22 June at Morganza. Several of their entries noted that they were assigned the rank of “(Colored) Cook” while others were given the rank of “Under-Cook.”

Often short on food and water throughout their long harsh-climate trek through enemy territory, the men encamped briefly at Pleasant Hill (now the Village of Pleasant Hill) the night of 7 April before continuing on the next day.

Marching until mid-afternoon on 8 April, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were rushed into battle ahead of other regiments in the 2nd Division. Sixty members of the 47th were cut down that day during the volley of fire unleashed during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads (also known as the Battle of Mansfield due to its proximity to the town of Mansfield). The fighting waned only when darkness fell. The exhausted, but uninjured collapsed beside the gravely wounded. After midnight, the surviving Union troops withdrew to Pleasant Hill.

The next day, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ordered into a critically important defensive position at the far right of the Union lines, their right flank spreading up onto a high bluff. By 3 p.m., after enduring a midday charge by the troops of Confederate Major-General Richard Taylor (a plantation owner who was the son of Zachary Taylor, former president of the United States), the brutal fighting still showed no signs of ending. Suddenly, just as the 47th was shifting to the left side of the massed Union forces, the men of the 47th Pennsylvania were forced to bolster the 165th New York’s buckling lines by blocking another Confederate assault, during what has since become known as the Battle of Pleasant Hill.

Casualties were severe. Second Lieutenant Alfred Swoyer of Company K and Private Richard Hahn of Company E were killed in action. The regiment’s second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander, was nearly killed, and the regiment’s two color-bearers, both from Company C, were also seriously wounded while preventing the American flag from falling into enemy hands. Still others from the 47th were captured by Confederate troops, marched roughly one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford, a Confederate Army prison camp near Tyler, Texas, and held there as prisoners of war until they were released during prisoner exchanges which began on 22 July and dragged on into November 1864. E Company Corporal James Huff, who had been wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill on 9 April, was one of those POWs who were finally released (on 29 August 1864). Sadly, at least three members of the 47th Pennsylvania never made it out alive.

Following what some historians have called a rout by Confederates at Pleasant Hill and others have labeled a technical victory for the Union or a draw for both sides, the 47th Pennsylvanians fell back to Grand Ecore to resupply and regroup. They remained at Grand Ecore for a total of eleven days (through 22 April 1864), where they engaged in the hard labor of strengthening regimental and brigade fortifications in a brutal climate. They then moved back to Natchitoches Parish, where they arrived in Cloutierville at 10 p.m. that night, after marching forty-five miles. En route, the Union forces were attacked again — this time in the rear, but they were able to end the encounter fairly quickly and continue on.

The next morning (23 April 1864), episodic skirmishing quickly roared into the flames of a robust fight. As part of the advance party led by Union Brigadier-General William Emory, the 47th Pennsylvania took on the Confederate cavalry of Brigadier-General Hamilton P. Bee during the Battle of Cane River (also known as “the Affair at Monett’s Ferry” or the “Cane River Crossing”).

Responding to a barrage from the Confederate’s twenty-pound Parrott guns and raking fire from enemy troops situated near a bayou and atop a bluff, Brigadier-General Emory directed one of his brigades to keep Bee’s Confederates busy while sending the other two brigades to find a safe spot where his Union troops could ford the Cane River. As part of the “beekeepers,” the 47th Pennsylvanians supported Emory’s artillery.

Meanwhile, other soldiers from Emory’s command found and worked their way across the Cane River, attacked Bee’s flank, and forced a Rebel retreat. That Union brigade then erected a series of pontoon bridges, enabling the 47th and other remaining Union units to make the Cane River Crossing by the next day. As the Confederates retreated, they torched their own food stores, as well as the cotton supplies of their fellow southerners. In a letter penned from Morganza, Louisiana on 29 May, Henry Wharton described what happened to the 47th Pennsylvanians during and immediately after making camp at Grand Ecore:

“Our sojourn at Grand Ecore was for eleven days, during which time our position was well fortified by entrenchments for a length of five miles, made of heavy logs, five feet high and six feet wide, filled in with dirt. In front of this, trees were felled for a distance of two hundred yards, so that if the enemy attacked we had an open space before us which would enable our forces to repel them and follow if necessary. But our labor seemed to the men as useless, for on the morning of 22d April, the army abandoned these works and started for Alexandria. From our scouts it was ascertained that the enemy had passed some miles to our left with the intention of making a stand against our right at Bayou Cane, where there is a high bluff and dense woods, and at the same attack Smith’s forces who were bringing up the rear. This first day was a hard one on the boys, for by ten o’clock at night they made Cloutierville, a distance of forty-five miles. On that day the rear was attacked which caused our forces to reverse their front and form in line of battle, expecting too, to go back to the relief of Smith, but he needed no assistance, sending word to the front that he had ‘whipped them, and could do it again.’ It was well that Banks made so long a march on that day, for on the next we found the enemy prepared to carry out their design of attacking us front and rear. Skirmishing commenced early in the morning and as our columns advanced he fell back towards the bayou, when we soon discovered the position of their batteries on the bluff. There was then an artillery duel by the smaller pieces, and some sharp fighting by the cavalry, when the ‘mule battery,’ twenty pound Parrott guns, opened a heavy fire, which soon dislodged them, forcing the chivalry to flee in a manner not at all suitable to their boasted courage. Before this one cavalry, the 3d Brigade of the 1st Div., and Birges’ brigade of the second, had crossed the bayou and were doing good service, which, with the other work, made the enemy show their heels. The 3d brigade done some daring deeds in this fight, as also did the cavalry. In one instance the 3d charged up a hill almost perpendicular, driving the enemy back by the bayonet without firing a gun. The woods on this bluff was so thick that the cavalry had to dismount and fight on foot. During the whole of the day, our brigade, the 2d was supporting artillery, under fire all the time, and could not give Mr. Reb a return shot.

“While we were fighting in front, Smith was engaged some miles in the rear, but he done his part well and drove them back. The rebel commanders thought by attacking us in the rear, and having a large face on the bluffs, they would be able to capture our train and take us all prisoners, but in this they were mistaken, for our march was so rapid that we were on them before they had thrown up the necessary earthworks. Besides they underrated the amount of our artillery, calculating from the number engaged at Pleasant Hill. The rebel prisoners say it ‘seems as though the Yankees manufacture, on short notice, artillery to order, and the men are furnished with wings when they wish to make a certain point.

“The damage done to the Confederate cause by the burning of cotton was immense. On the night of the 22d our route was lighted up for miles and millions of dollars worth of this production was destroyed. This loss will be felt more by Davis & Co., than several defeats in this region, for the basis of the loan in England was on the cotton of Western Louisiana.

“After the rebels had fled from the bluff the negro troops put down the pontoons, and by ten that night we were six miles beyond the bayou safely encamped. The next morning we moved forward and in two days were in Alexandria. Johnnys followed Smith’s forces, keeping out of range of his guns, except when he had gained the eminence across the bayou, when he punished them (the rebs) severely.”

Having finally reached Alexandria on 26 April, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers learned they would remain at their latest new camp for at least two weeks. Placed temporarily under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, they were assigned yet again to the hard labor of fortification work — this time helping to erect “Bailey’s Dam,” a timber structure that enabled Union gunboats to more easily make their way back down the Red River. According to Wharton:

“We were at Alexandria seventeen days, during which time the men were kept busy at throwing up earthworks, foraging and three times went out some distance to meet the enemy, but they did not make their appearance in numbers large enough for an engagement. The water in the Red river had fallen so much that it prevented the gunboats from operating with us, and kept our transports from supplying the troops with rations, (and you know soldiers, like other people, will eat) so Banks was compelled to relinquish his designs on Shreveport and fall back to the Mississippi. To do this a large dam had to be built on the falls at Alexandria to get the ironclads down the river. After a great deal labor this was accomplished and by the morning of May 13th the last one was through the shute [sic], when we bade adieu to Alexandria, marching through the town with banners flying and keeping step to the music of ‘Rally around the flag,’ and ‘When this cruel war is over.’ The next morning, at our camping place, the fleet of boats passed us, when we were informed that Alexandria had been destroyed by fire – the act of a dissatisfied citizen and several negroes. Incendiary acts were strictly forbidden in a general order the day before we left the place, and a cavalry guard was left in the rear to see the order enforced. After marching a few miles skirmishing commenced in front between the cavalry and the enemy in riflepits [sic] on the bank of the river, but they were easily driven away. When we came up we discovered their pits and places where there had been batteries planted. At this point the John Warren, an unarmed transport, on which were sick soldiers and women, was fired into and sunk, killing many and those that were not drowned taken prisoners. A tin-clad gunboat was destroyed at the same place, by which we lost a large mail. Many letters and directed envelopes were found on the bank – thrown there after the contents had been read by the unprincipled scoundrels. The inhumanity of Guerrilla bands in this department is beyond belief, and if one did not know the truth of it or saw some of their barbarities, he would write it down as the story of a ‘reliable gentleman’ or as told by an ‘intelligent contraband.’ Not satisfied with his murderous intent on unarmed transports he fires into the Hospital steamer Laurel Hill, with four hundred sick on board. This boat had the usual hospital signal floating fore and aft, yet, notwithstanding all this, and the customs of war, they fired on them, proving by this act that they are more hardened than the Indians on the frontier.

“On Sunday, May 15, we left the river road and took a short route through the woods, saving considerable distance. The windings of Red river are so numerous that it resembles the tape-worm railroad wherewith the politicians frightened the dear people during the administration of Ritner and Stevens. – We stopped several hours in the woods to leave cavalry pass, when we moved forward and by four o’clock emerged into a large open plain where we formed in line of battle, expecting a regular engagement. The enemy, however, retired and we advanced ‘till dark, when the forces halted for the night, with orders to rest on their arms. – ‘Twas here that Banks rode through our regiment, amidst the cheers of the boys, and gave the pleasant news that Grant had defeated Lee.”

Having entered Avoyelles Parish, they “rested on their arms” for the night, half-dozing without pitching their tents, but with their rifles right beside them. They were now positioned just outside of Marksville, Louisiana on the eve of the 16 May 1864 Battle of Mansura, which unfolded as follows, according to Wharton:

“Early next morning we marched through Marksville into a prairie nine miles long and six wide where every preparation was made for a fight. The whole of our force was formed in line, in support of artillery in front, who commenced operations on the enemy driving him gradually from the prairie into the woods. As the enemy retreated before the heavy fire of our artillery, the infantry advanced in line until they reached Mousoula [sic, Mansura], where they formed in column, taking the whole field in an attempt to flank the enemy, but their running qualities were so good that we were foiled. The maneuvring [sic] of the troops was handsomely done, and the movements was [sic] one of the finest things of the war. The fight of artillery was a steady one of five miles. The enemy merely stood that they might cover the retreat of their infantry and train under cover of their artillery. Our loss was slight. Of the rebels we could not ascertain correctly, but learned from citizens who had secreted themselves during the fight, that they had many killed and wounded, who threw them into wagons, promiscuously, and drove them off so that we could not learn their casualties. The next day we moved to Simmsport [sic, Simmesport] on the Achafalaya [sic, Atchafalaya] river, where a bridge was made by putting the transports side by side, which enabled the troops and train to pass safely over. – The day before we crossed the rebels attacked Smith, thinking it was but the rear guard, in which they, the graybacks, were awfully cut up, and four hundred prisoners fell into our hands. Our loss in killed and wounded was ninety. This fight was the last one of the expedition. The whole of the force is safe on the Mississippi, gunboats, transports and trains. The 16th and 17th have gone to their old commands.

“It is amusing to read the statements of correspondents to papers North, concerning our movements and the losses of our army. I have it from the best source that the Federal loss from Franklin to Mansfield, and from their [sic] to this point does not exceed thirty-five hundred in killed, wounded and missing, while that of the rebels is over eight thousand.”

Continuing on, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched for Simmesport and then Morganza, where they made camp again. According to Wharton, the members of Company C were sent on a special mission which took them on an intense one hundred and twenty-mile journey:

“Company C, on last Saturday was detailed by the General in command of the Division to take one hundred and eighty-seven prisoners (rebs) to New Orleans. This they done [sic] satisfactorily and returned yesterday to their regiment, ready for duty. While in the City some of the boys made Captain Gobin quite a handsome present, to show their appreciation of him as an officer gentleman.”

While encamped at Morganza, the nine formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania in Beaufort, South Carolina (1862) and Natchitoches, Louisiana (April 1864) were officially mustered into the regiment between 20-24 June 1864. During that same time, Corporal Francis A. Parks was promoted to the rank of sergeant (on 22 June). The regiment then moved on once again, and arrived in New Orleans in late June. As they did during their tour through the Carolinas and Florida, the men of the 47th had battled the elements and disease, as well as the Confederate Army, in order to survive and continue to defend their nation.

On 7 July 1864, the Callahan brothers and their fellow E Company men boarded yet another steamer, the U.S. McClellan, along with the 47th Pennsylvania’s Companies A, C, D, F, H, and I, and returned to the Washington, D.C. area. Following their arrival and a memorable encounter with President Abraham Lincoln, they joined up with Major-General David Hunter’s forces at Snicker’s Gap, Virginia to fight in the Battle of Cool Spring, and then assisted in defending Washington, D.C. once again while also helping to drive Confederate troops from Maryland. (Meanwhile, the members of Companies B, G and K — were awaiting transportation in New Orleans, and finally departed for the East Coast aboard the Blackstone in late July.)

Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign 

Attached to the Middle Military Division, United States’ Army of the Shenandoah beginning in August 1864, the now fully-staffed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was assigned to defensive duties in and around Halltown, Virginia during the opening days of that month. One of multiple regiments serving under Union Major-General Philip Sheridan, they subsequently engaged in a series of back-and-forth movements over the next several weeks between Halltown, Berryville, Middletown, Charlestown, and Winchester as part of a “mimic war” being waged against enemy troops that were led by Confederate Lieutenant-General Jubal Early.

From 3-4 September, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers fought in the Battle of Berryville. Two weeks later, on 18 September 1864, multiple members of the regiment mustered out at Berryville, upon expiration of their respective terms of enlistment. Among those who were honorably discharged that day were John and Thomas Callahan of the 47th Pennsylvania’s E Company. According to historians Jordan, Green and Ettinger, Thomas Callahan “was never sick, wounded or imprisoned during his service. For his meritorious conduct on the field of battle he [had been] promoted to the rank of corporal, and as such was honorably discharged from the service of the United States government in 1864.”

Both brothers then returned home to their mother and siblings in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where they secured work as laborers and tried to regain some semblance of their old lives.

* Note: Although John Callahan reportedly re-enlisted with Company B of the 86th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry sometime after he was honorably discharged from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (according to his 1907 obituary in Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper), researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have been unable to find additional historical records to support that claim. If John Callahan did re-enlist with a third Union Army regiment sometime after 18 September 1864, he may have done so with an entirely different unit of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (one that was not the 86th Pennsylvania).

Re-Enlistment with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (1865-1866) — Thomas Callahan

Less than four months after his honorable discharge from the Union Army, Thomas Callahan chose to return to military life. After re-enrolling in Easton, he re-mustered as a corporal with his former unit — Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry — on 28 January 1865. Transported south yet again, he reconnected with his regiment at its headquarters at Camp Fairview near Charlestown, West Virginia on 20 February 1865, where it had been tracking and capturing Confederate guerrillas to stop them from attacking key railroad lines — an assignment he and his comrades would continue to perform through the end of March, when “The command was ordered to proceed up the valley to intercept the enemy’s troops, should any succeed in making their escape in that direction,” according to The Lehigh Register.

After reaching Winchester, Virginia sometime around 4 April 1865, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers headed to Kernstown. On 9 April 1865, their senior officers received word that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. The long war appeared to be over.

But it wasn’t.

Shock and Despair

During the evening of 14 April, a night that was supposed to be a time of celebration for Washingtonians, a group of Confederate sympathizers sought to reignite the flames of civil war by murdering President Abraham Lincoln and key members of his cabinet. Mortally wounded by a gunshot to his head while attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre with his wife, the president drew his last breath the following morning as his heartbroken aides looked on.

Immediately placed on alert in response to President Lincoln’s assassination, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was charged with defending the nation’s capital. According to letters sent by members of the regiment to family and friends during that time, and newspaper accounts published in subsequent years, at least one 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantryman was given the high honor of guarding President Lincoln’s funeral train while other members of the regiment were assigned to guard duty at the prison where the key conspirators in the assassination plot were confined during the early days of their imprisonment and trial.

Headquartered at Camp Brightwood in Washington, D.C. during that time, the regiment then also marched in the Union’s Grand Review of the National Armies on 23 May 1865. As the last sounds of cheers from the adoring crowds faded over the next week, multiple 47th Pennsylvanians were told by their superiors that they would still not be going home. Their service was still needed to make the hard-won peace secure by continuing to calm tensions while also helping to rebuild segments of the nation’s shattered Deep South.

They were now serving their nation during what would later become known as the Reconstruction Era.

Peacekeeping and Diplomacy During the Reconstruction Era

Ordered to embark on yet another new assignment, the men of Company E and their fellow 47th Pennsylvanians packed up their belongings in early June 1865 and headed south for Savannah, Georgia. Still serving with Dwight’s Division, they were attached to the 3rd Brigade, U.S. Department of the South and assigned to reconstruction and provost (military police) duties there before they were re-assigned in July as replacements for the 165th New York Volunteers in Charleston, South Carolina, where they were also given reconstruction and provost-related tasks — duties that they continued to perform throughout that fall.

Finally, on Christmas Day, Corporal Thomas Callahan and his fellow 47th Pennsylvanians began to muster out for the last time — a process that continued through early January of 1866. Following a stormy voyage home from Charleston to New York City by ship, and then to Pennsylvania by train, the weary 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers marched into Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, where they were given their final discharge paperwork between 9-11 January 1866.

Last paid on 30 June 1865, according to the regiment’s final muster-out rolls, Corporal Callahan was still owed thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents of the sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents he had been promised for re-listing, as well as eight dollars and eighty-three cents for his clothing allowance. He did not receive that full amount upon his final discharge, however, because he still owed the federal government twenty cents for his ammunition (and also still owed the camp’s sutler fifteen dollars for additional supplies that hadn’t been provided by the government, but which he had needed to make his life more bearable while still in service to the nation).

Even so, he still managed to return home with a tidy “nest egg” to help him begin life anew.

Second Return to Civilian Life — Thomas Callahan

Following his second honorable discharge from the military, Thomas Callahan returned home to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley once again, where he secured a job with the Keystone Bridge Company. He was then hired by the Lehigh Valley Railroad as a switchman in 1868, beginning what would ultimately become a thirty-five-year career with that transportation company.

The following year, he wed Mary Alice Harvey (1849-died after 1908; alternate given name: “May”), who had been born in Easton on 9 November 1849 and was a daughter of Peter and Jane Harvey. Mary Alice’s mother, Jane, had been born in Phillipsburg, Warren County, New Jersey; Mary Alice’s father, Peter Harvey, “was a native of Lower Saucon township, was a bricklayer and contractor by occupation, and an expert mechanic, as was proven by the fact that he was chosen to build many of the large furnaces in the county,” according to historians Jordan, Green and Ettinger. Two of her brothers, Harry and James Harvey both worked for the same company that employed her new husband (the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company). Her grandfather, James Harvey, had served as a member of the United States military during the War of 1812, and had been a resident of Phillipsburg.

Thomas and Mary Alice (Harvey) Callahan’s wedding ceremony was held in the parsonage at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Easton on 15 April 1869, and was officiated by that church’s pastor, the Reverend Edmund Belfour, D.D., according to church records. Together, Tom and Mary Alice then welcomed the birth of a daughter, Anna Elizabeth Callahan (1869-1912), who was born on 12 July 1869 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey (alternate place of birth: Easton, Pennsylvania) and would later wed physician Sterling D. Shimer, M.D. (1870-1920).

In early July 1870, the trio resided at the Easton home of Tom Callahan’s widowed mother, Unity (McCarty) Callahan. Also living with them were Tom’s unmarried sisters, Rose and Elizabeth Callahan (aged thirty-one and twenty-eight, respectively), and his thirty-three-year-old, unmarried brother, John Callahan, who was documented by that year’s federal census enumerator as a sailor in the U.S. Navy.

Sadly, sometime after that federal census was enumerated in Easton on 2 July 1870, the Callahan family’s matriarch, Unity (McCarty) Callahan, passed away. Her burial location remains unidentified.

Another child soon followed for Tom and Mary Alice (Harvey) Callahan. Their son, Edward Thomas Callahan (1875-1935), was born in Easton in 1875 and would later secure work as a passenger brakeman with his father’s employer (the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company) and marry Jennie Elizabeth Benner (1872-1937). Employed as a railroad conductor in June of 1880, Tom Callahan resided on West Street in Easton’s Fifth Ward with his wife, Mary Alice, and their children, Anna Elizabeth and Edward Thomas Callahan. Also living with them was Tom’s unmarried brother and fellow 47th Pennsylvania veteran, John Callahan, who was also employed as a railroad conductor.

Six years later, Tom Callahan likely witnessed a spectacle that would be talked about for decades to come — the unveiling of the Lehigh County Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Allentown on 19 October 1899. Held on the anniversary of the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, the day’s events included a massive parade featuring many of the surviving 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers and other Union Army units from across and beyond the Lehigh Valley, chapters of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), soldiers who were currently serving in the U.S. military, local and state dignitaries, fire and police units, and area bands marching through the streets, past building after building draped in red, white and blue bunting. Viewed by a crowd that was estimated at forty thousand men, women and children, that parade was followed by the monument’s formal dedication ceremony, during which children sang patriotic songs and prominent elected officials lauded the long-dead, young heroes and stout-hearted, aging veterans who had saved America’s Union.

The next year would also be a memorable one, thanks to the unveiling and dedication of the Northampton County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Easton on 11 May 1900. Although smaller than the massive crowds that attended the events of the unveiling and dedication of the Lehigh County Soldiers and Sailors Monument, the Easton dedication ceremonies were still quite impressive. The day began with the firing of cannon at sunrise. Later that morning, wizened members of the Grand Army of the Republic sat down with old friends for breakfast in hotels and restaurants across the city. That afternoon, local and state officials, active duty soldiers, veterans of the American Civil War and their descendants, school students, and members of the Allentown Band, Fullerton Drum Corps and other marching bands made their way to their designated meeting places in preparation for a parade with roughly five thousand participants who stepped forward at 2 p.m. and marched through the city’s streets to Easton’s Grand Square, where the monument was then unveiled after multiple orators addressed the excited crowd during formal dedication ceremonies. Later that same evening, “a campfire was held in the Easton Opera House and a military ball was given by the Sons of Veterans, followed by a reception to Governor and Mrs. Stone and the commissioned officers of the Thirteenth Regiment by General and Mrs. Reeder,” according to The Allentown Leader. Adjutant General Stewart presided over the campfire meeting, which featured speeches by the governor, Easton’s mayor and several senior officers of the Grand Army of the Republic. And then Lieutenant Governor John Peter Shindel Gobin (the 47th Pennsylvania’s final commanding officer) made a special appearance at the military ball. By the time the day was done, roughly thirty thousand people from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other parts of the United States had joined in or witnessed the parade, monument dedication and evening’s gala events, according to The Allentown Democrat.

A member of St. Bernard’s Roman Catholic Church in Easton since childhood, Tom Callahan was also active with the Brotherhood of Railway Employees (Lehigh Lodge, No. 1; established circa 1907), the Lehigh Valley Relief Association and the Royal Arcanum as an adult.

Return to Civilian Life and Subsequent Military Service — John Callahan

Meanwhile, Tom Callahan’s older brother and fellow 47th Pennsylvania veteran John Callahan was pursuing a somewhat different path in life. Known to family and friends as “Reddy” due to his red hair, according to Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper, John Callahan was still single as of 1868. That fall, he decided to return to military life — but chose to do so by enlisting in an entirely different branch of the federal service — the United States Navy. Following his enrollment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York on 19 October 1868, he served as a first class fireman aboard the USS Franklin, a frigate that functioned as the flagship of the Navy’s eastern fleet under the command of Admiral David Farragut. Military records described Fireman John Callahan as a twenty-seven-year-old native of Easton who had a crucifix tatooed on his right forearm and was five feet, seven and one-half inches tall with rusty fair, gray eyes and a florid complexion, and had been employed as gasfitter prior to his enlistment.

Enrolled for a three-year term of service, he was honorably discharged in Boston, Massachusetts on 13 November 1871, upon expiration of his term of service, and subsequently returned home to Easton, where he resumed work as a laborer. He then re-enlisted in the U.S. Navy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 8 March 1872 (alternate enlistment year: 1874). Enrolled for an additional three-year term of service, he served as a fireman (and/or a purser’s yeoman) aboard the USS Canonicus, a single-turret, monitor-style ship that was stationed in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, until he was honorably discharged.

Initially employed as a railroad brakeman after returning home to Easton, he was employed as a railroad conductor by June of 1880. Still single, he resided at the home of his brother and fellow railroad conductor, Thomas Callahan, on West Street in Easton’s Fifth Ward. Also residing at that home were Tom’s wife, Mary Alice, and Tom’s children, Ann Elizabeth and Edward Thomas Callahan.

Suffering from a hernia and varicose veins, John Callahan was admitted to the Central Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on 29 August 1893, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life. Admission records noted that he was a fifty-five-year-old railroad brakeman and Protestant who was five feet, seven inches tall with gray hair, gray eyes and a light complexion whose next of kin was his brother, Thomas Callahan, who resided at 679 Washington Street in Easton, Pennsylvania.

At the time of his admission, John Callahan was receiving a U.S. Civil War Pension of six dollars per month, which was subsequently increased to eight dollars per month, and then increased to ten dollars per month. During his final years, he was receiving twelve dollars per month (the equivalent of roughly four hundred and forty U.S. dollars per month in 2026).

Illness, Death and Interment — John Callahan

Ailing with heart and kidney disease during his final years, John Callahan died in his late sixties from dilation of the heart at the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Dayton, Ohio on 13 September 1907, and was laid to rest later that same day at the Dayton National Cemetery. At the time of his passing, he had just thirty-six dollars and fifty-five cents to his name, thirty of which had come from his pension. Officials from the Soldiers’ Home subsequently sent a telegram to his brother, Thomas Callahan, in Easton, notifying him of John’s passing.

Illness, Death and Interment — Thomas Callahan

During his long tenure of service with the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, Tom Callahan had risen up through the ranks from his first job as a switchman to become the night yardmaster at the company’s railroad yard in Easton, a yard clerk, drill brakeman, regular road brakeman, and then, in 1886, to a long-time role as a conductor. According to historians Jordan, Green and Ettinger, he “was a passenger conductor on special excursion trains for a length of time, then on a train running between Easton and Jersey City,” and then “on a train running between Easton and Mauch Chunk” during the early 1900s, until health problems compelled him to retire in 1903. “During his many years of faithful and conscientious performance of duty and adherence to the interests of the railroad company,” he had “never met with any accident or misfortune. The record of his career from boyhood up is one that any man might be proud of, and is worthy of emulation.” The Allentown Democrat, would later report that Tom Callahan had “made numerous friends all along the line of the Lehigh Valley, and no one was better liked by his fellow employees.”

On 4 May 1905, he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension that was subsequently awarded to him, following the review of his application materials by U.S. Pension Bureau officials. As his health continued to decline, his friends from the Lehigh Lodge (No. 1) of the Brotherhood of Railway Employees gathered together to present him with a gold-headed cane, on 22 January 1908, in recognition of his many years of service with the Lehigh Valley Railroad. A reporter covering the ceremony for The Allentown Leader observed that “Mr. Callahan made an attempt to respond, but was completely overcome by the expression of good-will on the part of his co-workers.”

Sadly, less than five months later, Tom Callahan was also gone, having succumbed to heart disease-related complications at the age of sixty-four at his home in Easton, on 13 May 1908. Following funeral services, he was laid to rest at the Easton Cemetery in his hometown of Easton. He was survived by his widow, Mary Alice (Harvey) Callahan, and their children, Edward Thomas Callahan (1875-1932) and Ann Elizabeth (Callahan) Shimer (1869-1912), who all continued to reside in Easton. In addition, Tom was also reportedly survived by a half-brother, James Martin, who resided in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

In his last will and testament, which was proven on 15 June 1908, Thomas Callahan “will[ed] and bequeat[ed] unto [his] beloved wife Mary Alice Callahan, all of [his] household effects, all moneys, investments of all kinds, all moneys which may become due and payable upon [his] death from life insurance, and all and every other kind of personal property of which [he] may die seized and possessed, to be hers absolutely, to do with as she may deem proper.” He also “will[ed] and bequeath[ed] unto his beloved wife aforesaid, for and during her natural life, the use and income from all real estate of which [he] may die seized and possessed. Provided, however, that should said income, in connection with said personal property, be insufficient to properly provide for her, then and in such case, she is hereby authorized to mortgage or to sell as much of said real estate as will provide sufficient means to properly provide for her; hereby authorizing her to give and execute all such necessary mortgage or mortgages, deed or deeds, for the procuring of money on said real estate. And the money so derived from the executing of such mortgage or mortgages, deed or deeds, shall be used by her as she may see fit to properly maintain and support her.”

Naming his widow, Mary Alice, as the executrix of his estate, he then added that, upon his widow’s death, “all of [his] property remaining [should] be divided into two equal parts, one part of which [he would] will and bequeath unto [his] daughter, Anna Elizabeth Shimer, wife of Dr. Sterling D. Shimer, and the other part of which [he would] will and bequeath unto [his (Thomas Callahan’s)] son Edward Thomas Callahan; to be theirs absolutely.”

What Happened to the Widow and Children of Thomas Callahan?

Following his death, Tom Callahan’s widow, Mary Alice (Harvey) Callahan, continued to reside in Easton, where she filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension on 4 June 1908, which was subsequently awarded to her, following the review of her application materials by U.S. Pension Bureau officials. She died sometime after 1908 and was laid to rest beside her husband at the Easton Cemetery.

Following her marriage to Sterling D. Shimer, M.D. (1870-1920) in Easton on 18 December 1896, Tom Callahan’s daughter, A. Elizabeth (Callahan) Shimer (1869-1912), settled with him in Easton. In 1900, the young couple resided at the home of Dr. Shimer’s mother, Lydia E. Shimer, on Bushkill Street in Easton’s Second Ward. Also living with them were Dr. Shimer’s siblings, Eva, Frederick H. and Nathan G. Shimer. In early 1903, Elizabeth and her husband welcomed the birth of a daughter, Alice Lydia Shimer (1903-1969), who was born in Easton on 10 January 1903 and remained single for her entire life. By 1910, they were living in their own home at 120 North Third Street in Easton’s Second Ward. A member of Christ Lutheran Church who was also an active volunteer with programs at the Home for Aged and Infirm Women, A. Elizabeth (Callahan) Shimer died suddenly at her home at 120 North Third Street in Easton on 17 October 1912. Just forty-three years old at the time of her passing, she was also laid to rest at the Easton Cemetery in Easton.

Tom Callahan’s son, Edward Thomas Callahan (1875-1932), grew up to become a railroader like his father. After beginning work with his dad’s employer (the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company) on 15 December 1890, Edward “advanced thru the successive grades until he became a passenger conductor,” according to Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper. As his career began to gain steam, he began his own family line by marrying Jennie E. Benner in Allentown on 28 November 1895. Together, they welcomed the births of: Dorothy Callahan (1896-1974), who was born circa November 1896 and would later wed Edmund S. King (1890-1976) and settle with him in Belvidere, Warren County, New Jersey. Employed as a brakeman in 1900, Edward T. Callahan resided on Wolf Street in Easton’s Sixth Ward with his wife, Jennie, and their daughter, Dorothy. Also boarding with them was Carrie Snyder, a twenty-four-year-old nurse. More children soon followed: John Gobin Callahan (1902-1979), who was born in Easton or Slatington on 29 July 1902, was named after John Peter Shindel Gobin (the final commanding officer of his paternal grandfather’s Civil War regiment) and would grow up to marry Minnie B. Koose (1902-1978) and settle with her in Easton, where he ultimately became an assistant postmaster with the United States Postal Service; and Louise Elizabeth Callahan (1905-1982), who was born in Easton on 4 November 1905, would later marry Captain Herman Franklin Gingrich (1891-1969), travel with him to the Philippines, where he was stationed with the U.S. Navy and where their daughter, Janet Carolyn Gingrich (1929-2011) was born, and travel with him to China before settling with him in Norfolk, Virginia, and then relocating to the West Coast after his death to be closer to her daughter, Janet, in the city of Hayward in Alameda County, California.

A member, throughout his work life, of the F. and A. M.’s Easton Lodge (No. 152), the Loyal Order of Moose’s Easton Lodge (No. 45), the Order of Railway Conductors’ Easton Division (No. 147), the Rajah Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in Reading, the Scottish Rite of Masonry’s Caldwell Consistory in Bloomsburg, and the Tall Cedars of Lebanon’s Easton Forest (No. 35), Edward T. Callahan also served as a chair and vice chair of boards of adjustment that were engaged in improving working conditions for Lehigh Valley Railroad employees. He then “retired from active duty on Feb. 1, 1926, with an enviable record and the esteem of all with whom he was associated,” according to The Morning Call.

Seriously ill with hypostatic pneumonia for the final six months of his life, Edward Thomas Callahan had been “confined to his bed” during that time, according to The Morning Call. Unable to defeat that stubborn foe, he died at the age of fifty-eight at 4:30 p.m. at his home at 679 Washington Street in Easton on Saturday, 27 August 1932. Following funeral services at his home on 31 August, he was laid to rest at the Belvidere Cemetery in Belvidere, Warren County, New Jersey.

What Happened to the Siblings of John and Thomas Callahan?

Very little is presently known about the adult lives of John and Thomas Callahan’s brother, James Callahan (born circa 1838; died before 1907) or their sisters, Rose Callahan (born circa 1839; died before 1905) and Elizabeth Callahan (born circa 1841; died after June 1880, but before 1907). At the time of their mother Unity’s death in 1870, both daughters were still unmarried and living with her at the Callahan family home in Easton’s West Ward.

In 1880, Elizabeth Callahan may have still been unmarried but living apart from her other siblings. According to that year’s federal census, which was enumerated in Easton in early June of that year, there was a thirty-eight-year-old woman named “Elizabeth Callahan” who was employed as a live-in servant at the First Ward home of physician James Cavanaugh and his family.

Unfortunately, the lives of Elizabeth’s other siblings, James and Rose Callahan, remain even less clear. What is known for certain is that Rose died before the release of Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania, a book that was authored by John W. Jordan, Edgar Moore Green and George T. Ettinger and included a profile of Thomas Callahan which mentioned that Rose had died prior to their book’s 1905 publication. In addition, neither her name nor that of James Callahan were mentioned in the lists of surviving relatives that were published in the obituaries of John and Thomas Callahan in 1907 and 1908, respectively, signaling that both Rose and James Callahan were deceased by that time. (Elizabeth Callahan was also not listed as a survivor in either obituary, indicating that she, too, was deceased by 1907.)

 

Sources:

1. Alice Lydia Shimer (a granddaughter of Thomas Callahan and a daughter of Anna Elizabeth (Callahan) Shimer, in Death Certificates (file no.: 89305, local reg. no.: 1564, date of death: 11 September 1969). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
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70. “Veterans’ Reunion: Heroes of the 47th Assembled at the Duck Farm: Their Old Commander Present: Large Gathering of Old Soldiers in Whom Martial Spirit Is Still Strong.” Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Allentown Leader, 22 October 1902.
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