April 12th: This Date in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry History

Apr13

April 12th would prove to be an important date for the men who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. This abridged timeline illustrates why:

1861

The bombardment of Fort Sumter 12-14 April 1861 (Currier & Ives, public domain).

At 4:30 a.m., on April 12, 1861, artillery batteries of the Confederate States Army open fire on United States Army troops stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. A long and disastrous period of civil war begins in America.

The majority of Pennsylvanians and residents of other states throughout America who will ultimately serve with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry are at home, asleep in their beds — or just rising and readying themselves for their work days on family farms, as canal boatmen, in iron foundries, silk mills, tanneries or tobacco factories, as quarrymen toiling away in the slate industry, or as miners tunneling deeper inside of the Earth in poorly-lighted coal mines, along with countless other blue collar laborers who are risking their own health and safety just to keep their families housed and fed.

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry isn’t even “a glimmer” in anyone’s eyes — yet. (It won’t be founded until August 5, 1861.)

1862

In 1862, The Gazette, one of two hometown newspapers read by the majority of men serving with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s C Company, carries the following news in its April 12th edition:

Jeff. Davis is becoming desperate. He has issued an extraordinary Message ordering the enrollment of all citizens of the Confederate States between the ages of 18 and 35, for military service, the residue of the fighting population, above 35 to form a fighting force.

Although that particular edition of the newspaper has not yet reached the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who are stationed in Florida, a warning about the Confederate Conscription Act’s pending passage has likely been telegraphed by the U.S. War Department to senior officers at the 47th Pennsylvania’s headquarters at Fort Taylor in Key West in order to prepare them for the increased threat they and their troops will face.

1864

On April 12, 1864, Captain Charles William Abbott, commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s K Company, pens a brief report from his regiment’s camp at Grand Ecore, Louisiana to his superior officers in the United States Army of the Gulf, which partially documents the losses in soldiers and supplies sustained by his regiment during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864. That report also contains details about the regiment’s movements during this phase of duty.

Sergeant John Gross Helfrich then describes this same battle in a letter to his parents on May 5th, in which he notes:

I have learned additional news of the late fight of our boys of the “Nineteenth Corps”…. The casualties of our boys amounted to a great deal more than at first reported. The Lt. Col. of our Forty-seventh Regt. is missing, and supposed he is wounded or perhaps killed. Lt. Swoyer is dead.

1865

In a letter that he is writing to the Sunbury American on April 12, 1865 from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s camp near Summit Point, Virginia, 47th Pennsylvanian Henry D. Wharton describes a celebration that took place following the surrender at Appomattox by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his army on April 9, 1865:

Since yesterday a week we have been on the move, going as far as three miles beyond Winchester. There we halted for three days, waiting for the return or news from Torbett’s cavalry who had gone on a reconnoisance [sic] up to the valley. They returned, reporting they were as far up as Mt. Jackson, some sixty miles, and found nary an armed reb. The reason of our move was to be ready in case Lee moved against us, or to march on Lynchburg, if Lee reached that point, so that we could aid in surrounding him and [his] army, and with Sheridan and Mead capture the whole party. Grant’s gallant boys saved us that march and bagged the whole crowd. Last Sunday night our camp was aroused by the loud road of artillery. Hearing so much good news of late, I stuck to my blanket, not caring to get up, for I suspected a salute, which it really was for the ‘unconditional surrender of Lee.’ The boys got wild over the news, shouting till they were hoarse, the loud huzzas [sic, huzzahs] echoing through the Valley, songs of ‘rally round the flag,’ &c., were sung, and above the noise of the ‘cannons opening roar,’ and confusion of camp, could be heard ‘Hail Columbia’ and Yankee Doodle played by our band. Other bands took it up and soon the whole army let loose, making ‘confusion worse confounded.’

The next morning we packed up, struck tents, marched away, and now we are within a short distance of our old quarters. – The war is about played out, and peace is clearly seen through the bright cloud that has taken the place of those that darkened the sky for the last four years. The question now with us is whether the veterans after Old Abe has matters fixed to his satisfaction, will have to stay ‘till the expiration of the three years, or be discharged as per agreement, at the ‘end of the war.’ If we are not discharged when hostilities cease, great injustice will be done.

The members of Co. ‘C,’ wishing to do honor to Lieut. C. S. Beard, and show their appreciation of him as an officer and gentleman, presented him with a splendid sword, sash and belt. Lieut. Beard rose from the ranks, and as one of their number, the boys gave him this token of esteem.

A few nights ago, an aid [sic] on Gen. Torbett’s staff, with two more officers, attempted to pass a safe guard stationed at a house near Winchester. The guard halted the party, they rushed on, paying no attention to the challenge, when the sentinel charged bayonet, running the sharp steel through the abdomen of the aid [sic], wounding him so severely that he died in an hour. The guard did his duty as he was there for the protection of the inmates and their property, with instruction to let no one enter.

The boys are all well, and jubilant over the victories of Grant, and their own little Sheridan, and feel as though they would soon return to meet the loved ones at home, and receive a kind greeting from old friends….

1866

On April 12, 1866, members of the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers who survived the American Civil War are three months into their post-war civilian lives. Many are back home in Pennsylvania, trying to regain some sense of their old selves with normal work and family routines. Others have already left their pre-war and war lives behind, choosing to migrate west in search of better opportunities — or a certain peace of mind they hope to find in knowing they will be far away from any decision-makers who might drag their communities and nation back down into another disastrous war in the future.

Sources:

Abbott, Charles W. Report from Captain Charles W. Abbott, Captain, Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, to Senior Officers of the U.S. Army of the Gulf’s XIX Corps (19th Corps), Grand Ecore, Louisiana, April 12, 1864. Nazareth, Pennsylvania: Personal Collection of Julian Burley.
“Agriculture and Rural Life,” in “Stories from PA History.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2023.
“Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Park.” Washington, D.C.: National Park Foundation, retrieved online April 12, 2025.
Harris, Howard and Perry K. Blatz. Keystone of Democracy: A History of Pennsylvania Workers. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999.
Helfrich, John Gross. Letter to His Parents, May 5, 1864. Mesa, Arizona: Personal Collection of the Colin Cofield Family Archives.
Miller, Randall M. and William A. Pencak. Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
“Mining Anthracite,” in “Stories from PA History.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2023.
Montgomery, Morton L. Early Furnaces and Forges of Berks County, Pennsylvania, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1884. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1884.
News Regarding the Confederate States’ New Conscription Order. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Gazette, April 12, 1862.
Palladino, Grace. Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840-1868. New York, New York: Fordham University Press, March 30, 2006.
Sacher, John M. Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: LSU Press, 2021.
“The Industrial Age,” in “Stories from PA History: Science and Invention.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2023.
“The Pennsylvania Iron Industry: Furnace and Forge of America,” in “Stories from PA History.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2023.
“The Railroad in Pennsylvania,” in “Stories from PA History.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2023.
“Timeline of Labor History in Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Labor History Society, retrieved online April 12, 2025.

Honoring President George Washington, Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida (February 22, 1862)

Feb17

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

Letter from the Sunbury Guards
Camp Brannan. Key West, Fla., Feb. 27, 1862.

DEAR WILVERT:– Gen. Brannan and staff arrived here on Friday last, on the steamer Philadelphia. He made his first appearance, to us, on our parade ground, at dress parade, and seemed pleased at the improvement the men had made with their new arms, in the manual. After dress parade he rode passed [sic] the different streets of the regiment, and the enthusiastic cheers given him showed that he was liked, and that the men had perfect confidence in him.

Saturday last, the anniversary of the birth of “the Father of his Country,” WASHINGTON, was celebrated in a becoming manner. The whole Brigade was formed in Divisions, which made three sides of a square; the officers in the centre [sic]. A prayer was then offered to the Throne of Grace asking for success to our arms, that this wicked rebellion might be put down, and that we might hereafter celebrate the anniversary of Washington’s birthday in peace. The farewell ‘Address’ was then read….

Washington & Lincoln (Apotheosis), J. A. Arthur, 1865 (public domain).

When 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Henry D. Wharton penned those words from his duty station at Fort Taylor in Key West on February 27, he was referring to the final public address given by the first President of the United States, GeorgeWashington, as he prepared to retire from his life of public service. Written on September 19, 1796, Washington’s insightful words reminded Wharton and his fellow Union Army soldiers what they were fighting to preserve.

Picture them as they stood there, attired in their blue uniforms, the American flag wafting gently in the breeze under the brilliant blue sky of a sunny, Florida day, as a senior officer solemnly read Washington’s final guidance to his beloved fellow Americans–guidance that remains relevant even now.

Washington’s Final Address (Excerpt)

Friends and Fellow Citizens:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.

I beg you, at the same time, to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.

The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn….

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole….

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views.

One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection….

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another….

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy….

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, hunanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an eual and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed–in order to give to trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit … constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another….

Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence….

The reading of Washington’s lengthy final address continued on. The full address is available online here. It is well worth reading–and re-reading, on an annual basis.

Sources:

“Farewell Address (1796).” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: National Constitution Center, retrieved online February 17, 2025.
“George Washington’s Farewell Address.” Mount Vernon, Virginia: George Washington’s Mount Vernon, retrieved online February 17, 2025.
Wharton, Henry. “Letter from the Sunbury Guards: Camp Brannan, Key West, Florida, February 27, 1862.” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 15 March 1862.

Research Update: New Details Learned About Abraham Jassum, One of Nine Formerly Enslaved Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Oct27

Enlistment form for Abraham Jassum, Undercook, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, 5 October 1862, p. 1 (Compiled Military Service Records, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Fleeing the brutal practice of chattel slavery in South Carolina during the fall of 1862, a Black youth walked into a recruiting station for the Army of the United States in Beaufort, South Carolina and told an officer there that he wanted to become a soldier. His name, according to his enlistment paperwork, was Abraham Jassum, and he was just sixteen years old.

Sadly, much of that teenager’s life has remained a mystery that has stubbornly resisted unraveling–until now. Thanks to documents recently copied by the U.S. National Archives for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, researchers now know that Abraham Jassum was born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina sometime around 1846.

Although specific details about what happened to this teenager between the dates of his birth and army enlistment have not yet been found, researchers do already have several ideas. One theory is that Abraham’s surname was not actually “Jassum” because that surname does not appear to have been present on any federal census records for any plantation owners or other enslavers in South Carolina between 1840 and 1860, nor was it used for any Black Freedmen in South Carolina on federal census records that were completed after the American Civil War. Furthermore, there appear to be no U.S. Civil War Pension records that exist for any soldier with the surname of “Jassum.”

Another theory is that, by the time that Abraham reached the age of sixteen, he had been transported to Beaufort to be used as an enslaved laborer there (or was “sold as property” by his enslaver in Charleston to a plantation owner or other enslaver near Beaufort), and that he was freed by Union soldiers when Beaufort was occupied by the Union Army.

Fortunately, the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) file for Abraham Jassum does contain important details about his life between October 1862 and October 1865.

Bay Street Looking West, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862 (Sam A. Cooley, 10th Army Corps, photographer, public domain).

What is known for certain is that he enlisted for military service on October 5, 1862 as an “undercook“–a designation that was first authorized for use by regiments serving with the Army of the United States by the U.S. War Department. Examined and certified as fit for duty by William F. Reiber, M.D., an assistant regimental surgeon with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Abraham Jassum was then assigned to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ F Company.

Military records at the time of his enlistment noted that he was five feet, six inches tall and had black hair, black eyes and a black complexion. Muster sheets subsequently described him as a “Negro.”

During his three-year term of enlistment, he traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania to its battle, garrison, occupation, and other duty assignments in Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Washington D.C., and South Carolina. While stationed with his regiment in Louisiana, he was documented as having been officially mustered into the regiment in June 1864, along with the other Black soldiers of the 47th Pennsylvania.

Additional military records of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry confirm Abraham Jassum’s service in 1864 and 1865, describing him as a “cook” or as a “private,” which appears to indicate that he may have been promoted at some point prior to his honorable discharge.

Issued his honorable discharge paperwork on October 4, 1865, while his regiment was assigned to Reconstruction-related duties in Charleston, South Carolina, he was given a small travel allowance to enable him to return to his place of enlistment (Beaufort, South Carolina), which seems to indicate that he chose to settle in Beaufort, at least initially, rather than remaining in the city where he had been born (Charleston), and instead of relocating north with his former regiment when it returned to Pennsylvania.

Researchers will continue to search for records that can shed more light on what happened to Abraham Jassum after the war, and will post updates if and when new data is uncovered.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Jassum, Abraham, in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Jassum, Abraham, Civil War Muster Rolls (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Jassum, Abraham, in Compiled Military Service Records (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Jassum, Abraham, in Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865 (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry), in Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs (RG-19). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

The Backbones of a Nation: The Laborers Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Sep1

“Labor Is Life” (U.S. Postal Service’s Labor Day Stamp, 1956, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Bakers, blacksmiths, boatmen, butchers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, cigarmakers, coal miners, factory workers, farmers, gardeners, gold miners, iron workers, masons, quarry workers, teamsters, tombstone carvers. These were just a few of the diverse job titles held by the laborers who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.

Many returned to their same occupations after the war ended while others found new pathways for their life journeys. Far too many were never able to return to the arms of their loved ones and still rest in marked or unmarked graves far from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In honor of Labor Day, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is proud to present this abridged list of blue-collar men and boys who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between August 1861 and January 1866, as well as the names of two of the women associated with the regiment who made their own unforgettable marks on the world.

* Auchmuty, Samuel S. (First Lieutenant, Company D): A native of Duncannon, Perry County and veteran of the Mexican-American War who was employed as a carpenter during the early 1860s, Samuel Auchmuty responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War by enrolling as a first lieutenant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 20, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his work as a house carpenter and launched a successful contracting business that was responsible for building new business structures, churches, single-family homes, and schools, as well as renovating existing structures; he died in 1891, following a brief illness;

First Sergeant Christian S. Beard, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Beard, Christian Seiler (First Lieutenant, Company C): A twenty-seven-year-old, married carpenter residing in Williamsport, Lycoming County when President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1865, Chistian S. Beard promptly enrolled for Civil War military service before that month was out as a private with Company D of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; after rising up through the ranks to become a first lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on Christmas Day, 1865, and returned home to his wife in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a carpenter; after having several children with his wife, he was widowed by her; remarried in 1884, he relocated with his wife and children to Pittsburgh, where he continued to work as a carpenter; ailing with heart and kidney disease, he died there on November 16, 1911 and was interred at that city’s Highwood Cemetery;

* Burke, Thomas (Sergeant, Company I): A first-generation American, Thomas Burke was a twenty-year-old cabinetmaker residing in Allentown at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on the day that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded (August 5, 1861), he was officially mustered in as a private; from that point on, he continued to work his way up the ranks, receiving a promotion to corporal on September 19, 1864 and then to sergeant on July 11, 1865; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865, he returned home to Lehigh County, where he married and began a family; sometime in early to mid-1871, he and his family migrated west to Iowa, settling in Anamosa, Jones County, where he was employed as a carpenter and contractor; he died at his home there on October 22, 1910 and was buried at that town’s Riverside Cemetery;

* Colvin, John Dorrance (Second Lieutenant, Company C): A native of Abington Township, Lackawanna County who was a farmer when he enlisted for Civil War military service on September 12, 1861, John D. Colvin transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps on October 13, 1863, and continued to serve with the Signal Corps for the duration of the war; employed as an engineer, post-war, he helped the Pacific Railroad to extend its service from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Kearney in Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania, where he married, began a family and resided with them in Olyphant and Carbondale before relocating with them to Parsons in Luzerne County, where he became a prominent civic leader and member of the school board; initially employed as a machinist, he went on to become superintendent of the Delaware & Hudson Coal company before taking a similar job with the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster of Parsons during the early 1890s, he died there on March 15, 1901 and was buried at the Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre;

* Crownover, James (Sergeant, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old teamster residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Crownover rose up through the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania from private to reach the rank of sergeant; wounded in the right shoulder and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; during captivity, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant; given medical treatment before he was returned to active duty, he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he found work at a tannery near Blain, married, began a family and then relocated with them to East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, where he worked as a teamster; relocating with them to Braddock in Allegheny County after the turn of the century, he worked at a local mill there; he died in Allegheny County on July 18, 1903 and was buried at the Monongahela Cemetery in Braddock Hills;

Jacob Daub, circa 1862-1865 (carte de visite, Cooley & Beckett Photographers, Savannah, Georgia and Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina, public domain).

* Daub, Jacob and William J. (Drummer Boy, Company A): A German immigrant as a child, Jacob Daub emigrated with his parents and younger brother, William, circa 1852; after settling in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where his father found work as a stone mason, Jacob grew up to become a cigarmaker, and also became the first of the two brothers to enlist in the American Civil War; after enrolling at the age of sixteen, he was classified as a field musician and assigned to Company A as its drummer boy; his nineteen-year-old brother, William, a carpenter by 1865, followed him into the war when he enlisted as a private with the same company in February of that year; after the war ended, both returned home to Northampton County, where they married, had children and went on to live long, full lives; William eventually died at the age of eighty in 1928, followed by Jacob, who passed away in 1936, roughly two months before his ninety-first birthday;

* Detweiler, Charles C. (Private, Company A): Berks County native Charles Detweiler enrolled for Civil War military service on September 16, 1862; a carpenter who later became a farmer, he served with Company A until he was severely injured in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 19, 1864, when he sustained a musket ball wound to the middle of his thigh; treated at a Union Army hospital in Virginia before being transported to the Union’s Mower General Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he learned that the musket ball had damaged his femur and femoral arteries; following his wound-related death at Mower on March 12, 1865, he was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Kutztown, Berks County;

* Diaz, John (Private, Company I): An immigrant from Spain’s Canary Islands, John Diaz emigrated sometime between 1862 and 1865 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a cigarmaker; on January 25, 1865, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Norristown, Montgomery County and served as a private with Company I of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he resumed work as a cigarmaker in Philadelphia, eventually launching his own cigarmaking firm, which became a family business as his sons became old enough to work for him; sometime between 1906 and 1910, he relocated with his wife and several of his children to Camden County, New Jersey, where he died on September 5, 1915;

James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).

* Downs, James (Corporal, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old tanner residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Downs was captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River; held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, he received medical treatment and was subsequently returned to active duty; following his honorable discharge with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1865, he returned home, married, began a family and relocated with his family to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; suffering from heart and kidney disease, and possibly also from post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than “insane” as physicians at the Pennsylvania Memorial Home in Brookville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania had diagnosed him, he fell from a window at that home and died at there on September 16, 1921; he was subsequently interred in the Veterans’ Circle of the Brookville Cemetery;

* Eagle, Augustus (Second Lieutenant, Company F): A German immigrant as a teenager, Augustus Eagle arrived in America on June 23, 1855, two years after his brother, Frederick Eagle, had emigrated and made a life for himself in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; both men married and began families there, with Fred employed as a laborer and Gus employed by the Crane Iron Works; when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, both men enrolled for military service on August 21, 1861 as privates with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; in 1862, Fred fell ill and was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, but Gus continued to serve, rising up through the regiment’s enlisted and officers’ ranks; commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on September 11, 1864, upon completion of his three-year term of service; post-war, Fred became a successful baker with real estate and personal property valued at $4,200 (roughly $155,750 in 2023 dollars) and died in Catasauqua in 1885, while Gus owned a successful restaurant in Whitehall Township before operating the Fairview Hotel, which became a popular spot for political gatherings; after suffering a series of strokes in 1902, Gus died at his home on August 17 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;

* Eisenbraun, Alfred (Drummer Boy, Company B): A tobacco stripper and first-generation American from Allentown, Lehigh County, fifteen-year-old Alfred Eisenbraun became the second “man” from the 47th Pennsylvania to die when he succumbed to complications from typhoid fever at the Kalorama Eruptive Fever Hospital in Georgetown, District of Columbia on October 26, 1861; he still rests at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home Cemetery in Washington, D.C.;

* Fink, Aaron (Corporal, Company B): A shoemaker and native of Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Aaron Fink, grew up, began a family and established a successful small shoemaking business, first in Allentown and then in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County; on August 20, 1861, he chose to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring the American Civil War to a quick end when he enrolled for military service; shot in the right leg during the fighting at the Frampton Plantation during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but died there from wound-related complications on November 5, 1862; initially buried near that hospital, his remains were later exhumed by Allentown undertaker Paul Balliet and returned to Pennsylvania for reinterment at that city’s Union-West End Cemetery;

* Fornwald, Reily M. (Corporal, Company G): Born in Heidelberg Township, Berks County, Reily Fornwald was raised there on his family’s farm near Stouchsberg; educated in his community’s common schools and then at Millersville State Normal School, he became a railroad worker before returning to farm life shortly before the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service at the age of twenty on September 11, 1862, he was wounded in the head and groin by an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; stabilized on the battlefield before being transported to a field hospital for more advanced medical care, he spent four weeks recuperating before returning to active duty with his regiment; promoted to the rank of corporal on January 19, 1863, he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably discharged at Berryville, Virginia on September 18, 1864, upon expiration of his term of enlistment; after returning home, he spent four years operating a blast furnace for White & Ferguson in Robesonia, Berks County; he also married and began a family; sometime around 1870, he left that job to become an engine operator for Wright, Cook & Co. in Sheridan and then moved to a job as an engine operator for William M. Kauffman—a position he held for roughly a decade before securing employment as a shifting engineer with the Reading Railway Company at its yards in Reading; following his retirement in 1905, he and his wife settled in Robesonia, where he became involved in buying and selling real estate; following a severe fall in May 1925, during which he fractured a thigh bone, he died at the Homeopathic Hospital in Reading on June 1 and was buried at Robesonia’s Heidelberg Cemetery;

Captain Reuben Shatto Gardner, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Gardner, Reuben Shatto, John A. and Jacob S. R.: Natives of Perry County, Reuben Shatto Gardner and his brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner, began their work lives as laborers; among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861, Reuben was a twenty-five-year-old miller who resided in Newport, Perry County; after enlisting as a private with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20, he was honorably mustered out after completing his term of service; he then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a first sergeant with Company H of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; also enrolling with him that same day were his twenty-three-year-old and twenty-one-year-old brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner; John officially mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on September 18 (the day before Reuben arrived), while Jacob officially mustered in on September 19; both joined their brother’s company, entering at their respective ranks of corporal and private, but Jacob’s tenure was a short one; sickened by typhoid fever in late December 1861, he died at the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental hospital at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia on January 8, 1862; his remains were later returned to Perry County for burial at the Old Newport Cemetery; soldiering on, Reuben and John were transported with their regiment by ship to Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and subsequently sent to South Carolina with their regiment and other Union troops; shot in the head and thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, Reuben was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina for an extended period of time, and then returned to active duty with his regiment; meanwhile, John was assigned with H Company and the men from Companies D, F and K to garrison Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas; both brothers then continued to work their way up the regiment’s ranks, with John promoted to corporal on September 18, 1864 and Reuben ultimately commissioned as a captain and given command of Company H on February 16, 1865; both then returned home after honorably mustering out with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865; sometime around 1866 or 1867, Reuben and his wife migrated west, first to Elk River Station in Sherburne County, Minnesota and then to Stillwater, Washington County, before settling in the city of Minneapolis; through it all, he worked as a miller; Reuben and his family then relocated farther west, arriving in King County, Washington after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; initially employed in the restaurant industry, Reuben later found work as a railroad conductor before prospecting for gold with son Edward in the western United States and British Columbia, Canada during the 1890s Gold Rush; employed as a U.S. Post Office clerk in charge of the money order and registry departments in Seattle from 1898 to 1902, Reuben died in Seattle at the age of sixty-eight on September 25, 1903 and was interred at that city’s Lakeview Cemetery; meanwhile, his brother John, who had resumed work as a fireman with the Pennsylvania Railroad after returning from the war, was widowed by his wife in 1872; after remarrying and welcoming the births of more children, he was severely injured on October 9, 1873 while working as a fireman on the Pacific Express for the Pennsylvania Railroad; unable to continue working as a fireman due to his amputated hand, he worked briefly as a railroad call messenger before launching his own transfer business in Harrisburg; after he was widowed by his ailing second wife, John was severely injured in a second accident in 1894 while loading his delivery wagon; still operating his business after the turn of the century, he remarried on January 3, 1900, but was widowed by his third wife when she died during a surgical procedure in 1911; he subsequently closed his business and relocated to the home of his daughter in the city of Reading, Berks County; four years later, he fell on an icy sidewalk and became bedfast; aged eighty and ailing from arteriosclerosis and lung congestion, he died at her home on February 20, 1918 and was buried at Reading’s Charles Evans Cemetery;

* Gethers, Bristor (Under-Cook, Company F): Born into slavery in South Carolina circa 1829, Bristor Gethers was married “by slave custom at Georgetown, S.C.” on the Pringle plantation in Georgetown sometime around 1847 to “Rachael Richardson” (alternate spelling “Rachel”); a field hand at the dawn of the Civil War, he was freed from chattel enslavement in 1862 by Union Army troops; he then enlisted as an “Under-Cook” with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina on October 5, 1862, and traveled with the regiment until October 4, 1865, when he was honorably discharged in Charleston, South Carolina upon completion of his three-year term of enlistment; at that point, he returned to Beaufort and resumed life with his wife and their son, Peter; a farmer, Bristor was ultimately disabled by ailments that were directly attributable to his Union Army tenure; awarded a U.S. Civil War Soldiers’ Pension, he lived out his days with his wife on Horse Island, South Carolina, and died on Horse Island, South Carolina on June 24 or 25, 1894; he was then laid to rest at a graveyard on Parris Island on June 26 of that same year;

* Gilbert, Edwin (Captain, Company F): A native of Northampton County and a carpenter residing in Catasauqua, Lehigh County at the dawn of the American Civil War, Edwin Gilbert enrolled as a corporal on August 21, 1861; after rising up through his regiment’s officer ranks, he was ultimately commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on New Year’s Day, 1865, and then mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina of Christmas of that same year; resuming his life with his wife and children in Lehigh County after the war, he continued to work as a carpenter; after suffering a stroke in late December 1893, he died on January 2, 1894 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;

Mrs. Caroline Bost and Martin L. Guth celebrated the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday with fellow Grand Army of the Republic and ladies auxiliary members in February 1933 (public domain).

* Guth, Martin Luther (Corporal, Company K): A native of Lehigh County and son of a farmer, Martin L. Guth was a seventeen-year-old laborer and resident of Guthsville in Whitehall Township at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on September 26, 1862, he was officially mustered in as a corporal; he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on October 1, 1865, upon expiration of his term of service; at some point during that service, he broke his leg—an injury that did not heal properly and plagued him for the remainer of his life; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he found work again as a laborer; married in 1883, he became the father of four children, one of whom was born in New Mexico and another who was born in California; he had moved his family west in search of work in the mining industry; documented as a “prospector” or “miner” records created in Nevada during that period, he was also documented on voter registration rolls of Butte City in Glenn County, California in August 1892; by 1900, he was living separately from his wife, who was residing in Bandon, Coos County, Oregon with their two children while he was residing at the Veterans’ Home of California in Yount Township, Napa County, California; subsequently admitted to the Mountain Branch of the network of U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee on February 11, 1912, his disabilities included an old compound fracture of his right leg with chronic ulceration, defective vision (right eye), chronic bronchitis, and arteriosclerosis; discharged on December 12, 1920, he was admitted to the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 30, 1912, but discharged on September 29, 1913; by 1920, he was living alone on Fruitvale Avenue in the city of Oakland, California, but was remaining active with his local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic as he rose through the leadership ranks of chapter, state and national G.A.R. organizations; after a long, adventure-filled life, he died on October 11, 1935, at the age of ninety-one, at the veterans’ home in San Francisco and was interred at the San Francisco National Cemetery (also known as the Presidio Cemetery);

Lieutenant Charles A. Hackman, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).

* Hackman, Charles Abraham and Martin Henry (First Lieutenant and Sergeant, Company G): Natives of Rittersville, Lehigh County, Charles and Martin Hackman began their work lives as apprentices, with Charles employed by a carpenter and Martin employed by master coachmaker Jacob Graffin; members of the local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, they were among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; both enlisted as privates with Company I of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20 and were honorably mustered out in July after completing their service; Charles then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a sergeant with Company G of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; he then spent most of his early service in Virginia; meanwhile, his younger brother, Martin H. Hackman, who was employed as a coach trimmer in Lehigh County, re-enlisted for his own second tour of duty, as a private with Charles’ company, on January 8, 1862; working their way up the ranks, Charles was commissioned as a first lieutenant on June 18, 1863, while Martin was promoted to sergeant on April 26, 1864; Charles was then breveted as a captain on November 30, 1864 after having mustered out on November 5; Martin was then honorably discharged on January 8, 1865; initially employed, post-war, with the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad’s train car facility in Reading, Berks County, Charles was promoted to car inspector at the company’s Philadelphia facility in December 1866; he subsequently married, but had no children and was widowed in 1904; remarried, he remained in Philadelphia until the early 1900s, when he relocated to Allentown; Martin, who worked as a bricklayer in Allentown, did have children after marrying, but he, too, was widowed; also remarried, he became a manager at a rolling mill; ailing with pneumonia in early 1917, Charles was eighty-six years old when he died in Allentown on January 17; he was buried at Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, while his brother Martin was buried at the Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, following his death in Bethlehem from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14, 1921;

* Junker, George (Captain, Company K): A German immigrant as a young adult, George Junker emigrated sometime around the early 1850s and settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found employment as a marble worker and tombstone carver, and where he also joined the Allen Infantry, one of his adopted hometown’s three militia units; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, George enlisted with his fellow Allen Infantrymen, honorably completed his Three Months’ Service, and promptly began his own recruitment of men for an “all-German company” for the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; commissioned as a captain with the 47th Pennsylvania, he was placed in charge of his men who became known as Company K; mortally wounded by a Confederate rifle shot during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he died from his wounds the next day at the Union Army’s division hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County for reburial at the Vine Street Cemetery;

* Kern, Samuel (Private, Company D): A native of Perry County who was employed as a farmer in Bloomfield, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, Samuel Kern was wounded and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died from harsh treatment on June 12, 1864; buried somewhere on the grounds of that prison camp, his grave remains unidentified;

* Kosier, George (Captain, Company D): A native of Perry County and twenty-four-year-old carpenter residing in that county’s community of New Bloomfield at the dawn of the American Civil War, George Kosier became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for military service on April 20 as a corporal with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; joining him were his younger brothers, Jesse and William S. Kosier, aged nineteen and twenty-three, who were enrolled as privates with the same company; all three subsequently re-enlisted with their company at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida in 1863; sadly, Jesse fell ill with pleurisy and died at the Union Army’s Field Hospital in Sandy Hook, Maryland on August 1864; initially buried at a cemetery in Weverton, Maryland, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland; both George and William continued to serve with the regiment, with George continuing his rise up the ranks; commissioned as a captain, he was given command of Company D in early June 1865; both brothers were then honorably discharged with their regiment on Christmas Day, 1865; post-war, both men married and began families; William died in Pennsylvania sometime around 1879, but George went on to live a long full life; after settling in Ogle County, Illinois, where he was employed as a carpenter, he relocated with his family to Wright County, Iowa, where he built bridges; he died in Chicago on December 3, 1920 and was buried at that city’s Rosehill Cemetery;

Anna (Weiser) Leisenring (1851-1942) , circa 1914 (public domain).

* Leisenring, Annie (Weiser): The wife of Thomas B. Leisenring (Captain, Company G), Annie Leisenring was employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a factory inspector after the American Civil War; she became well known through newspaper accounts of her inspection visits and also became widely respected for her efforts to improve child labor laws statewide;

* Lowrey, Thomas (Corporal, Company E): An Irish immigrant as a young adult, Thomas Lowrey emigrated sometime around the late 1840s or early 1850s and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a miner, married and began a family; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, Thomas enlisted with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania on September 16, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a coal miner near Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, and where he resided with his wife and children; after witnessing the dawn of a new century, he died in Shenandoah on January 11, 1906;

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

* Magill, Julia Ann (Kuehner Minnich): Widowed and the mother of a young son at the time that her husband, B Company’s Captain Edwin G. Minnich, was killed in battle during the American Civil War, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich became a Union Army nurse at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. during the war in order to keep a roof over her son’s head; she then spent the remainder of her life battling the U.S. Pension Bureau to receive and keep both the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension and U.S. Civil War Nurse’s Pension that she was entitled to under federal law; forced to go on working into her later years by poverty, she finally found work as a cook at a hotel in South Bethlehem; she died sometime after 1906;

* Menner, Edward W. (Second Lieutenant, Company E): A first-generation American who was a native of Easton, Northampton County, Edward Menner was a sixteen-year-old carpenter when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 25, 1861; working his way up from private to second lieutenant before he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he was wounded in the left shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he secured employment as a hooker with the Bethlehem Iron Company (later known as Bethlehem Steel) on March 15, 1866; he married, begam a family and continued to work in the iron industry for much of his life; he died in Bethlehem on April 25, 1913 and was buried at that city’s Nisky Hill Cemetery;

* Miller, John Garber (Sergeant, Company D): A native of Ironville, Blair County, John G. Miller was a twenty-one-year-old laborer living in Duncannon, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861; captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; returned to active duty with his regiment after receiving medical treatment, he continued to serve until he was honorably discharged with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he married, began a family and relocated with his family to Philipsburg, Centre County, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a teamster; returning to Blair County with his family, he resided with them in Logan Township before relocating with them again to Coalport, Clearfield County; suffering from heart disease, he died in Coalport on February 16, 1921 and was interred at the Coalport Cemetery;

Captain Theodore Mink, Company I, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1870s-1880s, courtesy of Julian Burley; used with permission).

* Mink, Theodore (Captain, Company I): A native of Allentown, Lehigh County who was apprenticed as a coachmaker and then tried his hand as a whaler and blacksmith prior to the American Civil War, Thedore Mink became one of the “First Defenders” who responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital after the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; after honorably completing his Three Months’ Service in July, he re-enlisted on August 5 as a sergeant with Company I of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; after steadily working his way up through the ranks, he was commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on May 22, 1865; he continued to serve with his regiment until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he was hired as a laborer with a circus troupe operated by Mike Lipman before finding longtime employment in advertising and then as head of the circus wardrobe for the Forepaugh Circus before he was promoted to management with the circus; felled by pneumonia during late 1889, he died in Philadelphia on January 7, 1890 and was interred in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery;

* Newman, Edward (Private, Company H): A German immigrant who left his homeland sometime around 1920, Edward Newman chose to settle in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a baker; after enlisting for Civil War military service in August 1862, he mustered in as a private with Company I of the 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg from December 11-15 of that year; honorably mustered out with his regiment in May 1863, he re-enlisted on October 23, 1863 for a second tour of duty—but as a private with a different regiment—Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania until he was officially mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he returned to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where he worked briefly as a baker; suffering from rheumatism that developed while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed near Cedar Creek, Virginia during the fall of 1864, he was admitted to the network of U.S. Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at the Central Branch in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on July 17, 1877; still unmarried and still living there in 1880, his health continued to decline; diagnosed with acute enteritis, he died there on January 22, 1886 and was buried at the Dayton National Cemetery;

Captain Daniel Oyster, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).

* Oyster, Daniel (Captain, Company C): A native of Sunbury, Northumberland County who was employed as a machinist, Daniel Oyster became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for Civil War military service on April 23 as a corporal with Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; his brother, John Oyster, subsequently followed him into the service, enrolling as a private with his company on November 20, 1863; after rising up through the ranks to become captain of his company, Daniel was shot in his left shoulder near Berryville, Virginia on September 5, 1864 and then shot in his right shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19; successfully treated by Union Army surgeons for both wounds, he was awarded a veteran’s furlough in order to continue his recuperation and returned home to Sunbury; he then returned to duty and was honorably discharged with his company on Christmas Day, 1865; post-discharge, he and his brother, John, returned home to Sunbury; Daniel continued to reside with their aging mother and was initially employed as a policeman, but was then forced by a war-related decline in his health to take less-taxing work as a railroad postal agent; his brother John, who was married, lived nearby and worked as a fireman, but died in Sunbury on April 20, 1899; employed as a bookkeeper after the turn of the century, Daniel never married and was ultimately admitted to the Southern Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia, where he died on August 5, 1922—exactly sixty-one years to the day after the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded; he was given a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the officers’ section at the Arlington National Cemetery on August 11;

* Sauerwein, Thomas Franklin (First Sergeant, Company B): The son of a lock tender in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Thomas Sauerwein was employed as a carpenter at the dawn of the American Civil War; following his enrollment for military service in Allentown, Lehigh County on August 20, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company B of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; from that point on, he steadily worked his way up the ranks of the regiment, ultimately being promoted to first sergeant on New Year’s Day, 1865; following his honorable discharge with his company on Christmas Day of that same year, he returned home to the Lehigh Valley, where he found work as a carpenter, married and began a family; by 1880, he had moved his family west to Williamsport in Lycoming County, where he had found work as a machinist; employed as a leather roller with a tanning factory, he was promoted to a position as a leather finisher after the turn of the century, while his two sons worked as leather rollers in the same industry; he died in Williamsport on July 29, 1912 and was buried at the East Wildwood Cemetery in Loyalsock;

* Slayer, Joseph (Private, Company E; also known as “Dead Eye Dick” and “E. J. McMeeser”): A native of Philadelphia, Joseph Slayer was a nineteen-year-old miner residing in Willliams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service in Easton, Northampton County on September 9, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with his company, re-enlisting as a private with Company E, under the name of Joseph Slayer, at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas on January 4, 1864; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he relocated to Zanesville, Ohio sometime after the war, where he joined the Grand Army of the Republic’s Hazlett Post No. 81; he may then have relocated briefly to St. Paul, Minnesota sometime around the 1870s or early 1880s, or may simply have had a child and grandchild living there, because newspaper reports of his death noted that he had been carrying a photograph of a toddler named Robert—a photo that had “To Grandpa” inscribed on it and indicated that the grandchild, Robert, was a resident of St. Paul in 1892; by the 1880s, Joseph had made it as far west as the Dakota Territory—but this was where his life’s journey took a strange twist; discarding the name he had used in the army (“Joseph Slayer”), he changed his name several times over the next several years, as if he were trying to shed his prior life and all of its associations; acquaintances he met in the southern part of the Dakota Territory during the early to mid-1880s knew him as “Dead Eye Dick” while others who met him after he had resettled in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory, knew him as “Eugene McMeeser” or “E. J. McMeeser” (alternate spelling: “McNeeser”); by the time that the federal government conducted its special census of Civil War veterans in June 1890, Joseph was so comfortable fusing parts of his old and new lives together that he was convincingly documented by an enumerator as “Eugene McMeeser,” a veteran who had served as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry from September 9, 1861 until January 11, 1866; in 1890, Joseph became a married man; documented as having rheumatism so severe that he was “at times confined at home,” he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension from North Dakota on March 28, 1891—but he did so as “Joseph Slayer”—the name under which he had first enrolled for military service in Pennsylvania in 1861; ultimately awarded a pension—which would not have happened if federal officials had not been able to verify his identity and match it to his existing military service records, he was diagnosed with angina pectoris in 1904, but still managed to secure a U.S. patent for one of his inventions—a napkin holder; he died in Bismarck less than a month later, on January 12 or 13, 1905; found on the floor of his rented room, his death sparked a coroner’s inquest which revealed that he had been living under an assumed name; he was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck; the name “Joseph Slayer” was carved onto his military headstone;

* Snyder, Timothy (Corporal, Company C): A carpenter who was born in Rebuck, Northumberland County, Tim Snyder was employed as a carpenter and residing in the city of Sunbury in that county by the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service as a private in August 1861, he was wounded twice in combat, once during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862) and a second time, in the knee, during the Battle of Opequan, Virginia (1864), shortly after he had been promoted to the rank of corporal; he survived and returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a carpenter; after relocating to Schuylkill County, he settled in the community of Ashland; in 1870, he married Catharine Boyer and started a family with her; he continued to work as a carpenter in Schuylkill County until his untimely death in May 1889 and was laid to rest with military honors at the Brock Cemetery in Ashland; John Hartranft Snyder, his first son to survive infancy, grew up to become a co-founder of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, while his second son to survive infancy, Timothy Grant Snyder, became a corporal in the United States Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War; stationed on the USS Buffalo as it visited Port Said, Egypt, he also served aboard Admiral George Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia, in 1899;

Drummer Boy William Williamson, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Williamson, William (Drummer, Company A): A farmer from Stockertown, Northampton County, William Williamson was documented by a mid-nineteenth-century federal census enumerator as an unmarried laborer who lived at the Easton home of Northampton County physician John Sandt, M.D.—an indication that William’s parents may have either died or were struggling so much financially during the 1850s and early 1860s that they had encouraged him to “leave the nest” and begin supporting himself, or had hired him out as an apprentice or indentured servant; like so many other young men from Northampton County, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for help to protect the nation’s capital from a likely invasion by Confederate States Army troops, he stepped forward, raised his hand, and stated the following:

I, William Williamson appointed a private in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.

Later in life, William Williamson became a champion for an older woman who had been struggling to convince officials of the federal government that she was worthy enough to be awarded a U.S. Civil War Mother’s Pension, after her son had died in service to the nation as a Union Army soldier.

Post-war, William Williamson found work at a slate quarry, married, began a family in Belfast, Northampton County, and lived to witness the dawn of a new century. Following his death at the age of sixty in Plainfield Township on June 17, 1901, he was laid to rest at the Belfast Union Cemetery.

Sources:

“A Badge from Admiral Dewey and Schuylkill County” (announcements of Timothy Grant Snyder’s service on Admiral Dewey’s flagship). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Eagle: October 3, 1899 and November 21, 1899.
Baptismal, census, marriage, military, death, and burial records of the Snyder family. Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, etc.: Snyder Family Archives, 1650-present; and in Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records (baptismal, marriage, death and burial records of various churches across Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1776-1918.
Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
James Crownover, James Downs and Samuel Kern, et. al., in Camp Ford Prison Records. Tyler, Texas: The Smith County Historical Society, 1864.
Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, U.S. Army; Admissions Ledgers, U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers; federal burial ledgers, and national cemetery interment control forms, 1861-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of the Adjutant General (Record Group 94), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
U.S. Census Records, 1830-1930. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
U.S. Civil War Pension Records, 1862-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

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

Aug16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The amount to be turned into the City Treasury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

Sitting in Judgment: Four Officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers Oversee Court Martial Proceedings (1862–1863)

Mar29

Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, shown here circa 1863, went on to become lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania after the war (public domain).

One of the terms that crops up when researching the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers is “court martial”—a phrase that often conjures images of soldiers deserting their posts or behaving in some other dishonorable manner, and who then ended up facing charges of “conduct unbecoming.”

With respect to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the phrase “court martial” appears, more often than not, in relation to the service by multiple officers of the regiment who were assigned to serve as judges or members of the jury during trials of civilians in territories where the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to provost (military police and civilian court) duties, or as judges or members of the jury during the court martials of other members of the Union Army during the American Civil War.

This article presents details about two of the multiple military courts martial in which members of the 47th Pennsylvania were involved.

1862

In mid to late December 1862, Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan directed the three most senior officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry—Colonel Tilghman H. Good, Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander and Major William H. Gausler—to serve on a judicial panel with other Union Army officers during the court martial trial of Colonel Richard White of the 55th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Brannan then also appointed Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company as judge advocate for the proceedings.

Of the four, Gobin was, perhaps, the most experienced from a legal standpoint. Prior to the war, he was a practicing attorney in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Post-war, he went on to serve in the Pennsylvania State Senate and as lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

On December 18, 1862, The New York Herald provided the following report regarding Colonel White’s court martial:

A little feud [had] arisen in Beaufort between General [Rufus] Saxton and the forces of the Tenth Army corps. Last week, during the absence at Fernandina of General Brannan and Colonel Good, the latter of whom is in command of the forces on Port Royal Island, Colonel Richard White of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania, was temporarily placed in authority. By his command a stable, used by some of General Saxton’s employes [sic, employees], was torn down. General Saxton remonstrated, and … hard words ensued … the General presumed upon his rank to place Colonel White in arrest, and to assume the control of the military forces. Upon General Brannan’s return, last Monday, General Saxton preferred against Colonel White several charges, among which are ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline’ and ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’ General Brannan, while denying the right of General Saxton to exercise any authority over the troops, has, nevertheless, ordered a general court martial to be convened, and the following officers, comprising the detail of the court, are to-day [sic, today] trying the case:— Brigadier General Terry, United States Volunteers; Colonel T. H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel H. R. Guss, Ninety-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel J. D. Rust, Eighth Maine; Colonel J. R. Hawley, Seventh Connecticut; Colonel Edward Metcalf, Third Rhode Island artillery; Lieutenant Colonel G. W. Alexander, 47th Pennsylvania; Lieutenant Colonel J. F. Twitchell, Eighth Maine; Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Bedell, Third New Hampshire; Major Gausler, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Major John Freese, Third Rhode Island artillery; Captain J. P. S. Gobin, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania, Judge Advocate. Among the officers of the corps the act of General Saxton is generally deemed a usurpation on his part; and, inasmuch as this opinion is either to be sustained or outweighed by the Court, a good deal of interest is manifested in the trial.

White, whose regiment had just recently fought side-by-side with the 47th Pennsylvania and other Brannan regiments in the Battle of Pocotaligo, was ultimately acquitted, according to subsequent reports by the United States War Department.

1863

Major William H. Gausler, third-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1864 (photo used with permission, courtesy of Julian Burley).

Three months after the aforementioned court martial proceedings, Major William Gausler was called upon again to oversee legal proceedings against his fellow Union Army soldiers—this time serving as president of the courts martial of two members of the 90th New York Volunteer Infantry. Those trials and their resulting findings were subsequently reported by the Adjutant General’s Office of the U.S. War Department roughly a year later as follows:

General Orders, No. 118
War Department, Adjutant General’s Office
Washington, March 24, 1864

I. Before a General Court Martial, which convened at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida, March 23, 1863, pursuant to Special Orders, No. 130, dated Headquarters, Department of the South, Hilton Head, Port Royal, South Carolina, March 7, 1863, and of which Major W. H. Gausler, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, is President, were arraigned and tried—

1. Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th New York State Volunteers.

CHARGE I.—“Violation of the 7th Article of War.”

Specification—“In this, that Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did join in a seditious combination of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

CHARGE II.—“Violation of the 8th Article of War.”

Specification 1st—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, being present at an unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, having knowledge of an intended unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers being held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, did not without delay give information of the same to his Commanding Officer. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

CHARGE III.—“Rebellious conduct, tending to excite mutiny.”

Specification 1st —“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, with, thirteen other officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers, tender his resignation, and insist upon its being forwarded, at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, after so tendering his resignation, positively refuse to withdraw the same when requested to do so by his Commanding Officer, Colonel Joseph S. Morgan, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, then commanding the post, he having been notified by Commanding Officer that there were apprehensions of imminent danger at the post. All this at Key West, Florida, on our about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

To which charges and specifications the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”

FINDING.

The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, as follows:

CHARGE I.

Of the Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

CHARGE II.

Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the 2d Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

CHARGE III.

Of the 1st Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘insist upon its being forwarded at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South.’”

Of the 2d Specification, “Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

And the Court, being of opinion there was no criminality, does therefore acquit him.

2. 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers.

CHARGE I.—“Neglect of duty.

Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, Company ‘G,’ 90th New York Volunteers, did, on the night of the 10th of March, when he was the Officer of the Day, permit and encourage an enlisted man who was drunk to occupy and sleep in his, the said Lieutenant C. N. Smith’s quarters, and to create an uproar, to the disturbance and annoyance of the officers in the same building, and did not send him, the said enlisted man, although after ‘taps,’ to his proper quarters, or cause him to be quiet.”

CHARGE II.—“Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and prejudicial to good order and military discipline.”

Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith did allow and keep in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man, and encourage him to speak disrespectfully and abusively of his superior officers; and upon the said enlisted man saying ‘that every officer who had sent in his resignation was a cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch,’ did reply ‘that’s so;’ and did further permit, encourage, and agree to many other things said of a like nature. All this at Key West, Florida, on or about March 10, 1863.”

To which charges and specifications the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”

FINDING.

The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, as follows:

CHARGE I.

Of the Specification, “Guilty, excepting the words ‘encouraged’ or ‘cause him to be quiet.’”
Of the Charge, “Guilty.”

CHARGE II.

Of the Specification, “Guilty of allowing and keeping in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man.”
Of the Charge, “Guilty, except the words ‘unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’”

SENTENCE.

And the Court does therefore sentence him, the said Charles N. Smith, 1st Lieutenant, 90th New York Volunteers, “To be reprimanded by his Commanding Officer.”

Trusted to honorably and faithfully fulfill their responsibilities by senior Union Army leaders, those and other officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry would be called upon repeatedly for the remainder of the war to serve in similar judicial roles throughout the remaining years of the war.

Sources:

General Orders No., 118, Washington, March 24, 1864, in Index of General Orders Adjutant General’s Office, 1864. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865.
“Our Hilton Head Correspondence.” New York New York: The New York Herald, December 16, 1862.
“South Carolina.; Military Organization of the Department of South Carolina.” New York, New York: The New York Times, August 8, 1865.

Research Update: Additional New Details Learned About Bristor Gethers, One of the Nine Formerly Enslaved Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Jan16

Page one of the U.S. Army’s Civil War enlistment paperwork for Bristor Gethers (mistakenly listed as “Presto Garris”), 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Company F, October 5, 1862 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Fleeing the brutal experience of chattel slavery in Georgetown County, South Carolina, a thirty-three-year-old Black man was willing to enlist for military service in the fall of 1862 as an “undercook”—a designation within the United States Army that was first authorized by the U.S. War Department on September 28, 1863—in order to ensure his freedom in America’s Deep South during the American Civil War.

Arriving at a federal military recruiting depot in Union Army-occupied Beaufort, South Carolina, that man—Bristor Gethers—was certified as fit for duty by Dr. William Reiber, an assistant surgeon with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and was then accepted into that regiment on October 5, 1862 by Captain Henry Samuel Harte, a German immigrant who had been commissioned as the commanding officer of that regiment’s F Company.

The reason that officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were able to enroll Bristor Gethers, along with three additional formerly enslaved men that fall (roughly three months before U.S. President Abraham Lincoln officially issued the nation’s Emancipation Proclamation), was because the U.S. Congress had previously passed the Militia Act of 1862 on July 17, 1862, which authorized state and federal military units in Union-held territories to recruit and enroll enslaved and free Black men to fill labor-related jobs.

According to section twelve of that legislation, starting on that date, President Lincoln was “authorized to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent, and such persons shall be enrolled and organized under such regulations, not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws, as the President may prescribe” while the next three sections specified the following additional details of that military service:

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That when any man or boy of African descent, who by the laws of any State shall owe service or labor to any person who, during the present rebellion, has levied war or has borne arms against the United States, or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort, shall render any such service as is provided for in this act, he, his mother and his wife and children, shall forever thereafter be free, any law, usage, or custom whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding: Provided, That the mother, wife and children of such man or boy of African descent shall not be made free by the operation of this act except where such mother, wife or children owe service or labor to some person who, during the present rebellion, has borne arms against the United States or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort.

SEC. 14. And be it further enacted, That the expenses incurred to carry this act into effect shall be paid out of the general appropriation for the army and volunteers.

SEC. 15. And be it further enacted, That all persons who have been or shall be hereafter enrolled in the service of the United States under this act shall receive the pay and rations now allowed by law to soldiers, according to their respective grades: Provided, That persons of African descent, who under this law shall be employed, shall receive ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.

Seeking to add more teeth to its anti-slavery legislation, the U.S. Congress then also passed the Confiscation Act of 1862 that same day, proclaiming that “every person who shall hereafter commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof, shall suffer death, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free.”

General Orders No. 323 (enlistment and pay of undercooks of African descent), U.S. War Department and Office of the Adjutant General, September 28, 1863 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

By taking that important step toward securing what he hoped would be permanent freedom from the plantation enslavement he had endured in South Carolina for more than three decades, Bristor Gethers was, in reality, trading one form of backbreaking labor (slavery) for another that was only marginally better because he was entering military life as an “undercook”—a designation that placed him on the very bottom of the 47th Pennsylvania’s military rosters—beneath the names of soldiers who were listed at the rank of private or drummer boy.

His status clearly improved enough over time, though, that he was willing to stay with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry for nearly the entire duration of its service to the nation. Traveling with the 47th to Florida, where the regiment was stationed on garrison duty at Forts Taylor and Jefferson from late December 1862 through early February 1864, he likely participated side by side with the regiment’s white soldiers as they felled trees, built new roads and engaged in other similar tasks designed to strengthen the fortifications of those federal installations. It was during this same time that he would have learned from his commanding officer, Captain Harte, that President Abraham Lincoln had officially issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and that the U.S. War Department and Adjutant General’s Office had issued General Orders No. 323 on September 28th of that same year, which authorized all Union Army units “to cause to be enlisted for each cook [in each Union Army regiment] two under-cooks of African descent, who shall receive for their full compensation ten dollars per month and one ration per day” (three dollars of which could be issued to undercooks “in clothing,” rather than money).

Bristor Gethers was listed as a private on the final version of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s “Registers of Volunteers, 1861-1865” for Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (Pennsylvania State Archives, public domain; click to enlarge and scroll down).

Promoted to the rank of Cook by the spring of 1863, according to regimental muster rolls, his duties were also likely expanded to include the job of caring for the regiment’s combat casualties by the spring and fall of 1864, when the 47th Pennsylvania was engaged in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana and the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia. In addition to rescuing and carrying wounded men from multiple fields of battle under fire as a stretcher bearer during this time, as many other undercooks in the Union Army were ordered to do, he may very well also have helped to dig the graves for his 47th Pennsylvania comrades who had been killed in action.

Apparently so well thought of by his superior officers, according to the regiment’s final muster-out ledgers, Bristor Gethers was ultimately accorded the rank of private—a hard-won title that, on paper in the present day, may seem as if it were a minor achievement.

It wasn’t. It was, in reality, historic.

About “Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry”

“Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry” is a special project of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, an educational program designed to teach children and adults about the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, a Union Army regiment which served for nearly the entire duration of the American Civil War and became the only military unit from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.

This important initiative is dedicated to researching, documenting and presenting the life stories of nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during two of the regiment’s most eventful years of service to the nation—1862 and 1864. Largely forgotten for more than a century after honorably completing their historic military service, these nine men have been repeatedly overlooked by mainstream historians over the years as potentially important subjects for research and have also been an ongoing source of mystery and frustration to their descendants because the majority of their military service records have still not been digitized by state and national archives.

To learn more about the life of Bristor Gethers before, during and after the war, and to view his U.S. Civil War military and pension records, visit his profile on “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”

Sources:

Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. Freedom’s Soldiers: the Black Military Experience in the Civil War. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York, New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in “Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865” (47th Regiment, Company F), in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs” (RG-19). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War Compiled Military Service Records, 1862-1865. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War General Pension Index (veteran’s pension application no.: 773063, certificate no.: 936435, filed from South Carolina, February 1, 1890; widow’s pension application no.: 598937, certificate no.: 447893, filed from South Carolina, July 27, 1894). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War Muster Rolls (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Company F), 1862-1865. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union. New York, New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007.
Smith, John David. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2002.
The Militia Act of 1862, in U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, vol. 12, pp. 597-600: Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1863.
“The Confiscation Act.” New York, New York: The New York Times, July 15, 1862.
“The Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862.” Washington, D.C.: United States Senate, retrieved online January 14, 2024.

New Year, Familiar Duties: Preventing Assaults on Federal Forts by Confederate Troops and Foreign Powers (Florida, late December 1862 – early February 1864)

Jan1

Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, U.S. Army, circa 1863 (public domain).

“It is hardly necessary to point out to you the extreme military importance of the two works now intrusted [sic, entrusted] to your command. Suffice it to state that they cannot pass out of our hands without the greatest possible disgrace to whoever may conduct their defense, and to the nation at large. In view of difficulties that may soon culminate in war with foreign powers, it is eminently necessary that these works should be immediately placed beyond any possibility of seizure by any naval or military force that may be thrown upon them from neighboring ports….

Seizure of these forts by coup de main may be the first act of hostilities instituted by foreign powers, and the comparative isolation of their position, and their distance from reinforcements, point them out (independent of their national importance) as peculiarly the object of such an effort to possess them.”

— Excerpt from orders issued by Brigadier-General John M. Brannan, commanding officer, United States Army, Department of the South, to Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in December 1862

Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (public domain image, circa 1863).

With those words above, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, the founder and commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, learned that he and his subordinates were being sent back to Florida to resume their garrison duties at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida. Far from being a punishment, following the regiment’s performance during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, though, as several historians have claimed over the years, those words written to Colonel Good make clear that the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers to Florida was viewed by senior Union military officers as a critically important assignment, not only for the regiment, but for the United States of America.

More simply put, senior federal government officials, in consultation with senior Union Army officers, had determined that two key federal military installations in Florida—Fort Taylor in Key West and Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas—were at continuing risk of attack and capture by foreign powers, as well as by Confederate States Army troops, because Confederate States leaders had been able to secure support from several European nations, despite promises by the leaders of those nations that they would remain “neutral” as the American Civil War progressed. In addition to helping Confederate troops defeat the Union’s blockade of Confederate States ports that had been established in 1861, enabling the Confederacy to raise financial support for its war efforts through the sale of cotton to European nations, Great Britain had been “provid[ing] significant assistance in other ways, chiefly by permitting the construction in English shipyards of Confederate warships,” according to historians J. Matthew Gallman and Eric Foner.

The most serious incidents of this nature were initiated with the launch of the Confederate cruiser, Alabama, on July 29, 1862. Per research completed by historians at the United States Department of State:

[The Alabama] captured 58 Northern merchant ships before it was sunk in June 1864 by a U.S. warship off the coast of France. In addition to the Alabama, other British-built ships in the Confederate Navy included the Florida, Georgia, Rappahannock, and Shenandoah. Together, they sank more than 150 Northern ships and impelled much of the U.S. merchant marine to adopt foreign registry. The damage to Northern shipping would have been even worse had not fervent protests from the U.S. Government persuaded British and French officials to seize additional ships intended for the Confederacy. Most famously, on September 3, 1863, the British Government impounded two ironclad, steam-driven “Laird rams” that Confederate agent James D. Bulloch had surreptitiously arranged to be built at a shipyard in Liverpool.

The United States demanded compensation from Britain for the damage wrought by the British-built, Southern-operated commerce raiders, based upon the argument that the British Government, by aiding the creation of a Confederate Navy, had inadequately followed its neutrality laws. The damages discussed were enormous. Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that British aid to the Confederacy had prolonged the Civil War by 2 years, and indirectly cost the United States hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars (the figure Sumner suggested was $2.125 billion)….

As a result, senior federal government and military officials grew increasingly worried that Confederate States troops would attempt to take over Forts Taylor and Jefferson—possibly in much the same way that Rebel forces had captured Fort Sumter in April 1861.

Ordered to prevent those takeovers from happening by Special Order No. 384, which was issued by Brigadier-General Brannan of the United States Army’s Department of the South, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were specifically chosen for this mission because of the reputation they had built during their first sixteen months of Civil War service. Cited by senior Union Army leaders as being “specially worthy of notice by their bravery and praiseworthy conduct” during the Battle of Pocotaligo, members of the 47th Pennsylvania had already become known for their “attention to duty, discipline and soldierly bearing” as early as 1861, according to historian Samuel P. Bates.

Another Sea Journey

Elisha Wilson Bailey, M.D., Regimental Surgeon, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, circa 1863 (used with permission; courtesy of Julian Burley).

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 December 15, 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 historian Lewis 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 December 16, “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.”

Woodcut depicting the harsh climate at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida during the Civil War (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on 21 December, C Company Musician 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, December 18, the 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 H. 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 Emanual 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.”

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

Three days later, on Saturday, December 21, 1862, Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren 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 at the Union’s remote outpost 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….

Although water quality was a challenge for members of the regiment at both of these duty stations, it was particularly problematic at Fort Jefferson. According to Schmidt:

‘Fresh’ water was provided by channeling the rains from the fort’s barbette through channels in the interior walls, to filter trays filled with sand; and finally to the 114 cisterns located under the fort which held 1,231,200 gallons of water. The cisterns were accessible in each of the first level cells or rooms through a ‘trap hole’ in the floor covered by a temporary wooden cover…. Considerable dirt must have found its way into these access points and was responsible for some of the problems resulting in the water’s impurity…. The fort began to settle and the asphalt covering on the outer walls began to deteriorate and allow the sea water (polluted by debris in the moat) to penetrate the system…. Two steam condensers were available … and distilled 7000 gallons of tepid water per day for a separate system of reservoirs located in the northern section of the parade ground near the officers [sic, officers’] quarters. No provisions were made to use any of this water for personal hygiene of the [planned 1,500-soldier garrison force]….

Fort Jefferson’s moat and wall, circa 1934, Dry Tortugas, Florida (C.E. Peterson, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

As a result, the soldiers stationed at Fort Jefferson washed themselves and their clothes, using saltwater from the ocean. As if that weren’t difficult enough, “toilet facilities were located outside of the fort,” according to Schmidt:

At least one location was near the wharf and sallyport, and another was reached through a door-sized hole in a gunport, and a walk across the moat on planks at the northwest wall…. These toilets were flushed twice each day by the actions of the tides, a procedure that did not work very well and contributed to the spread of disease. It was intended that the tidal flush should move the wastes into the moat, and from there, by similar tidal action, into the sea. But since the moat surrounding the fort was used clandestinely by the troops to dispose of litter and other wastes … it was a continuous problem for Lt. Col. Alexander and his surgeon.

As for housing and feeding the soldiers stationed here, as well as daily operations, there was a fort post office and the “interior parade grounds, with numerous trees and shrubs in evidence, contained … officers quarters, [a] magazine, kitchens and out houses,” according to Schmidt, as well as “a ‘hot shot oven’ which was completed in 1863 and used to heat shot before firing.”

Most quarters for the garrison … were established in wooden sheds and tents inside the parade [grounds] or inside the walls of the fort in second-tier gun rooms of ‘East’ front no. 2, and adjacent bastions … with prisoners housed in isolated sections of the first and second tiers of the southeast, or no. 3 front, and bastions C and D, located in the general area of the sallyport. The bakery was located in the lower tier of the northwest bastion ‘F’, located near the central kitchen….

Additional Duties: Diminishing Florida’s Role as the “Supplier of the Confederacy”

On top of the strategic role played by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in preventing foreign powers from assisting the Confederate Army and Navy in gaining control over federal forts in the Deep South, members of this regiment would also be called upon to play an ongoing role in weakening Florida’s abilities to supply and transport food and troops throughout the area held by the Confederate States of America.

Prior to intervention by Union Army and Navy forces, the owners of plantations and livestock ranches, as well as the operators of small, family farms across Florida, had been able to consistently furnish beef and pork, fish, fruits, and vegetables to Confederate troops stationed throughout the Deep South during the first year of the American Civil War. Large herds of cattle were raised near Fort Myers, for example, while orchard owners in the Saint John’s River area were actively engaged in cultivating large orange groves (while other types of citrus trees were easily found growing throughout the state’s wilderness areas).

The state was also a major producer of salt, which was used as a preservative for the foods. As a result, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union troops across Florida were ordered to capture or destroy salt manufacturing facilities in order to further curtail the enemy’s access to food.

And they would be undertaking all of these duties in conditions that were far more challenging than what many other Union Army units were experiencing up north in the Eastern Theater. The weather was frequently hot and humid as spring turned to summer, the mosquitos and other insects were an ever-present annoyance and serious threat when they were carrying tropical diseases, and there were also scorpions and snakes that put the men’s health at further risk.

Consequently, the time spent in Florida during the whole of 1863 and early 1864 was most definitely not “easy duty” for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. It was a serious and perilous time for them, and it would prove to be one that a significant number of 47th Pennsylvanians would not survive.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“Florida’s Role in the Civil War: ‘Supplier of the Confederacy.’” Tampa, Florida: Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida (College of Education), retrieved online January 15, 2020.
Gallman, J. Matthew, editor, and Eric Foner, introduction. The Civil War Chronicle: The Only Day-by-Day Portrait of Americas Tragic Conflict as Told by Soldiers, Journalists, Politicians, Farmers, Nurses, Slaves, and Other Eyewitnesses. New York, New York: Crown, 2000.
“History: Crops (Historic Florida Barge Canal Trail).” Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Mathews, Alfred and Austin N. Hungerford. History of the Counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Everts & Richards, 1884.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence and Harriet Fason Chappell. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
“Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–1865,” and “The Alabama Claims, 1862–1872,” in “Milestones: 1861–1865.” Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Staubach, Lieutenant Colonel James C. “Miami During the Civil War: 1861-65,” in Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, vol. LIII, pp. 31-62. Miami, Florida: Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 1993.
Stuckey, Sterling, Linda Kerrigan and Judith L. Irvin, et. al. Call to Freedom. Austin, Texas: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 2000.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Oct27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Their Own Words: The Vocabulary of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (“Skedaddle”)

Oct14

Image: Definition of “Skedaddle,” a term frequently used by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers when describing Confederate troop movements during the American Civil War (fair use screenshot, courtesy of Merriam Webster, 2022).

“Skedaddle” or “skedaddling”: Words frequently used by officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry to describe the behavior of Confederate States Army troops unfortunate enough to encounter the 47th Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. (See also: bolt, flee, hightail it, run away, and retreat.)

Example (October 1862):

“After my arrival at the bluff, it being then 7:30 o’clock, I dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander with two companies back to the last-named camp (which I found, from a number of papers left behind, to have been called Camp Hopkins and occupied by the Milton Artillery, of Florida) to reconnoiter and ascertain its condition. Upon his return he reported that from every appearance the skedaddling of the enemy was as sudden as in the other instances already mentioned, leaving their trunks and all the camp equipage behind; also a small quantity of commissary stores, sugar, rice, half barrel of flour, one bag of salt, &c., including 60 tents, which I have brought in this morning. The commissary stores were used by the troops of my command.”

— Colonel Tilghman H. Good in his report to Union Army superiors from the 47th Pennsylvania’s encampment at Saint John’s Bluff, Florida, 3 October 1862

To learn more about the involvement of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and other Union troops in the capture of Saint Johns Bluff, Florida, visit the “Official Battle and Campaign Reports” section of our website.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

ONE CIVIL WAR REGIMENT'S STORY

Tag Archives: Florida, Georgia and South Carolina

April 12th: This Date in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry History

Honoring President George Washington, Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida (February 22, 1862)

Research Update: New Details Learned About Abraham Jassum, One of Nine Formerly Enslaved Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

The Backbones of a Nation: The Laborers Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

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

Sitting in Judgment: Four Officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers Oversee Court Martial Proceedings (1862–1863)

Research Update: Additional New Details Learned About Bristor Gethers, One of the Nine Formerly Enslaved Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

New Year, Familiar Duties: Preventing Assaults on Federal Forts by Confederate Troops and Foreign Powers (Florida, late December 1862 – early February 1864)

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

In Their Own Words: The Vocabulary of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (“Skedaddle”)