Alternate Spellings of Surname: Gebhard, Gebhardt, Gebhart, Gephard. Alternate Spellings of Given Name: Lewis, Louis

 

Far more is known about the final years of this 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer than about his childhood. Born circa 1836 in what is now known as Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Louis Gebhard emigrated from his homeland sometime before the start of the American Civil War. This biography, which begins with his life as a husband and father in Pennsylvania and ends with a description of a terrible crime that he committed in Oregon, is suitable for college-aged or adult readers only.

An Immigrant in Pennsylvania

Sometime after arriving in the United States of America, Louis Gebhard settled in Northampton County in northeastern Pennsylvania (a region that is now more commonly referred to as “NEPA”), where he married Mary Walker (circa 1831-1898), a fellow immigrant from Baden-Württemberg.

They then became the parents of Mary Gebhard (born circa 1861-died before 1880), who was born circa 1861 but appears to have died in childhood (because her name appeared as a member of her parents’ household on the 1870 federal census, which was enumerated in Northampton County in August 1870, but did not appear in subsequent records for her parents or in the 1920s-era obituaries of her two younger siblings).

* Note: It is possible that Lewis Gebhard’s wife was still pregnant when he enlisted in the military. If so, his first daughter, Mary Gebhart (born circa 1861-died before 1880) may have been born sometime in late 1861 or early to mid-1862.

American Civil War

Present-day researchers can say with certainty that Louis Gebhard was a resident of the northern section of the State of New Jersey in the United States of America by at least the early 1860s. We know this because military historian Samuel P. Bates documented basic facts about Lewis — his approximate year of birth, the city where he resided in 1861, his occupation at that time, his physical appearance, the dates and locations of his enlistment with a Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry regiment, and the ranks he held at his muster in and out. Bates obtained those facts from regimental muster records that were created by clerks of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.

As a result, descendants of Louis Gebhard can be sure that he enrolled for military service in the Borough of Easton in Northampton County, Pennsylvania on 16 September 1861, and that he then officially mustered in for duty at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania as a corporal with Company A of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Military records described him at that time as a twenty-five-year-old gardener and resident of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, who was five feet, nine inches tall with sandy hair, blue eyes and a sallow complexion.

* Note: Company A was led by Richard A. Graeffe, who had performed his own Three Month’s Service with Company G, 9th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Commissioned as a captain upon his enlistment in April 1861, he served with the 9th Pennsylvania from 24 April 1861 until mustering out at Harrisburg, Dauphin County out on 29 July 1861. Graeffe then enlisted again on 16 September 1861, was again commissioned as a captain, and was placed in charge of Company A of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

According to A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, authored by Lewis Schmidt, “The Easton Express reported on August 14 that … 33 year old Capt. Richard A. Graeffe, a merchant from Easton who would command Company A of the 47th, was recruiting at Glantz’s’ in Easton.” That saloon in Easton was operated by Charles Frederick William Glanz, an 1845 emigrant from Germany who had been appointed as captain of the Northampton County militia unit known as the “Easton Jaegers” during the late 1850s.

Following a brief light infantry training period at Harrisburg’s Camp Curtain, the men of Company A and the 47th Pennsylvania headed for Washington, D.C. where they were stationed at “Camp Kalorama” on the Kalorama Heights near Georgetown, beginning 21 September. Henry D. Wharton, a field musician with the regiment’s C Company, wrote to the Sunbury American newspaper the next day with the following update:

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 24 September 1861, Captain Richard Graeffe, First Lieutenant James F. Meyers and their men from Company A became members of the U.S. Army when they were officially mustered into federal service with the other members of the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Three days later, the 47th Pennsylvania was assigned to the 3rd Brigade of 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 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 fairly close to the headquarters of Brigadier-General William Farrar Smith (also known as “Baldy”), and were now part of the 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 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 growing 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 marched in the Grand Review at Bailey’s Cross Roads. Also around that time, 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, 22 October, the 47th engaged in a Divisional Review, described by Schmidt as “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, Brannan], 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 21 November, the 47th participated in a morning divisional headquarters review monitored by 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 — and in preparation for bigger things to come, Brannan obtained new Springfield rifles for every member of the 47th Pennsylvania.

But those frequent marches and their guard duties in rainy weather gradually began to wear the men down; a number of 47th Pennsylvanians fell ill with fever. Several contracted Variola (smallpox), which was also sickening Confederate troops stationed nearby, and were sent back to Union Army hospitals in Washington, D.C. At least two members of the regiment died from the pox while receiving treatment.

For that reason, and because the war waged on, enrollments continued; by December 1861, a total of one hundred and one men were listed on Company A’s roster.

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, Virginia, where they boarded the steamship City of Richmond and sailed to the Washington Arsenal. While there, they were re-equipped with weapons and ammunition before being marched off for dinner and rest at the Soldiers’ Retreat in Washington, D.C.

The next afternoon, they 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 the afternoon of Monday, 27 January, they began lining up at the wharf for the final time. Ferried to the big steamship by smaller steamers, the enlisted men boarded the Oriental first, followed by the officers. Then, per the directive of Brigadier-General Brannan, they steamed away for the Deep South at 4 p.m. — headed for Florida which, despite its secession from the United States, remained strategically important to the Union due to the presence of Forts Taylor and Jefferson in Key West and the Dry Tortugas.

Arriving in Key West in early February 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers initially made camp on the beach, re-erecting their Sibley tents. Assigned to garrison Fort Taylor, they introduced their presence to Key West residents by parading through the streets of the city during the weekend of Friday, 14 February. That Sunday, a number of soldiers from the regiment attended local church services, where they met and mingled with residents from the area as part of the first of many community outreach efforts to build support for the army’s efforts to preserve the nation’s Union. Drilling daily in heavy artillery tactics, they also strengthened the fortifications at that federal installation, felled trees and built new roads.

Sometime during that phase of service, a number of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen began suffering problems with chronic diarrhea. Diagnosed with typhoid fever, several members of the regiment were confined to the post hospital at the fort.

Next ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina from mid-June through July, they camped 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 members of the 47th Pennsylvania 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.

Detachments from the regiment were also assigned to the Expedition to Fenwick Island (9 July) and the Demonstration against Pocotaligo (10 July).

During the second week of July, according to Schmidt, the regiment’s third-in-command — Major William H. Gausler — and F Company’s Captain Henry S. Harte returned home to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to resume the 47th Pennsylvania’s recruiting efforts. After arriving in Allentown on 15 July, they quickly re-established an efficient operation that they would keep running through early November 1862. During that time, Major Gausler was able to persuade fifty-four new recruits to join the 47th Pennsylvania while Harte rounded up an additional twelve.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the regiment continued to soldier on. From 20-31 August 1862, companies of the 47th Pennsylvania resumed picket duty, including at “Barnwells” (so labeled by Company C Captain J. P. S. Gobin) while other companies from the regiment performed picket duty in the areas around Point Royal Ferry.

On 12 September, the 47th Pennsylvania’s founder and commanding officer Colonel Tilghman H. Good and his adjutant, First Lieutenant Washington H. R. Hangen, issued Regimental Orders, No. 207 from the 47th Pennsylvania’s Headquarters in Beaufort, South Carolina:

I. The Colonel commanding desires to call the attention of all officers and men in the regiment to the paramount necessity of observing rules for the preservation of health. There is less to be apprehended from battle than disease. The records of all companies in climate like this show many more casualties by the neglect of sanitary post action then [sic] by the skill, ordnance and courage of the enemy. Anxious that the men in my command may be preserved in the full enjoyment of health to the service of the Union. And that only those who can leave behind the proud epitaph of having fallen on the field of battle in the defense of their country shall fail to return to their families and relations at the termination of this war.

II. All the tents will be struck at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday of each week. The signal for this purpose will be given by the drum major by giving three taps on the drum. Every article of clothing and bedding will be taken out and aired; the flooring and bunks will be thoroughly cleaned. By the same signal at 11 a.m. the tents will be re-erected. On the days the tents are not struck the sides will be raised during the day for the purpose of ventilation.

III. The proper cooking of provisions is a matter of great importance more especially in this climate but have not yet received from a majority of officers of the regiment that attention that should be paid to it.

IV. Thereafter an officer of each company will be detailed by the commander of each company and have their names reported to these headquarters to superintend the cooking of provisions taking care that all food prepared for the soldiers is sufficiently cooked and that the meats are all boiled or seared (not fried). He will also have charge of the dress table and he is held responsible for the cleanliness of the kitchen cooking utensils and the preparation of the meals at the time appointed.

V. The following rules for the taking of meals and regulations in regard to the conducting of the company will be strictly followed. Every soldier will turn his plate, cup, knife and fork into the Quarter Master Sgt who will designate a permanent place or spot for each member of the company and there leave his plate & cup, knife and fork placed at each meal with the soldier’s rations on it. Nor will any soldier be permitted to go to the company kitchen and take away food therefrom.

VI. Until further orders the following times for taking meals will be followed Breakfast at six, dinner at twelve, supper at six. The drum major will beat a designated call fifteen minutes before the specified time which will be the signal to prepare the tables, and at the time specified for the taking of meals he will beat the dinner call. The soldier will be permitted to take his spot at the table before the last call.

VII. Commanders of companies will see that this order is entered in their company order book and that it is read forth with each day on the company parade. All commanding officers of companies will regulate daily their time by the time of this headquarters. They will send their 1st Sergeants to this headquarters daily at 8 a.m. for this purpose.

Great punctuality is enjoined in conforming to the stated hours prescribed by the roll calls, parades, drills, and taking of meals; review of army regulations while attending all roll calls to be suspended by a commissioned officer of the companies, and a Captain to report the alternate to the Colonel or the commanding officer.

At 5 a.m., Commanders of companies are imperatively instructed to have the company quarters washed and policed and secured immediately after breakfast.

At 6 a.m., morning reports of companies request [sic] by the Captains and 1st Sgts and all applications for special privileges of soldiers must be handed to the Adjutant before 8 a.m.

By Command of Col. T. H. Good
W. H. R. Hangen Adj

In addition, First Lieutenant and Regimental Adjutant Hangen clarified the regiment’s schedule as follows:

• Reveille (5:30 a.m.) and Breakfast (6:00 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Guard (6:10 a.m. and 6:15 a.m.)
• Surgeon’s Call (6:30 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Company Drill (6:45 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.)
• Recall from Company Drill (8:00 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Squad Drill (9:00 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.)
• Recall from Squad Drill (10:30 a.m.) and Dinner (12:00 noon)
• Call for Non-commissioned Officers (1:30 p.m.)
• Recall for Non-commissioned Officers (2:30 p.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Squad Drills (3:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.)
• Recall from Squad Drill (4:30 p.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Dress Parade (5:10 p.m. and 5:15 p.m.)
• Supper (6:10 p.m.)
• Tattoo (9:00 p.m.) and Taps (9:15 p.m.)

As the one-year anniversary of the 47th Pennsylvania’s departure from the Great Keystone State dawned on 20 September, thoughts turned to home and Divine Providence as Colonel Tilghman Good issued Special Orders, No. 60 from the 47th’s Regimental Headquarters in Beaufort, South Carolina:

The Colonel commanding takes great pleasure in complimenting the officers and men of the regiment on the favorable auspices of today.

Just one year ago today, the organization of the regiment was completed to enter into the service of our beloved country, to uphold the same flag under which our forefathers fought, bled, and died, and perpetuate the same free institutions which they handed down to us unimpaired.

It is becoming therefore for us to rejoice on this first anniversary of our regimental history and to show forth devout gratitude to God for this special guardianship over us.

Whilst many other regiments who swelled the ranks of the Union Army even at a later date than the 47th have since been greatly reduced by sickness or almost cut to pieces on the field of battle, we as yet have an entire regiment and have lost but comparatively few out of our ranks.

Certain it is we have never evaded or shrunk from duty or danger, on the contrary, we have been ever anxious and ready to occupy any fort, or assume any position assigned to us in the great battle for the constitution and the Union.

We have braved the danger of land and sea, climate and disease, for our glorious cause, and it is with no ordinary degree of pleasure that the Colonel compliments the officers of the regiment for the faithfulness at their respective posts of duty and their uniform and gentlemanly manner towards one another.

Whilst in numerous other regiments there has been more or less jammings and quarrelling [sic] among the officers who thus have brought reproach upon themselves and their regiments, we have had none of this, and everything has moved along smoothly and harmoniously. We also compliment the men in the ranks for their soldierly bearing, efficiency in drill, and tidy and cleanly appearance, and if at any time it has seemed to be harsh and rigid in discipline, let the men ponder for a moment and they will see for themselves that it has been for their own good.

To the enforcement of law and order and discipline it is due our far fame as a regiment and the reputation we have won throughout the land.

With you he has shared the same trials and encountered the same dangers. We have mutually suffered from the same cold in Virginia and burned by the same southern sun in Florida and South Carolina, and he assures the officers and men of the regiment that as long as the present war continues, and the service of the regiment is required, so long he stands by them through storm and sunshine, sharing the same danger and awaiting the same glory.

Saint John’s Bluff and the Capture of a Confederate Steamer

During a return expedition to Florida beginning 30 September, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers 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. Trekking and skirmishing through roughly twenty-five miles of dense swampland and forests after disembarking from ships at Mayport Mills on 1 October, the 47th captured artillery and ammunition stores (on 3 October) that had been abandoned by Confederate forces during the bluff’s bombardment by Union gunboats.

Note: The capture of Saint John’s Bluff followed a string of U.S. Army and Navy successes that had enabled the Union to gain control over key southern towns and transportation hubs. In November 1861, the Union’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron had established a base at Port Royal, South Carolina to facilitate Union expeditions in Georgia and Florida, during which U.S. troops took possession of Fort Clinch and Fernandina, Florida (3-4 March 1862), secured the surrender of Fort Marion and Saint Augustine (11 March) and established a Union Navy base at Mayport Mills (mid-March).

That summer, Brigadier-General Joseph Finnegan, commanding officer of the Confederate States of America’s Department of Middle and Eastern Florida, had ordered the placement of earthworks-fortified gun batteries atop Saint John’s Bluff and at nearby Yellow Bluff, hoping to disable the Union’s naval and ground force operations at Mayport Mills by deploying eighteen cannon, including three eight-inch siege howitzers and four eight-inch smoothbores and Columbiads (two of each).

After the U.S. gunboats Uncas and Patroon had exchanged shell fire with the Confederate battery at Saint John’s Bluff on 11 September, Rebel troops were initially driven away, but had then returned to the bluff. When a second, larger Union gunboat flotilla tried and failed to shake the Confederates loose six days later, Union military leaders had then ordered an army operation with naval support.

Backed by U.S. gunboats Cimarron, E. B. Hale, Paul Jones, Uncas, and Water Witch that were armed with twelve-pound boat howitzers, the fifteen-hundred-strong Union Army force of Brigadier-General Brannan moved up the Saint John’s River and further inland along the Pablo and Mt. Pleasant Creeks on 1 October 1862 before disembarking and marching for Saint John’s Bluff. But when the 47th Pennsylvanians reached Saint John’s Bluff with their fellow Union brigade members on 3 October 1862, they found the battery abandoned. (Other Union troops later discovered that the Yellow Bluff battery was also Rebel free.) According to Henry Wharton, “On the day following our occupation of these works the guns were dismounted and removed on board the steamer Neptune, together with the shot and shell, and removed to Hilton Head. The powder was all used in destroying the batteries.”

Meanwhile that same weekend (Friday and Saturday, 3-4 October 1862), Brigadier-General Brannan, who was quartered on board the Ben Deford as the Union expedition’s commanding officer, was busy penning reports to his superiors while also planning the next move of his expeditionary force. That Saturday, Brannan ordered officers to direct their men to prepare rations and ammunition for a new foray that would take them roughly twenty miles upriver to Jacksonville. (A sophisticated hub of cultural and commercial activities with a racially diverse population of more than two thousand residents, the city had repeatedly changed hands between the Union and Confederacy until its occupation by Union forces on 12 March 1862.) Among the Union soldiers selected for that mission were 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers from Company C, Company E and Company K.

According to Schmidt, the small force steamed upriver roughly one to two hundred miles “to Lake Beresford, where they then assisted in capturing the [68-ton] steamer Governor Milton,” which had been renamed in honor of Florida’s governor after having been “formerly known as the George M. Bird [under its previous owners] a New England family named ‘Swift’, who were timber cutters and used it as a tug boat to tow rafts loaded with live oak to the lumber market.”

In a subsequent report to his superiors, Brigadier-General Brannan noted that the Union party “returned on the morning of the 9th with a Rebel steamer, Governor Milton, which they captured in a creek about 230 miles up the river and about 27 miles north [and slightly west] from the town of Enterprise. Lt. Bacon, my aide-de-camp, accompanied the expedition… On the return of the successful expedition after the Rebel steamers… I proceeded with that portion of my command to St. John’s Bluff, awaiting the return of the Boston.”

That return trip did not happen without complications, however; in a letter penned to The New York Times on October 14, Wharton reported that:

Finding that the Cosmopolitan, which had been sent to Hilton Head for provisions, had struck heavily in crossing the bar, on her return to the St. John’s River, and was temporarily disabled for service, the Seventh Connecticut Regiment was sent to Hilton Head on the Boston, with the request that she should return for the remainder of the troops, and she got back on the 11th, when the command was reembarked, reaching this plane yesterday, excepting one company of the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania, which is left for the protection of the Cosmopolitan. The accident to this valuable steamer is severe. A large hole was made in her bottom and she filled, but she will not be a wreck, as was at first feared.

Integration of the Regiment

On 5 and 15 October 1862, respectively, the 47th Pennsylvania made history as it became an integrated regiment, adding to its muster rolls several Black men who had escaped from chattel enslavement on plantations near Beaufort, South Carolina. Among the formerly enslaved men who enlisted were Bristor Gethers, Abraham Jassum and Edward Jassum.

Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina

From 21-23 October 1862, under the brigade and regimental commands of Colonel T. H. Good and Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers next engaged the heavily protected Confederate forces in and around Pocotaligo, South Carolina — including at Frampton’s Plantation and the Pocotaligo Bridge — a key piece of southern railroad infrastructure that Union leaders had ordered to be destroyed in order to disrupt the flow of Confederate troops and supplies in the region.

Harried by snipers en route to the Pocotaligo Bridge, they met resistance from an 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. The Union soldiers grappled with Confederates where they found them, pursuing the Rebels for four miles as they retreated to the bridge. There, the 47th relieved the 7th Connecticut. But the enemy was just too well armed. After two hours of intense fighting in an attempt to take the ravine and bridge, depleted ammunition forced the 47th to withdraw to Mackay’s Point.

The next day — 23 October 1862 — the regiment returned to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where a significant number of men were admitted to the Union Army’s general hospital for treatment of the wounds they had sustained in combat. Shortly thereafter, a group of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to serve as the honor guard for the funeral of Union Major-General Ormsby Mitchel, who succumbed to yellow fever on 30 October.

Having been ordered back to Key West on 15 November 1862, the 47th Pennsylvanians did not know it, yet, but much of 1863 for them would be spent garrisoning federal installations in Florida as part of the 10th Corps, U.S. Army, Department of the South. Companies A, B, C, E, G, and I would once again garrison Fort Taylor in Key West, but this time, the men from Companies D, F, H, and K would garrison Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas off the southern coast of Florida.

On 1 December 1862, Corporal Louis Gebhard of Company A was promoted to the rank of sergeant.

After packing their belongings at their Beaufort, South Carolina encampment and loading their equipment onto the U.S. Steamer Cosmopolitan, the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry sailed toward the mouth of the Broad River on 15 December 1862, and anchored briefly at Port Royal Harbor in order to allow the regiment’s medical director, Elisha W. Baily, M.D., and members of the regiment who had recuperated enough from their Pocotaligo-related battle injuries at the Union’s General Hospital at Hilton Head, to rejoin the regiment.

At 5 p.m. that same evening, the regiment sailed for Florida, during what was later described by several members of the regiment as a treacherous and nerve-wracking voyage. According to Schmidt, the ship’s captain “steered a course along the coast of Florida for most of the voyage,” which made the voyage more precarious “because of all the reefs.” On 16 December “the second night, the ship was jarred as it ran aground on one during a storm, but broke free, and finally steered a course further from shore, out in the Gulf Stream.” In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on 21 December, Henry Wharton provided the following details about the regiment’s trip:

On the passage down, we ran along almost the whole coast of Florida. Rather a dangerous ground, and the reefs are no playthings. We were jarred considerably by running on one, and not liking the sensation our course was altered for the Gulf Stream. We had heavy sea all the time. I had often heard of ‘waves as big as a house,’ and thought it was a sailor’s yarn, but I have seen ‘em and am perfectly satisfied; so now, not having a nautical turn of mind, I prefer our movements being done on terra firma, and leave old neptune to those who have more desire for his better acquaintance. A nearer chance of a shipwreck never took place than ours, and it was only through Providence that we were saved. The Cosmopolitan is a good river boat, but to send her to sea, loadened [sic, loaded] with U.S. troops is a shame, and looks as though those in authority wish to get clear of soldiers in another way than that of battle. There was some sea sickness on our passage; several of the boys ‘casting up their accounts’ on the wrong side of the ledger.

According to Corporal George Nichols of Company E, “When we got to Key West the Steamer had Six foot of water in her hole [sic]. Waves Mountain High and nothing but an old river Steamer. With Eleven hundred Men on I looked for her to go to the Bottom Every Minute.”

Although the Cosmopolitan arrived at the Key West Harbor on Thursday, 18 December, Sergeant Louis Gebhard and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers did not set foot on Florida soil until noon the next day. The men from Companies C and I were immediately marched to Fort Taylor, where they were placed under the command of Major William Gausler, the regiment’s third-in-command. The men from Companies B and E were assigned to the older barracks that had been erected by the United States Army and were placed under the command of B Company Captain Emanuel P. Rhoads while the men from Companies A and G were placed under the command of A Company Captain Richard A. Graeffe and stationed at newer facilities known as the “Lighthouse Barracks” on “Lighthouse Key.”

On Saturday, 21 December, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander, the regiment’s second-in-command, sailed away aboard the Cosmopolitan with the men from the regiment’s remaining companies — Companies D, F, H, and K — and headed south to Fort Jefferson, where they would assume garrison duties in the Dry Tortugas, roughly seventy miles off the coast of Florida (in the Gulf of Mexico). According to Henry Wharton:

We landed here on last Thursday at noon, and immediately marched to quarters. Company I. and C., in Fort Taylor, E. and B. in the old Barracks, and A. and G. in the new Barracks. Lieut. Col. Alexander, with the other four companies proceeded to Tortugas, Col. Good having command of all the forces in and around Key West. Our regiment relieves the 90th Regiment N.Y.S. Vols. Col. Joseph Morgan, who will proceed to Hilton Head to report to the General commanding. His actions have been severely criticized by the people, but, as it is in bad taste to say anything against ones [sic, one’s] superiors, I merely mention, judging from the expression of the citizens, they were very glad of the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers….

Key West has improved very little since we left last June, but there is one improvement for which the 90th New York deserve a great deal of praise, and that is the beautifying of the ‘home’ of dec’d. soldiers. A neat and strong wall of stone encloses the yard, the ground is laid off in squares, all the graves are flat and are nicely put in proper shape by boards eight or ten inches high on the ends sides, covered with white sand, while a head and foot board, with the full name, company and regiment, marks the last resting place of the patriot who sacrificed himself for his country….

1863

Life for members of the 47th Pennsylvania then went on, the hours taken up by training, drilling and inspections that were scheduled regularly to keep them in a perpetual state of readiness for anything that the Confederate Army or Navy could throw at them. In addition, they were also sent out on skirmishes and received training in operating the light and heavy artillery defenses of Forts Taylor and Jefferson. (Companies A, B, C, E, G, and I were based at Fort Taylor, while Companies D, F, H, and K were stationed at Fort Jefferson.)

The frequently mundane duties of garrison duty that were carried out under the severe restrictions of life at a military installation finally proved to be too much for Sergeant Louis Gebhard, however, who was reduced to the rank of private on 10 June 1863, a significant disciplinary action that would only have been meted out by his superiors because he had committed a serious infraction. (Although he would continue to serve with the regiment for more than a year, Louis Gebhard would never be promoted again.)

1864

In early January 1864, Company A underwent a significant transformation, following orders that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry help to expand the Union’s reach across Florida. In response, Captain Graeffe selected a group of soldiers for a special duty assignment that required those A Company men to travel north by boat and feet to Fort Myers and revitalize a federal installation that had been abandoned in 1858 after the U.S. government’s third war with the Seminole Indians.

Ordered to be reclaimed by Major-General Daniel P. Woodbury, the commanding officer of the U.S. Army’s Department of the Gulf, District of Key West and the Tortugas, the fort would subsequently be used, under Captain Graeffe’s leadership, to support the Union’s Gulf Coast blockade and create a safe haven for pro-Union supporters, Confederate Army deserters and children and adults who were escaping chattel slavery. Captain Graeffe and his men were also charged with launching raids on cattle herds in the region around the fort in order to provide food for the growing Union troop presence across Florida. According to Schmidt:

Capt. Richard A. Graeffe, accompanied by Assistant Surgeon William F. Reiber, commanded the main portion of Company A which boarded ship on Monday, January 4 and sailed the following day, Tuesday, for Fort Myers, on the Caloosahatchee River fifteen air miles southeast of Charlotte Harbor. The company was transported on board the Army quartermaster schooner Matchless, after having embarked the day before, and was accompanied by the steamer U.S.S. Honduras commanded by Lt. Harris, and with Gen. Woodbury aboard. Lt. Harris was directed to tow the Matchless if necessary.

Punta Rassa was probably the location where the troops disembarked, and was located on the tip of the southwest delta of the Caloosahatchee River … near what is now the mainland or eastern end of the Sanibel Causeway… Fort Myers was established further up the Caloosahatchee at a location less vulnerable to storms and hurricanes. In 1864, the Army built a long wharf and a barracks 100 feet long and 50 feet wide at Punta Rassa, and used it as an embarkation point for shipping north as many as 4400 Florida cattle….

Capt. Graeffe and company were disembarked on the evening of January 7, and Gen. Woodbury ordered the company to occupy Fort Myers on the south side of the Caloosahatchee, about 12 miles from its mouth and 150 miles from Key West. Shortly after, [a detachment of men from the 47th Pennsylvania’s A Company stationed on Useppa Island] was also ordered to proceed to Fort Myers and join the main body of Company A, the entire command under direct orders of the General who was in the area…. Gen. Woodbury returned to Key West on the Honduras prior to January 19, and the command was left in charge of Capt. Graeffe who dispatched various patrols in search of refugees for enlistment and for activities involving Confederate cattle shipments.

Company A’s muster roll provides the following account of the expedition under command of Capt. Graeffe: ‘The company left Key West Fla Jany 4. 64 enroute to Fort Meyers Coloosahatche River [sic] Fla. were joined by a detachment of the U.S. 2nd Fla Rangers at Punta Rossa Fla took possession of Fort Myers Jan 10. Captured a Rebel Indian Agent and two other men.’

Schmidt also noted that Graeffe’s hand drawings included depictions of roughly twelve buildings “primarily situated along the river, with a log palisade protecting those portions not bounded by the Caloosahatchee; the whole in a densely wooded area and entered through an opening on the southeast protected by the river on the west near the area of the wharf, and a log blockhouse on the east.”

An 1856 survey of the fort contained in the Federal Register “suggest[ed] that the fort’s wooden stockade ran from just east of Broadway to just east of Royal Palm, and from Main Street on the south to the river bank, which meandered along what is Bay Street today,” according to Tom Hall, creator of a website about the arts in Southwest Florida:

It consisted of as many as three dozen hewn pine buildings which included officers’ quarters … barracks, administration offices, a 2½-story hospital with plastered rooms, warehouses for the storage of munitions and general supplies, a guard house … blacksmith’s and carpenter’s shops, a kitchen, bakery, laundry, a sutler’s store, stables for horses and mules, a gardener’s shack, and even a bowling alley and bathing pier and pavilion.

It also boasted a pier nearly 700 feet long that had wide dock and rails that enabled the soldiers to bring in supplies by tram without having to lighter them ashore. The buildings were sided and topped by cedar shingles shipped in from Pensacola and Apalachicola, together with doors, windows and flooring. The interior featured parade grounds, a carefully-tended velvety lawn, two immense vegetable gardens, rock-rimmed river banks, shell walks, lush palms and even citrus trees.

Also according to Hall:

By the time Captain Richard A. Graeffe and his soldiers arrived at the fort, most of the wood stockade had disappeared, so he ordered his men to construct an earthen wall 15 feet wide by 7 feet tall. Three guard towers were also constructed: one where the hospital had been; a second by the garden and bowling alley; and the third between the stables and riverside warehouse. Then Captain Graeffe sent his troops across the river to begin rounding up the herds of scrub cows being raised by ranchers between Punta Gorda and Tampa. As they did, resistance began to grow. Captain Graeffe realized he needed reinforcements and Companies D and I of the [U.S. Colored Troop’s] 2nd Regiment were brought up from Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West.

A draft Environmental Impact Statement prepared in 2010 for the Everglades National Park partially documents the time of Richard Graeffe and the men under his Florida command this way:

A small contingent of 20 men and two officers from the Pennsylvania 47th Regiment, led by Captain Henry Crain of the 2nd Regiment of Florida, arrived at the fort on January 7, 1864. A short time later, the party was joined by another small detachment of the 47th under the command of Captain Richard A. Graeffe. Over a short period, increasing reinforcements of the fort led to increasing cattle raids throughout the region. A Union force so far into Confederate land did not go well with Confederate loyalists. The fact that so many men stationed at the post were black soldiers from the newly created U.S. Colored Troops was particularly aggravating. The raids were so antagonizing that the Confederates created a Cattle Guard Battalion called the “Cow Cavalry” to repulse Union raiders. The unit remained a primary threat to the Union soldiers carrying out raids and reconnaissance missions from Brooksville to as far south as Lake Okeechobee and Fort Myers.

Early on, according to Schmidt, Captain Graeffe sent the following report to Woodbury:

‘At my arrival hier [sic] I divided my forces in three detachment, viz one at the Hospital one into the old guardhouse and one into the Comissary [sic] building, the Florida Rangers I quartered into one of the old Company quarters, I set all parties to work after placing the proper pickets and guards at the Hospital i have build [sic] and now nearly finished a two story loghouse of hewn and square logs 12 inches through seventeen by twenty-two fifteen feet high with a cupola onto the roof of six feet high and at right angle with two lines of picket fences seven feet high. i shall throw up a half a bastion around it as soon as completed. around the old guardhouse i have thrown up a bastion seven feet through at the foot and three feet on the top nine feet high from the bottom of the ditch and five on the inside. I also build [sic] a loghouse sixteen by eighteen of two storys [sic] Southeast of the Commissary building with a bastion around it at right angles with a picket fence each bastion has the distance you recomandet [sic] from the loghouses 20 feet on the sides and 20 to the salient angle, i caused to be dug a well close to bl. houses and inside of the bastions at each Station inside they are all comfortable fitted up with stationary bunks for the men without interfering with the defence [sic] of the work outside of the Bastions and inside the picket fense i have erected small kitchens and messrooms for each station, i am building now a guardhouse build [sic] of square hewn logs sixteen by sixteen two storys high the lower room to be used for the guard and the upper one as a prison, the building to be used for defence [sic] (in case of attack) by the Rangers each work is within view and supporting distance from the other; Capt. Crane with a detachment of his men repaired the wharf, which is in good condition now and fit for use, the bakehouse i got repaired, and the fourth day hier [sic] we had already very good fresh bread; the parade ground is in a good condition had all the weeds mowed off being to [sic] green to burn. i intend to fit up a schoolroom and church as soon as possible.’

Muster rolls for Company A from that period noted that “a detachment of 25 men crossed over to the north west side of the river” on 16 January and “scoured the country till up to Fort Thompson a distance of 50 miles,” where they “encountered a Rebel Picket who retreated after exchanging shots.” Making their way back, they swam across the river, and reached the fort on 23 January. Meanwhile, while that group was still away, Captain Graeffe ordered a smaller detachment of eight men to head out on 17 January in search of cattle. Finding only a few, they instead took possession of four barrels of Confederate turpentine, which were later disposed of by other Union troops.

Graeffe’s men also captured three Confederate sympathizers at the fort, including a blockade runner and spy named Griffin and an Indian interpreter and agent named Lewis. Charged with multiple offenses against the United States, they were transported to Key West, where they were kept under guard by Major William Gausler, the officer who was third-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry who was serving as the provost marshal of Key West at that time. That phase of duty lasted until sometime in February of 1864.

* Note: Captain Richard Graeffe’s detachment at Fort Myers became known as the “Florida Rangers,” according to The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Robert N. Scott, et. al. (1891). His hand-drawn sketches of Fort Myers were later published in Images of America: Fort Myers by Gregg Tuner and Stan Mulford. Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have not yet determined if Private Louis Gebhard was one of the soldiers from Company A to be chosen by Captain Richard Graeffe for the Fort Myers assignment or not. If he was not selected by Graeffe for that mission, he most likely remained behind at Fort Taylor, where he continued to perform his duties as part of his regiment’s garrison function.

Red River Campaign

Meanwhile, all of the other companies of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had begun preparing for 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 (XIX 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 assigned to 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, Louisiana with those prisoners on 9 April.

* Note: Due to that delay, Private Louis Gebhard and his fellow A Company soldiers missed the two bloodiest combat engagements that their regiment would endure during the Red River Campaign — the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield on 8 April and the Battle of Pleasant Hill on 9 April. According to Schmidt, Company A was so far away from the scene of those battles because its men had been ordered to return their Confederate prisoners to New Orleans — a directive that extended their detached duty and kept them from rejoining the main regiment until Company A reached Alexandria, Louisiana on 27 April. That timing meant that those A Company men also missed a third combat engagement — the Battle of Cane River (also known as “the Affair at Monett’s Ferry”), which took place on 23 April.

From late April through mid-May, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers helped to erect Bailey’s Dam on the Red River near Alexandria. In a letter penned from Morganza, Louisiana on 29 May, Henry Wharton described their mission and the weeks that followed:

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.

Afterward, Private Louis Gebhard and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers made their way through Simmesport and into the Atchafalaya Basin, and then moved on to Morganza, where they made camp again. While there, the nine formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania in Beaufort, South Carolina (October-November 1862) and Natchitoches, Louisiana (5 April 1864) were officially mustered into the regiment between 20-24 June 1864. But once again, disease was proving to be a formidable foe, sickening a significant number of 47th Pennsylvanians who had been weakened by the long, grueling marches across challenging terrain in difficult weather.

The regiment was then ordered to head for New Orleans — which they did. Given new orders on the Fourth of July to return to the Eastern Theater of the war, they packed up their gear and then climbed aboard the U.S. Steamer McClellan three days later and prepared to sail away from America’s Deep South. Joining the men from the 47th Pennsylvania’s A Company on that voyage were the men from Companies C, D, E, F, H, and I. (The remaining companies then followed later that month, transported by the Blackstone.)

Following their arrival in Virginia and a memorable encounter with President Abraham Lincoln on 12 July, Private Louis Gebhard and his fellow 47th Pennsylvanians joined up with Major-General David Hunter’s forces at Snicker’s Gap in mid-July 1864. Once there, they fought in the Battle of Cool Spring and assisted in defending Washington, D.C. while also helping to drive Confederate troops from Maryland.

Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign

Attached to the Middle Military Division, U.S. Army of the Shenandoah from August through November of 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned next to defensive duties in and around Halltown, Virginia in early August 1864, and engaged in a series of back-and-forth movements between Halltown, Berryville, Middletown, Charlestown, and Winchester as part of a “mimic war” being waged by the Union forces commanded by Major-General Philip Sheridan with those commanded by Confederate Lieutenant-General Jubal Early. From 3-4 September, they took part in the Battle of Berryville and engaged in related post-battle skirmishes with the enemy over subsequent days.

Two weeks later, multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry opted to end their military careers, content that they had fulfilled their obligations to the nation by completing their original three-year terms of enlistment. Among those departing during that chapter of the regiment’s history were Company A’s Captain Richard Graeffe, First Lieutenant James F. Meyers and Private Louis Gebhard, who were each officially mustered out with honorable discharges at Berryville, Virginia on 18 September 1864.

Return to Civilian Life

Following his departure from the military, Louis Gebhard returned home to his wife, Mary (Walker) Gebhart, and their toddler, Mary, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a laborer. They then became the parents of Louis Gebhard, Jr. (1866-1928), who was born in the Borough of Easton in Northampton County on 2 February 1866 and would later serve as a member of the New York Infantry during the Spanish-American War before operating a tobacco store in Buffalo, Erie County, New York.

Still employed as a laborer when the federal census was enumerated in Easton during the summer of 1870, Louis Gebhard, Sr. resided there with his wife and two children. They were clearly comfortable in their living circumstances at that juncture, as evidenced by the census enumerator’s notation that he owned real estate and personal property worth one thousand three hundred dollars (the equivalent of more than thirty thousand U.S. dollars in 2026). Another daughter was then born at their Easton home: Sarah Gebhard (1871-1929), who arrived on 5 October 1871 and would later wed Pierre Morin (1858-1943), a native of Canada.

Increasingly restless and disatisfied with the quality of his life, however, Louis Gebhard decided to begin the process of obtaining one of the tracts of land that were being made available to veterans of the American Civil War through the Soldiers and Sailors Homestead Act that had been passed by the United States Congress on 4 April 1872. An update to the Homestead Act passed by Congress on 20 May 1862, which had made it possible for U.S. citizens and immigrants to obtain ownership of up to one hundred and sixty acres of land in western territories of the United States free of charge after they had resided on that land for five years, or by purchasing the land for one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre after working and improving it for six months, the new 1872 legislation would make it even easier for Union Army veterans like Louis Gebhard to not only obtain land, by allowing them to reduce the residency requirement by subtracting their time served in the military, but also to be able to bequeath that land to their widows or children when they died.

* Note: Many of those tracts of land that were being made available to veterans and other homesteaders were, in reality, lands that had been home to one or more of the many Native American tribes inhabiting the Nebraska Territory for generations, but had been seized and redistributed to non-indigenous people by the U.S. Government during the nineteenth century.

Sometime circa the spring or early summer of 1872, Louis Gebhard packed up his wife and children and took them to the railroad station in Easton, where they boarded a train and began their migration west. After a long and exhausting journey, they finally arrived in Nebraska, and headed for Polk County, where they found temporary lodging and he found work to begin supporting his family while embarking on his dream of becoming a successful homesteader and land owner.

In mid-May 1872, he completed a series of forms that would become part of a short but historically important Homestead Application file that is now housed at the U.S. National Archives. Those initial forms that were submitted by Louis Gebhard, Sr. to the U.S. Government’s Land Office in Lincoln, Nebraska documented his military service with Company A of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers during the American Civil War, his honorable discharge from that regiment, his status as the head of a family and citizen of the United States of America, and his payment of eighteen dollars to federal officials at the Land Office in Lincoln, Nebraska to initiate his homestead claim. (His application file at the National Archives also includes a copy of his final muster-out record from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, illustrating the type of paperwork that was issued to honorably discharged U.S. soldiers.)

Less than two weeks later — on 3 June 1872 — he settled his family on one hundred and sixty acres of land in the “NW 1/4 of Section No. 20, in Township No. 16 N of Range No. 1 W” (now part of Polk County, Nebraska), where he would ultimately dig a well, install a water pump, build a two-room, twelve-foot by fourteen-foot frame house and a ten-foot by fourteen-foot kitchen with windows and three doors, and a fifteen-foot by thirty-foot stable. He also began to cultivate what would be the first of his roughly forty acres of land that would be devoted to farming, according to the final homestead paperwork he submitted on 1 September 1877 that enabled him to obtain the title to his property from the federal government. Lewis Gebhard then made his final payment of eight dollars to the federal government on 5 October 1877.

But when the federal census of 1880 was enumerated on 5 June, Louis Gebhard, Sr. was documented not as a farmer — but as a brickmaker, as well as a boarder who was living with his eight-year-old daughter, Sarah Gebhard, in a boarding house that was operated by restauranteur Henry Suer [sp?] and his wife, Laura, in the Village of Osceola in Polk County, Nebraska. Although six other boarders were listed on that census sheet, along with three of the Suers’ children and one live-in servant, the wife and son of Louis Gebhard, Sr. were not, signaling that Louis and Mary were possibly separated at that time, with each of the parents caring for one of their two surviving children at their respective rentals.

The Gebhards were clearly struggling — not only with their farming operation, but in their personal lives as well — domestic problems that, sadly, continued to escalate. During the summer of 1885, Louis Gebhard, Sr. was arrested for firing a revolver at his wife on Monday, 6 July, according to the Osceola Record, which reported that Louis “was arraigned before judge Saunders, of the county court on Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. … and was placed under bonds in the sum of $750 to keep the peace and await the action of the district court. Upon default of bail he was lodged in jail until the bail could be procured,” which took roughly three weeks, according to a later edition of that newspaper.

Then, on 28 April 1887, the Osceola Record reported that C. M. Pulver had prevailed in a legal action against Louis and Mary Gebhard, resulting in “a decree of foreclosure of mortgage” by the “district court of Polk county Nebraska … on lots one two three four seven and eight in block No two in Wheelers addition to the town of Osceola also 96 feet off of the west end of original lot six and seven in original block ten east addition to the town of Osceola.” That report also included the March 1887 announcement by Sheriff L. D. Hamilton regarding his planned 30 April 1887 sale of the Gebhards’ “real estate at public auction to the highest bidder for cash to satisfy said judgement then due thereon in the aggregate being the sum of $116.00 and interest from Oct. 19th 1886, at ten percent interest and $51.60 cost and accruing cost.”

Having lost nearly everything, Louis Gebhard, Sr. and his wife moved to Cascade Locks in Hood River County, Oregon, where they began to operate a small farm sometime circa 1888. They would continue to live there on that farm, which was located roughly forty miles east of the city of Portland, for the remainder of their days.

Sadly, many of their days in Oregon were also unhappy ones because Louis Gebhard, Sr. had been battling alcoholism for much of his life. He was also a domestic abuser who repeatedly battered his wife. According to multiple news reports, the couple quarreled frequently.

Mental Illness, Death and Interment

As his dependence on alcohol grew stronger, the mind of Louis Gebhard, Sr. deteriorated. Newspapers would later report that the seventy-year-old veteran suffered from dementia and paranoia during his final months. Tragically, during the evening of 21 March 1898, he shot and killed his sixty-five-year-old wife, before turning the gun on himself. According to multiple news accounts, “Gebhart had been in ill health of late … and imagined that his wife was trying to cause his death.” The Idaho Daily Statesman reported that:

The shooting was heard last night [21 March 1898] but no attention was paid to it and the bodies were not found until today.

Gebhard has lived  with his wife for the last 10 or 12 years on a small farm. Frequent quarrels have occurred between them for many years and when intoxicated he was very abusive.

Blood stains were found about the room, showing that a struggle had taken place. Mrs. Gebhard evidently started to flee from her husband but she only reached the front porch, where he shot her, and the body was found lying on the edge of the porch.

After committing the murder Gebhard walked into the house and, lying down upon a lounge, placed the pistol to his head and sent a bullet into his brain.

The Sacramento Daily Record-Union and the San Francisco Chronicle, which also ran that same article that had been syndicated to dozens of newspapers nationwide, also noted that “The aged couple left a daughter, Mrs. Morin, who resides with her husband at Fort Stevens, Oregon.”

* How to Get Help: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out for help. Confidential support is available free of charge through the the National Domestic Violence Hotline at: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or by visiting the hotline’s website.

What Happened to the Children of Louis Gebhard, Sr.?

Louis Gebhard, Jr. (1866-1928), enlisted as a private with the 65th New York Infantry’s G Company during the Spanish-American War. Researchers have not yet located records documenting what happened to him immediately after his service to the nation. What is known for certain is that, by the 1920s, he was operating a tobacco and newspaper store on Main Street in Buffalo, Erie County, New York. A member of the United Spanish War Veterans’ Seyburn-Liscum Camp No. 12 in Buffalo, Louis Gebhard, Jr. died at the age of fifty-six “in Sisters’ hospital” in Buffalo on 20 March 1928 (alternate death date: 19 March 1928). Following funeral services at the J. M. O’Gorman funeral home at 1691 Main Street in Buffalo at 2 p.m. on 24 March, Louis Gebhard was laid to rest at the “Pine Hill Cemetery,” according to his Buffalo Evening News obituary. Researchers are also still searching for the exact location of his grave. According to his obituary and subsequent reports by that same publication regarding the resolution of his estate, “His only known relative [was] a sister in Omaha, Neb.” — a sister with whom he had lost touch.

The $10,000 estate of the late Louis Gebhard, lower Main street character, who for many years operated a tobacco store at 144 Main street, was enriched by $3600 Wednesday by the sale by Public Administrator Charles A. White, of 20 shares of Radio Corporation stock which Gebhard, had purchased in July, 1924, for, around $30 a share. The stock sold Wednesday [9 May 1928] for $203 a share.

Sarah Gebhard, sole heir to the estate, has not as yet been found. When Gebhard was taken to the Sisters’ hospital in March last he told the hospital authorities to notify his sister, Sarah Gebhard, at Osceola, Neb. A diligent search gas been carried on here and in other parts of the country without success.

Public Administrator Charles A. White also is making a search for the heirs of the late Frederick L. Miller….

Following her marriage to Pierre Morin (1858-1943) sometime during the mid to late 1880s, Sarah (Gebhard) Morin (1871-1929) initially settled with her husband in Cascade Locks in Hood River County, Oregon, where they became the parents of: Clara Mary Morin (1888-1974), who was born on 2 July 1888 and would later wed and be widowed by Len Harvey Curtis (1881-1929), before marrying Clarence Jacob Kauffman (1880-1950); William Peter Morin (1890-1918), who was born in Cascade Locks on 18 January 1890 but would later die at sea, off the coast of Scotland, on 5 February 1918 (seventeen days after his twenty-eighth birthday), while serving as a private with the United States Army’s 20th Engineers during World War I; and Rose E. Morin (1892-1963), who was born on 11 February 1892 and would later wed Wilbur B. Portouw (1894-1969).

Sometime after Rose’s birth, Sarah and Pierre Morin packed up their belongings and moved their children to Fort Stevens, Oregon. More children soon followed: Blanche M. Morin (1897-1966), who was born in Fort Stevens on 22 May 1897 and would later wed and be widowed by Armour F. Ariss (1896-1954), before marrying Vencel J. Barta (1892-1968); Ralph Ernest Morin (1901-1975), who was born in Oregon on 9 October 1901 and would later become a factory worker but would never marry; and Florence Josephine Morin (1904-1989), who was born in Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon on 9 January 1904 and would later wed Ernest Arthur Lang (1901-1970).

In 1910, Sarah (Gebhard) Morin lived in East Butte Precinct, Washington County, Oregon, where her husband worked the land as a farmer. Residing with them were their unmarried children: Clara, who was employed as a laundress at a steam laundry; Rose, Blanche, Ralph, and Florence. By 1920, Sarah and her carpenter-husband were living in North Tigard Precinct, Washington County with their children: Rose, who was employed as a filing clerk in a local office; Ralph and Florence. Predeceased by her brother in 1928, Sarah (Gebhard) Morin subsequently became the subject of a nationwide search as the reported sole surviving heir of his estate. According to the Polk County Democrat in Nebraska:

The whereabouts of Sarah Gebhard, a resident of Osceola during the ’80s [sic, “1880s”] is being sought by persons residing at Buffalo, New York, since the death in that city of the woman’s brother, Louis Gebhard jr. The family, parents of Louis and Sarah, resided on a farm in Clear Creek precinct, the northwest quarter of 20-16-1 having been taken as a homestead of Louis Gebhard, sr., and to whom a deed was issued by the government in 1878. This land was later disposed of to people by the name of Nitsch in 1885 and is owned by them at the present time. Mr. Gebhard came to Osceola and in 1885 purchased from Mr. M. A. Mills, lots 6 and 7, block 10, of East addition to Osceola. This was later disposed of to Mr. C. M. Pulver, now of Omaha. Following the sale of the Osceola place the family went west, according to the recollection of people living here [in Osceola] now, and their whereabouts is [sic, “are”] not known. During March of this year, the son, Louis, died at Buffalo and a news report from that city, sent to the Democrat reads as follows:

‘Buffalo, N. Y., May 15. — The $10,000 estate of the late Louis Gebhard lower Main street character here who for many years operated a tobacco store at 144 Main street, was enricued by $3,600 Saturday by the sale by Public Administrator Charles A. White, of 20 shares of Radio Corporation stock which Gebhard had purchased in July 1924, for around $30 a share. The stock sold Saturday for$203 a share. Sarah Gebhard, sole heir to the estate, has not yet been found. When Gebhard was taken to the Sister’s hospital here [in Buffalo] in March last he told the hospital to notify his sister, Sarah Gebhard, at Osceola, Nebraska. A diligent search has been carried out here and in other parts of the country without success.’

If any of the readers of this paper are aware of the woman who was known here at [sic, “as”] Sarah Gebhard they will confer a favor by letting it be known at once.

Researchers have not yet located any follow-up news coverage that clarifies whether or not the administrators of the estate of Louis Gebhard, Jr. were ever able to locate Sarah Gebhard, who had been residing in Oregon under her married name of “Morin” at the time of their search for her. Ailing with hypertension and cardiovasular disease during her final years, Sarah died at the age of fifty-eight in Hubbard, Marion County, Oregon (alternate death location: the home of her daughter, Rose Portouw, in Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon) on 24 November 1929, and was laid to rest at the River View Cemetery in Portland (where her son had been buried in 1918).

* How to Get Help: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please reach out for help. Confidential support is available free of charge through the the National Domestic Violence Hotline at: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or by visiting the hotline’s website.

 

Sources: 

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