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The Honorable Andrew Gregg Curtin, Pennsylvania’s Civil War-Era Governor

Andrew Gregg Curtin, Governor, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, circa 1860 (public domain).

“In this locality his very name is a tower of strength — and either in or out of politics, amid the exciting scenes and contests of his profession or in the reciprocity of the amenities and courtesies of society, Col. Curtin commands the respect of his fellows, and never fails to win the confidence of the people with whom he comes in contact. There are always men who seem to be born leaders, and he is one of them. He wins by intuition, as much by the grace of his learning, as by the fiery zeal of his nature. As a lawyer, he is keen, sagacious, and when full[y] engaged in a cause, irresistible in his efforts…. His zeal and devotion to the system of Common School Education, the present arrangement of which is owing to his energies … is as near perfection as possible.” — The Alleghenian, September 29, 1859

 

Known as “the Soldier’s Friend,” Andrew Gregg Curtin (1815-1894) was the fifteenth governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. “His influence had much to do with the first nomination for president of Abraham Lincoln,” according to The New York Times.

He was also revered as a friend by many Pennsylvanians, not only for the genuine compassion he showed to children who had been orphaned during the American Civil War, but for his leadership in improving public education for all children statewide.

FORMATIVE YEARS

Born on April 22, 1815, in the Borough of Bellefonte, the County Seat of Centre County in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gregg Curtin (1815-1894) was the eldest child of Roland Curtin (1764-1830), an emigrant from Ireland who became an iron industry pioneer in Pennsylvania, and his second wife, Jean Gregg (1791-1854), a daughter of Andrew Gregg, the former president pro tempore of the United States Senate.

Andrew G. Curtin was also the big brother of multiple Bellfonte-born siblings — Constans Curtin (1817-1895), who was born on March 6, 1817 and never married; Martha Maria Curtin (1819-1880), who was born on August 29, 1819 and would later wed William Irwin, M.D.; Ellen Honora Curtin (1822-1851), who was born on June 11, 1822 and would later wed William H. Allen, M.D.; Margery Gregg Curtin (1823-1885), who was born on December 23, 1823 and would later wed Thomas R. Reynolds (1824-1888); Nancy Jane Curtin (1828-1900), who was born on May 4, 1828 and would later wed D. D. Clarke, M.D.; and Julia G. Curtin (1831-1919), who was born on October 3, 1831 and never married.

Educated initially at a private school in Bellefonte, and via attendance with his parents and siblings at Presbyterian Church services, Andrew Curtin was subsequently enrolled at a preparatory school in the city of Harrisburg in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania prior to attending the Milton Academy in Milton, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

* Note: According to historian Herbert C. Bell, the Milton Academy was highly regarded:

“In 1815 Joseph D. Biles established an English school at the Broadway school house, adding Latin and Greek to his curriculum in the following year. This gained for his school the name of ‘The Milton Academy,’ thus for the first time applied to an educational institution at this place. In 1817 it numbered among its students John F. Wolfinger, for many years a member of the Northumberland county bar, Samuel Pollock, and James Pollock, afterward Governor of Pennsylvania. But this school did not long continue, and other pedagogues succeeded Biles….

“The Milton Academy, the leading educational institution of the West Branch valley during the period of its existence, originated with the Rev. George Junkin, pastor of the Presbyterian church and the moving spirit in many public enterprises of a moral and educational character. Through his efforts a stock company was formed, composed of Samuel Hepburn, Joseph Rhoads, William H. Sanderson, Samuel Teas, Sarah Pollock, and others, by whom a plain, one-story brick building was erected at a cost of four hundred dollars at the brow of the hill on the north side of Broadway, and a short distance to the east of the frame school building previously mentioned. The entrance was on the western side, and from its elevated location the academy commanded a view of the town, the river, and the valley. The interior was divided into two rooms by a narrow entrance hall. The apartment on the north was the smaller of the two; it was occupied by the students in Latin and Greek, the higher mathematics, rhetoric, etc., while the other room was set apart for those who had not advanced beyond the ordinary English branches. A small cupola surmounted the building, but the necessary appendage of a bell was never provided.

“The first principal of the academy … was the Rev. David Kirkpatrick. He was employed as a teacher of the classics at Oxford, Chester county, Pennsylvania, when Mr. Junkin formed his acquaintance and prevailed on him to change the field of his labors; he accordingly came to Milton, and on the second Monday of May, 1822, opened a classical school at a frame building that occupied the site of Dr. James McCleery’s residence on Front street. In the following October he removed his school to the academy building, where he taught until November, 1834, assisted at different times by a Mr. Mayne, Thomas C. Hambly, and others. Among his students were many who subsequently acquired honorable rank in the legal and medical professions, and as clergymen, teachers, civil engineers, etc.”

After completing his education at the Milton Academy, Andrew Curtin studied law with his mother’s cousin, William W. Potter, prior to enrolling formally in the law department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Dickinson in 1837, he began practicing law in his hometown of Bellefonte. Focused primarily on criminal law during his work days, he spent a significant portion of his free time as a volunteer for the Whig Party.

Married to Katharine Irvine Wilson on May 30, 1844, Andrew Curtin settled with her in Centre County, where they then welcomed the births of: Mary Wilson Curtin (1845-1927), who was born in Potters Bank on March 7, 1845, and would later wed George Fairlamb Harris, M.D. (1843-1911); Jane Gregg Curtin (1847-1893), who was born in Bellefonte on January 17, 1847, and would later wed William Henry Sage (1844-1924); Martha Irvine Curtin (1848-1935), who was born on March 22, 1848, and would later wed Commander Kidder Randolph Breese (1831-1881); William Wilson Curtin (1851-1936), who was born in Bellefonte on March 27, 1851, and would later wed Harriet Fuller Harding (1853-1935); and Myron Stanley Curtin (1854-1857), who was born in Bellefonte on October 9, 1854.

On January 19, 1855, Andrew Curtin was appointed by Pennsylvania Governor James Pollock (1810-1890) as the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — a post that he held until January 20, 1858. During that time, he also served in an ex officio capacity as the commonwealth’s superintendent of public instruction. According to historians at the Pennsylvania & Historical Museum Commission (PHMC), it was during that period of his public service career that he “started the state system of teacher training in ‘normal’ schools.” The New York Times would later credit him with reforming the “entire management” of Pennsylvania’s system of public education. “It was Mr. Curtin who secured, among many other innovations, the adoption of the prevailing system [in 1894] of County Superintendents of Schools in Pennsylvania.”

Sadly, during that same time, he and his wife suffered a terrible loss when their youngest child, Myron, died at the age of two on January 13, 1857. They then welcomed the birth of daughter, Katharine Irvine Wilson Curtin (1859-1930), who was born in Bellefonte on May 2, 1859, and would later wed Moses Dewitt Burnett, Jr. (1854-1920).

ELECTED GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s State Capitol Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, circa 1870s (James Laughery Paul, Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphan Schools, 1876, public domain; click to enlarge).

In 1860, according to PHMC historians, Andrew G. Curtin “helped persuade Pennsylvania’s delegates at the National Republican Convention to abandon the nomination of his political nemesis, Pennsylvania Senator Simon Cameron, [for the office of president of the United States] and instead cast their votes in-favor of [Abraham] Lincoln, making Pennsylvania a key swing state in his successful nomination. That fall, Curtin won Pennsylvania’s 1860 gubernatorial election, becoming the first Republican to hold this office.”

Inaugurated on January 15, 1861, Governor Andrew Curtin began his first term as the nation’s secession crisis was deepening. South Carolina had seceded from the United States on December 20, 1860, followed by Mississippi on January 9, 1861, Florida on January 10th, and Alabama on January 11th. (Georgia then seceded on January 19th, followed by Louisiana on January 26th and Texas on February 1st.)

Working with the Pennsylvania Legislature to prepare for the possibility of a full-blown civil war, he began to bring many of the militia units that had been operating in cities and towns across the commonwealth under the organizational umbrella of the Military Department of Pennsylvania, and then secured appropriations that would eventually fund the purchase and distribution of weapons, ammunition, uniforms, food and other supplies to the more than three hundred thousand Pennsylvanians who would ultimately serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

On March 14, 1861, he signed legislation repealing the tonnage tax on Pennsylvania’s railroad companies, “which helped the Pennsylvania Railroad become the nation’s largest transport system,” according to PHMC historians. That change, which was initially criticized by many newspapers statewide, would ultimately prove to be a critical, pro-Union incentive for those same companies over the next several months and years, as they transported Pennsylvanians and other men from the Mid-Atlantic Region to military training facilities and then on to Union Army encampments in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. According to The New York Times:

“In the lower house of the Legislature a bill was instantly introduced investing the Governor with power to raise and equip troops, and appropriating $500,000 for this purpose. In forty-eight hours the bill became a law. Its authority was used by the Governor so promptly that when the President issued his call for 75,000 men for 100 days the Pennsylvania soldiers were the first to reach the capital. The Governor foresaw that the war would be long, called an extra session of the Legislature, asked for authority to raise not less than fifteen nor more than thirty regiments, enlisted for three years, or until the end of the war, and obtained all that he requested and an appropriation of $3,500,000. The reserves equipped with this fund saved the capital of the United States from capture after the battle of Bull Run.”

Among the military units that were created by Governor Curtin during his first months in office was the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, which was established on August 5, 1861 and would later make history as the only regiment from Pennsylvania to take part in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.

As the civil war raged into a second year, he presided over “The Loyal War Governors’ Conference” at the Logan House Hotel in Altoona, Blair County (September 1862). Its participants subsequently urged President Lincoln to remove Union General George B. McClellan from his position as the commander of the Army of the Potomac — a recommendation that Lincoln accepted.

A gifted writer and celebrated orator, Governor Curtin also delivered the first of his Thanksgiving Addresses in 1862. Re-elected in 1863, he then continued to lead the commonwealth’s prosecution of the war by securing funding to support the recruitment, training, transportation, and medical and spiritual care of Union soldiers and sailors from Pennsylvania. According to historian and biographer Rebecca Gifford Albright, “Among Andrew Curtin’s most admirable qualities what that of compassion…. Curtin insisted that all letters from soldiers be answered, either by himself or by his personal secretary. On many occasions, the Governor visited camp hospitals to talk with the wounded or to present them with some recognition of their sacrifices. In addition, Curtin heard countless pleas from wounded soldiers and their families and took what steps he could to relieve their anxieties.” He also “established the practice of bringing Pennsylvania war dead home for burial.”

Through it all, he tried to maintain a measure of normalcy as a husband and father. On October 19, 1865, he and his wife welcomed the birth of Bessie Elliott Curtin (1865-1866), who was born in Bellefonte. Sadly, she died in infancy at their family home on July 1, 1866.

HONORS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Camp Curtin

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

Three days after the fall of Fort Sumter to Confederate States Army troops in mid-April 1861, a new military recruiting and training camp was opened just north of the State Capitol building in the city of Harrisburg in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. Situated on eighty acres of land that had previously been used for Dauphin County’s Agricultural Fairgrounds, “The camp was between Reels Lane on the north, the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks on the east, Maclay Street on the south and Fifth Street on the west,” according to volunteers at the Camp Curtin Historical Society, and was initially named “Camp Union.”

“Harrisburg’s location on major railroad lines running east and west, and north and south made it the ideal location for moving men and supplies to the armies in the field. In addition to Pennsylvania regiments, troops from Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin and the Regular Army used Camp Curtin.”

That same day (April 18, 1861), Major Joseph Knipe, “a native of Mount Joy, a veteran of the Mexican War … raised the American flag over the new camp and proposed that it be named after the governor,” according to Tom Huntington, author of Pennsylvania Civil War Trails — a recommendation that was quickly adopted. More than three thousand regular and volunteer Union Army soldiers would ultimately be enrolled, mustered in, trained, mustered out, and/or honorably discharged at Camp Curtin between the spring of 1861 and early January 1866, making it the largest military facility in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and one of the largest in the nation during the American Civil War.

Soldiers’ Orphan Schools

The Tressler Orphans’ Home in Loysville, Pennsylvania, depicted here circa 1876, was founded in 1865 as part of the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphan Schools (John Laughery Paul, Pennsylvania’s Soldiers’ Orphan Schools, 1876, public domain; click to enlarge).

One of Governor Curtin’s most important initiatives was one that outlived him by many years — the creation of a system of schools for the thousands of Pennsylvania children whose fathers had died while serving with Union military units during the American Civil War (or had died, post-war, as a direct result of their service to the nation). Known as the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphan Schools, this system was approved by an act of the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1864, which read as follows:

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania be and is hereby authorized to accept the sum of fifty thousand dollars donated by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, for the education and maintenance of destitute orphan children of deceased soldiers and sailors, and appropriate the same in such manner as he may deem best calculated to accomplish the object designed by said donation; the accounts of said disbursements to be settled, in the usual manner, by the Auditor General and the Governor, and make report of the same to the next Legislature.

On June 16, 1864, Governor Curtin appointed The Honorable Thomas L. Burrowes, L.L.D., as superintendent of soldiers’ orphans, and directed him to create a plan for the new school system. Dr. Burrowes, who had previously served as the ex officio superintendent of Pennsylvania’s common school system during his tenure as secretary of the commonwealth under Governor Joseph Ritter, was able to quickly complete that new plan, and submitted it to Governor Curtin on June 27 of that same year (1864). In addition to establishing the criteria for determining a child’s eligibility for orphans’ school enrollment, that plan defined the application procedures for the mother or guardian of an eligible child, the responsibilities of each orphans’ school (to house, clothe, feed, educate, and provide medical and spiritual care to each child enrolled), and the recordkeeping and reporting procedures.

Governor Curtin then dedicated a significant portion of his final years in office to securing a staggering amount of funding for the orphans’ school system from the Pennsylvania Legislature (four hundred thousand dollars), and also worked with Dr. Burrowes on refining the system’s admissions and operating procedures.

POST-GUBERNATORIAL LIFE

The residence of Pennsylvania’s Civil War-era governor, Andrew Gregg Curtin, Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, circa 1890s (public domain).

Having completed his second term as governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on January 15, 1867, Andrew Gregg Curtin chose to remain active in public service. Appointed by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant as the United States’ minister to Russia in 1869, he held that post until 1872. From 1872-1873, he served as a delegate to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention, the product of which was Pennsylvania’s updated constitution (1874), which, among other things, declared that:

  • “All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness…; and that
  • “Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage….”

Elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Congress in 1880, Andrew Gregg Curtin served three terms, from March 4, 1881 to March 3, 1887, during which time he chaired the U.S. House of Representatives’ committees on Foreign Affairs (1883-1885) and Banking and Currency (1885-1887). Eschewing a fourth term, he retired to Bellefonte.

By 1889, the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphans School system that he had played such a key role in creating had grown into a network of forty-four separate educational institutions. A businessman involved with the First National Bank of Bellefonte, who had invested in the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad, his net worth during the latter part of his life was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars (the equivalent of more than nine million U.S. dollars in 2026). According to The New York Times:

“He lived at Bellefonte, in his stone house which has the air of a castle, among the books of his library.  He was tall, slim, and straight…. His eyes were dark gray, his hair was silvery, and when he went to Washington his affability attracted around him a circle of eminent men, to whom he related his career and innumerable stories.”

Illness, Death, Funeral and Interment

The Lewisburg Chronicle in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania paid tribute to former Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin on its October 13, 1894 front page (public domain).

Ailing during the final years of his life, Andrew Gregg Curtin died at the age of seventy-nine, at his home in Bellefonte, at 5 a.m. on October 7, 1894, and was immediately eulogized by government officials and in newspapers nationwide. According to The New York Times, “Gov. Pattison issued a proclamation tonight in which he announced ex-Gov. Curtin’s death. After reviewing his distinguished services to his State and country, the proclamation concludes as follows:

‘In honor of his memory and in recognition of his eminent public service, I invoke for his bereaved family the sympathy of the people of Pennsylvania, and I recommend and order that on the day of his funeral the flags upon the public buildings be displayed at half mast and that the several departments of the State Government within executive control be closed upon that day.’”

Both private and public funeral services were then held for Governor Curtin on October 10, 1894. According to The Semi-Weekly New Era of Lancaster, Pennsylvania:

“Private services [were] held at his late home, after which the body [was] taken in charge by Post 89, G.A.R., of [Bellefonte], for burial under the ceremonies of war. Detachments of the Pennsylvania National Guard [acted] as escort to the Post. The pallbearers [were] Col. A. K. McClure and John Scott, of Philadelphia; ex-Governor James A. Beaver, General Daniel H. Hastings, Edward C. Humes and Judge Austin O. Furst, of Bellefonte; Hon. John Dean, of Hollidaysburg, Judge of the Supreme Court; Hon. Wm. A. Wallace, of Clearfield, and Wm. B. Mann, of Philadelphia.”

The monument at the grave of Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin (Bellefonte Union Cemetery, Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, public domain).

In addition, the Pennsylvania National Guard’s “Second Brigade Band, Sheridan Troop, Battery B, Companies A, B, C, and G, of the Fifth Regiment, and A, B, D, G, and H, of the Twelfth Regiment” acted “as a funeral escort at the Curtin obsequies.” The Pennsylvania National Guard was also ordered to fire “seventeen minute guns … at the State Arsenal on the day of the funeral” — a funeral that merited coast to coast news coverage. According to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“This town [Bellefonte, Pennsylvania was] draped in mourning today in honor of the memory of Andrew Gregg Curtin, who was laid to rest this afternoon. This morning a memorial meeting was held in the courthouse, a great number of distinguished men being present. Touching addresses were made by Gov. Pattison, A. K. McClure, of Philadelphia, Gen. Gobin [the final commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and a future lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania] and others. At 12 o’clock the ex-governor’s body was borne from the family residence to the courthouse, where it remained until 1:30, thousands of people viewing the remains while they lay in state. The body was then taken back to the Gregg mansion [sic], where at 2 o’clock the funeral services were held.

Following those tributes, The Honorable Andrew Gregg Curtin was laid to eternal rest at the Union Cemetery in his beloved hometown of Bellefonte.

 

Sources:

  1. Albright, Rebecca Gifford. “The Civil War Career of Andrew Gregg Curtin, Governor of Pennsylvania,” serialized in The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, vols. 47 and 48, 1964-1965. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.
  2. “Andrew Curtin Dead: Pennsylvania’s Great War Governor Passes Away: His Invaluable Services to His State and Nation — Idolized by the Soldiers and Loved By All the People — Proclamation By Governor Pattison — Burial With Military Honors.” Meriden, Connecticut: The Meriden Daily Journal, October 8, 1894.
  3. “Andrew G. Curtin Historical Marker, in “Explore PA History.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, retrieved online August 4, 2026.
  4. “Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817-1894)” (alumus, class of 1937), in “Encyclopedia.” Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Archives & Special Collections, Dickinson College, retrieved online August 4, 2026.
  5. “Andrew Gregg Curtin Dead: The Illustrious ‘War Governor’ Passes Peacefully Away at His Home in Bellefonte.” Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: The Lewisburg Chronicle, October 13, 1894.
  6. Annual Reports of the Pennsylvania Commission of Soldiers’ Orphans Schools, 1870-1918. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
  7. “Another War Governor Gone: Andrew G. Curtin Passes Away at His Pennsylvania Home.” New York, New York: The New York Times, October 8, 1894.
  8. “Appointments by the Governor” (appointment by Governor James Pollock of Andrew G. Curtin as secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: The Lewisburg Chronicle, January 19, 1855.
  9. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1865-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
  10. “Biographical Sketch of Andrew G. Curtin! Next Governor of Pennsylvania.” Towanda, Pennsylvania: The Bradford Reporter, September 20, 1860.
  11. Bordewich, Fergus M. “Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins,” in Smithsonian Magazine, 2011. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian.
  12. “Camp Curtin Historical Marker,” in ExplorePAhistory.com. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, retrieved online July 25, 2022.
  13. “Curtin, Andrew Gregg,” in “History, Art & Archives.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. House of Representatives, retrieved online August 2, 2026.
  14. “Curtin, Andrew Gregg,” in “House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College.” Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Dickinson College, retrieved online August 2026.
  15. “For the Repository and Transcript: A List of the Governors, Deputy Governors, Presidents, and Vice Presidents of Pennsylvania” (mentions Andrew G. Curtin’s tenure as secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Franklin Repository and Transcript, December 1, 1858.
  16. “Funeral Arrangements and Pallbearers” and “Special Order to the National Guard,” in “Andrew G. Curtin Dead: The Famous War Governor at Rest.” Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Semi-Weekly New Era, October 10, 1894.
  17. “Funeral of Andrew Gregg Curtin.” Seattle, Washington: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 11, 1894.
  18. “Gov. Andrew Gregg Curtin,” in “Database of Former Governors: Pennsylvania.” Washington, D.C.: National Governors Association, retrieved online August 2, 2026.
  19. “Gov. Curtin and the Militia System of the State.” Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: The Pittsburgh Post, April 12, 1861.
  20. “Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin,” in “Pennsylvania Governors.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, retrieved online August 1, 2026.
  21. “Governor Curtin Has Signed the Bill for the Repeal of the Tonnage Tax.” York, Pennsylvania: The Wrightsville Star, March 14, 1861.
  22. Grodzins, Dean and David Moss. “The U.S. Secession Crisis as a Breakdown of Democracy,” in When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, from Ancient Athens to the Present Day (chapter 3). New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
  23. “History of Camp Curtin.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Camp Curtin Historical Society, retrieved online July 25, 2022.
  24. “Hon. Andrew G. Curtin,” in “Personal.” Ebensburg, Pennsylvania: The Alleghenian, September 29, 1859.
  25. Huntington, Tom. Pennsylvania Civil War Trails: The Guide to Battle Sites, Monuments, Museums and Towns, pp. 65-66. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2007; Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2007.
  26. Miller, William J. The Training of an Army: Camp Curtin and the North’s Civil War. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Publishing, 1990.
  27. Paul, James Laughery. Pennsylvania’s Soldiers’ Orphans Schools, Giving a Brief Account of the Origin of the Late Civil War, the Rise and Progress of the Orphan System, and Legislative Enactments Relating Thereto. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Claxton, Remson & Haffelfinger, 1876; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Lane S. Hart, 1877.
  28. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
  29. Sobel, Robert, and John Raimo, eds. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, vol. 4. Westport, Connecticut: Meckler Books, 1978.
  30. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 2. New York, New York: James T. White & Company, 1895.

 

Flag Days: The History of One Regiment’s Battle Flags

Cared for by archivists of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the two battle flags that were carried by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during its tenure of service in the American Civil War were known as the First and Second State Colors.

First State Color

The First State Color of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was presented to the regiment by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin on September 20, 1861, and was officially retired on May 11, 1865 (source: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 1985.057, Evans and Hassall, v1p126).

Presented to the regiment by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1861, the First State Color of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was manufactured by Evans and Hassall of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to the September 17, 1861 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper:

Under an act of the Legislature, passed during the extra session of 1861, the Governor of the State was authorized to purchase stands of colors for the several regiments of Pennsylvania. — Twelve of these have been completed, marked with the appropriate numbers of the regiments, and sent to Gov. Curtin. We have been shown one of these new standards. It bore upon it the Stars and Stripes, with the coat of Arms of Pennsylvania exquisitely painted on the blue field, and surrounded by the thirty-four Stars. On the central stripe the number of the regiment was emblazoned. The material is rich, heavy and lustrous silk. The sunlight never flashed on a more beautiful ensign…. The trimmings of the flags are very handsome. The work was completed by Messrs. Evans & Hassall, No. 51 S. Fourth Street.

The First State Color was the battle flag that was initially cared for and carried by the 47th Pennsylvania’s first color bearer, Sergeant Benjamin Walls, as the regiment took part in multiple military engagements, including the:

The First State Color was then carried by Sergeant William Pyers in subsequent military engagements, including the:

Subsequently carried by a third regimental color bearer, the First State Color was also the flag carried by the regiment during the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s defense of Washington, D.C., following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (beginning mid-April 1865 and lasting until the First State Color was officially retired on May 11, 1865).

Second State Color

Second State Color, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, presented to the regiment on March 7, 1865, this battle flag documents the regiment’s major engagements (source: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 1985.058, Horstmann Brothers and Company, v1p127).

The Second State Color of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was the battle flag that was carried by the regiment’s color-bearer as the 47th Pennsylvania marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. during the Grand Review of the National Armies on May 23, 1865, and as it marched into Savannah, Georgia in early June 1865 and into Charleston, South Carolina in July of that same year (while stationed in both cities on provost duty during the Reconstruction Era).

Presented to Captain Daniel Oyster on March 7, 1865, the commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company (the regiment’s color guard unit), while Captain Oyster was at home in Sunbury, Pennsylvania on a thirty-day military furlough (after having been wounded in action twice during Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign), it had been shipped to Sunbury in February by its manufacturer, Horstmann Brothers & Company of Philadelphia. According to archivists at the American History Museum in Washington, D.C.:

“William Hortsmann [sic, “Horstmann”], born in Germany, emigrated to the United States and established himself as a maker of fringe, laces, and trimmings in Philadelphia, in 1815. William Horstmann & Sons were located at North Third Street between 1830 and 1857, manufacturing and importing everything from textiles and trimmings to military goods including drums, pistols, and swords. As the company expanded, Horstmann & Sons moved the factory to 5th and Cherry Streets and their storefront to 2223 Chestnut Street. Later the company would grow to two stores in New York and an agency in Paris. William Horstmann retired from the company in 1845, and his sons, William and Sigmund continued the family business until 1872.”

Sources:

  1. “47th Infantry,” in “Pennsylvania Civil War Battle Flags.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, retrieved online June 3, 2026.
  2. “A Handsome Flag.” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Sunbury American, March 11, 1865.
  3. Bates, Samuel P., in History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
  4. “Flags for Pennsylvania Regiments.” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 1861.
  5. “Historical Listing of Pennsylvania Civil War Color Bearers,” in “Pennsylvania Civil War Battle Flags.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, retrieved online June 3, 2026.
  6. “Horstmann Brothers & Co. Military Trumpet.” Washington, D.C.: American History Museum, Smithsonian Institute, retrieved online June 3, 2026.
  7. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
  8. “The History of the Forty-Seventh Regt. P. V.” Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Lehigh Register, July 20, 1870.

 

Making History in May: Guarding the Key Conspirators in the Lincoln Assassination Plot

Brevet Major-General John Frederick Hartranft, governor and commanding officer of the Washington Arsenal military prison in Washington, D.C., July 7, 1865 (excerpted from original public domain photo of Hartranft and staff, U.S. Library of Congress).

On May 10, 1865, a group of soldiers from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry concluded another of their regiment’s history-making assignments — guarding the individuals who were instrumental in planning and carrying out the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Present-day historians know this to be true thanks to this brief note that was written by Brevet Major-General John Frederick Hartranft, the commanding officer of the United States military prison where those conspirators were held in the days leading up to their trial:

Hd. Qrs. Mil. Prison
Wash. Arsenal May 11th 1865.

Major Gen’l. Hancock
Com’dg. Mid. Mil. Div.
Gen’l,

I have the honor to report that 10.25 a.m. yesterday, Lt. Col. J. M. Clough, 18th N.H. reported with 450 muskets, for four days duty relieving the 47th Pa. Vols.

At 11.45, the prisoners on trial were taken into Court, in compliance with the orders of the same. At 1 P.M. the Court ordered the prisoners returned to their cells, which was done.

At 1.10 P.M. dinner was served to the prisoners in the usual manner.

At 1.30 in compliance with your orders Marshal McPhail was admitted to see the prisoner in 161, his hood having been previously removed; he remained with him until 2.35, immediately after which his hood was replaced and the door locked.

At 3.45 P.M. Mr. George L. Crawford in accordance with your instructions, was permitted to have an interview with prisoner in 209. I was present during the same, and heard all that was said. The conversation was in regard to the property of the prisoner in Philadelphia. At 4.25 the hood was replaced and the cell locked.

At 6 P.M. Supper was furnished the prisoners and at the same time Dr. Porter and myself made inspections of all the cells and prisoners.

At 6 P.M. in accordance with your instructions, Mr. Stone, Counsel for Dr. Mudd, was permitted to visit his client. The interview took place in the presence of Lt. Col. McCall but not in his hearing.

At 6.35 the interview closed, and the door was again locked.

At 7 this A.M. breakfast was served to the prisoners in the usual manner. At 7.15, Dr. Porter and myself made Inspections of all the cells and prisoners.

I would respectfully recommend that the prisoner in 190 be removed to cell 165.

All passes admitting persons during the last 24 hours are herewith enclosed.

I have the honor to be
Very Respectfully
Your Obt. Servt.
Bvt. Maj. Genl. and
Gov. and Comdr. Mil. Prison

* Note: The conspirator who was identified only as “prisoner 161” in Major-General Hartranft’s entry regarding the visit to the prison at 1:30 p.m. by Marshal McPhail was George Atzerodt, according to historians Edward Steers, Jr. and Harold Holzer, who worked with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration to publish a book containing correspondence that Hartranft wrote during his tenure as the head of the military prison where Atzerodt was being held, along with his fellow conspirators Samuel Arnold (cell 170), David Herold (cell 205), Dr. Samuel Mudd (cell 176), Michael O’Laughlen (cell 181), Lewis Payne/Lewis Powell (cell 195), Edman Spangler (cell 190 and then cell 184), and Mary Surratt (cell 157 and then cell 200). Also imprisoned there at that time were suspected conspirator John Celestino (cell 209) and Willie Jett (cell 211), the Confederate soldier who had accompanied Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and David Herold as they crossed the Rappahannock River to evade capture by Union troops, and had then also secured lodging for Booth at the farm of Richard Garrett in Virginia.

Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story are currently working to confirm the nature of and exact start and end dates for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s guard duty assignment at the Washington Arsenal military prison in Washington, D.C., as well as which companies of the regiment may have been involved. Their current theory (based on the first sentence of Major-General Hartranft’s May 11, 1865 letter shown above) is that as many as four hundred and fifty men from the 47th Pennsylvania may have been stationed at the Washington Arsenal for a four-day period between May 6-9, 1865. If so, then those 47th Pennsylvanians would have been on guard duty somewhere on the grounds of, or near, that prison on the day when Major-General Hartranft personally visited the cells of each of the key conspirators and read the official charges against them (May 8, 1865) and on the day when the key conspirators appeared before the military tribunal and were each asked whether or not he or she wanted to have an attorney advise and represent them — to which each said yes (May 9). The next morning, as the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were being released from their duties and replaced by men from the 18th New Hampshire, Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlen, Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Payne), Edman Spangler (also known as Ned Spangler), and Mary Surratt stood in front of the military tribunal at the Washington Arsenal, listening as the charges against them were read out loud in open court during their formal arraignment.

 

Sources:

  1. “Assassination Conspirators Tried, Convicted & Executed,” in Civil War on the Western Border: Border War Timeline. Kansas City, Missouri: Kansas City Public Library, 2013-2015.
  2. “Executive Order — General Court-Martial Orders: 356” (the legal charges filed in May 1865 against the key conspirators in the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln), in The American Presidency Project. Santa Barbara, California: University of California, Santa Barbara, retrieved online May 10, 2026.
  3. Steers, Jr., Edward and Harold Holzer, editors. The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, as Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press in Association with the U.S. National Archives, Washington, D.C., 2009.
  4. “The Trial of the Conspirators,” in Lincoln’s Assassination: Investigating the Assassination. Washington, D.C.: Ford’s Theatre, retrieved online May 10, 2026.

 

Telegraphing the News — From President Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination to His Assassin’s Capture

Telegram announcing the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, sent by Henry Harrison Atwater at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. on 15 April 1865 at 1:30 a.m. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

They are fleeting glimpses into a nation reeling from the death of a beloved hero. Viewed in chronological sequence, they take readers from the utter shock experienced by stunned government employees through the stages of grief as they tried to carry out their expected duties while also coming to terms with their own emotions about what was unfolding through the chaos and confusion around them.

They were the telegrams, logbook entries, military orders, dispatches from executives of the United States government to their subordinates who were stationed throughout the U.S. and across the globe, and other documents that were hurriedly created during the immediate and ongoing aftermath of the assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln, and they are illuminating, heartbreaking and, at times, infuriating — particularly as their intensity builds with each update regarding the dramatic hunt for, and capture of, the perpetrator and facilitators of one the most vile acts in American history.

Henry Harrison Atwater

Among the briefest but most powerful of the telegraph messages that were dispatched during the first hours after President Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre were those transmitted by Washington Navy Yard telegrapher Henry Harrison Atwater:

  • War Dept. Apr. 14 (186)5. Comd Parker. An attempt has been made this P.M. to assassinate the President & Secy of State – The parties may escape or attempt to escept [sic] down the Potomac [unclear] J.H. Taylor, Chf Staff
  • War Dept. Washington. Apr 15th (186)5. 1.05 a.m. Brig Gen. Barnes Pt. Lookout. Stop all vessels going down the river & hold all persons on them till further orders and [sic] attempt has been made tonigh [sic] to assassinate the President & secy of state hold all persons leaving Washington H.W. Halleck Maj Gen Chf Staff 
  • Navy Yard Washington Apr 15th (186)5 1.15 a.m. Comdr Parker. An attempt has this evening been made to assinate [sic] the President and Sec’y Seward The President was shot through the head and Secy seward [sic] had his throat cut in his own house Both are in a very dangerous condition. No further particulars There is great excitement here T.H. Eastman Lt Comdr U.S. Pot. Flotilla
  • War Dept Apr 15 (186)5 8 a.m. H.H. Atwater President died at seven twenty two (7.22) this a.m. Maynard Operator
  • War Dept April 15th 2.20 p.m. (186)5. Comd J.B. Montgomery Navy Yard If the military authorities arrest the murderer of the President and take him to the yard put him on a monitor & anchor her in the stream with strong guard on vessel – wharf – and in yard Call upon Comdt Marine Corps for guard – Have vessel immediately prepared ready to receive him at any hour day or night with necessary instructions he will be heavily ironed and so guarded as to prevent escape or injury to himself Gideon Welles Secy Navy

Atwater, when interviewed half a century later for the May 1, 1915 edition of the journal, Telephone and Telegraph Age, explained how he came to be the person who transmitted those crucial messages:

I was not in the theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865, but was in my room at the Navy Yard, where I was stationed, when about eleven p.m. I was called up by Mr. Maynard at the War Department Office and informed that President Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s Theatre. I ran to give the information to Commodore Montgomery at his house, and met the Commodore as he was entering the yard and conveyed the information. He replied: — “I guess that is a mistake, for I have just come from uptown and heard nothing of it.” I told him it had just occurred, and returned to my quarters.

Edwin Stanton

U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, circa 1862-1865 (Matthew Brady, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of War Edward Stanton was penning the following messages for telegraphic transmission by his subordinates:

  • War Department, April 15, 1865 – 1:30 a.m.
    Major-General Dix,
    New York:
    Last evening, about 10:30 p.m., at Ford’s Theater, the President, while sitting in his private box with Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris, and Major Rathbone, was shot by an assassin . . . The pistol-ball entered the back of the President’s head, and penetrated nearly through the head. The wound is mortal. The President has been insensible ever since it was inflicted, and is now dying.
  • War Department, April 15, 1865 – 2:35 a.m.
    Investigation strongly indicates J. Wilkes Booth as the assassin of the President.

Roughly five hours later, on April 15, 1865, Secretary Stanton conveyed the news that:

  • Abraham Lincoln died this morning at 22 minutes after 7 o’clock.

Stanton then began to write, rewrite and send announcements about the president’s death to senior officials of the federal government, which carried instructions that kept the federal government running during the transfer of power to the new president Andrew Johnson. Unable to employ the Transatlantic telegraph to quickly alert U.S. Department of State staff who were serving overseas at that time (because the transatlantic cable was still inoperable), Stanton was compelled to use the nineteenth-century version of “snail mail” when he sent this dispatch of April 15, 1865 by ship to Charles Francis Adams, the U.S. Minister to the United Kingdom:

Recd. 26 April, 1865
Charles Francis Adams
United States Minister, London
Washington, DC 15 April, 1865

Sir.

It has become my distressing duty to announce to you that last night His Excellency Abraham Lincoln President of The United States, was assassinated, about the hour of half past 10 o’clock, in his private box at Ford’s Theatre, in this city. The President about eight o’clock accompanied Mrs. Lincoln to the theatre. Another lady and gentleman were with them in the box. About half past ten during a pause in the performance, the assassin entered the box, the door of which was unguarded, hastily approached the President from behind, and discharged a pistol at his head. The bullet entered the back of his head, and penetrated nearly through. The assassin then leaped from the box upon the stage, brandishing a large knife or dagger, and exclaiming “Sic semper tyrannis!” and escaped in the rear of the theatre. Immediately upon the discharge the President fell to the floor insensible, and continued in that state until 20 minutes past 7 o’clock this morning when he breathed his last. About the same time the murder was being committed at the Theatre another assassin presented himself at the door of Mr. Seward’s residence, gained admission by representing he had a prescription from Mr. Seward’s physicians which he was directed to see administered and hurried up to the third story chamber where Mr. Seward was lying. He here discovered Mr. Frederick Seward, struck him over the head, inflicting several wounds, and fracturing the skull in two places, inflicting, it is feared mortal wounds. He then rushed into the room where Mr. Seward was in bed, attended by a young daughter and a male nurse. The male attendant was stabbed through the lungs, and it is believed will die. The assassin then struck Mr. Seward with a knife or dagger twice in the throat and twice in the face, inflicting terrible wounds. By this time Major Seward, eldest son of the Secretary, and another attendant reached the room, and rushed to the rescue of the Secretary; they were also wounded in the conflict, and the assassin escaped. No artery or important blood vessel was severed by any of the wounds inflicted upon him, but he was for a long time insensible from the loss of blood. Some hope of his possible recovery is entertained. Immediately upon the death of the President notice was given to Vice President Johnson, who happened to be in the City, and upon whom the office of President now devolves. He will take the office and assume the functions of President to-day. The murderer of the President has been discovered, and evidence obtained that these horrible crimes were committed in execution of conspiracy deliberately planned and set on foot by rebels on pretence of avenging the South and aiding the rebel cause; but it is hoped that the perpetrators will be caught.

The feeling occasioned by these atrocious crimes is so great, sudden, and overwhelming that I cannot at present do more than communicate them to you. At the earliest moment yesterday the late President called a Cabinet meeting, at which General Grant was present. He was more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him, rejoiced at the near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and abroad, manifested in a marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him. Public notice had been given that he and General Grant, would be present at the Theatre, and the opportunity of adding the Lieutenant General to the number of victims to be murdered was no doubt seized for the fitting occasion of executing the plans that appear to have been in preparation for some weeks, but General Grant was compelled to be absent, and thus escaped the designs upon him. It is needless for me to say anything in regard to the influence which this atrocious murder of the President may exercise upon the affairs of this country, but I will only add that, horrible as are the atrocities that have been resorted to by the enemies of the country, they are not likely in any degree to impair the public spirit, or postpone the complete and final overthrow of the rebellion. In profound grief for the events, which it has become my duty to communicate to you,

I have the honor to be
Very respectfully
Your obt. Servant
Edwin M. Stanton

Metropolitan Police, Washington, D.C.

In addition, a supervising police officer at the city of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department headquarters penned this ten-line entry in the department’s logbook:

At this hour the melancholy intelligence of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, President of the U.S, at Fords Theater was brought to this office, and the information obtained from the following persons goes to show that the assassin is a man named J. Wilks [sic] Booth. Secretary Seward & both his sons & servant were attacked at the same hour by a man supposed to be J____ Serratt. Assign to the Force.

The hunt for the conspirators had begun.

 

Sources:

  1. Brown, J. Willard, A.M. The Signal Corps, U.S.A. in the War of the Rebellion. Boston, Massachusetts: U.S. Veteran Signal Corps Association, 1896.
  2. “Exhibit: Lincoln Assassination Report.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, retrieved online April 15, 1865.
  3. Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York, New York: Random House, 2004.
  4. Langbart, David. “Reporting the Death of the President, 1865,” in The Text Message. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, April 15, 2015.
  5. “The Assassin’s Escape: Following John Wilkes Booth.” Washington, D.C.: Ford’s Theatre, retrieved online April 15, 1865.

 

“March Madness”: American Civil War Style

The phrase, “Dum Tacent Clamant” (“While they are silent, they cry aloud”), is inscribed on the Grand Army of the Republic monument at the Chalmette National Cemetery in Louisiana (G.A.R. Monument, Chalmette National Cemetery, circa 1910, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

For many Americans, the phrase “March Madness” conjures visions of college life or good times spent with friends at sports bars, cheering on favorite teams as future NBA All Stars steal and dunk their way through basketball championships en route to fame and fortune. But a very real form of “madness” affected Americans during the American Civil War — and it was a devastating experience for many of the boys and men who were forced to endure it by circumstances that were largely out of their control. That condition, which was referred to by physicians as nostalgia, was known to cause feelings of “despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died,” according to the late journalist Tony Horwitz, and it affected multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry throughout the regiment’s long and storied history.

“Though geographically less distant from home than soldiers in foreign wars, most Civil War servicemen were farm boys, in their teens and early 20s, who had rarely if ever traveled far from family and familiar surrounds….”

Horowitz’s description of young Civil War-era soldiers was particularly true for the teenagers and young men who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Among the most distantly located of Union Army troops, many were transported from farms and small towns across Pennsylvania to Virginia in 1861 — and then down to America’s Deep South as the war raged on toward its second year. Initially stationed at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida during the late winter of 1862, they were subsequently transferred to South Carolina, and were then moved back and forth between Florida and South Carolina between the fall of 1862 and mid-February 1864 as they engaged in the capture of Saint John’s Bluff, Florida, the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, the capture of Jacksonville, Florida, and the garrisoning of Fort Taylor in Key West and of Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas — the latter of which was a duty station that was about as far south as any American could travel in the United States.

And then they were shipped west to Louisiana to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign, during which time they made history as the only regiment from Pennsylvania to take part in that campaign — a series of intense military engagements in which more than a dozen 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers would be captured by Confederate troops and force marched to Texas, only to be held in deplorable conditions as prisoners of war at Camp Ford — the largest Confederate POW camp west of the Mississippi River. Several never made it out alive; those who did were never the same.

Even more damaging were the horrific conditions experienced by a far larger group of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were taken prisoner in Virginia roughly six months later, including First Sergeant William Fry (1836-1865) of Company C and Corporal James Huff (1835-1865) of Company E, who were both captured during the Battle of Cedar Creek and then dragged away to the two most infamous POW camps in the Confederacy. Sergeant Fry, who “was paroled [on March 4, 1865], only to ‘come home to die’ from starvation and slow poison — the victim [at Andersonville] of atrocities such as have only been practiced by the traitors to our own government, and from which savages would turn in disgust,” died three weeks later at his mother’s home (on March 28, 1865), according to the 15 April 1865 edition of The Sunbury American, while Corporal Huff lost his will to live on March 5, 1865, after suffering through months of the mental and physical torment of starvation that he endured at Salisbury. (His body was then thrown into an unmarked trench grave there with those of thousands of other Union POWs, and was never able to be identified.)

War-Induced Trauma

“A Southern ‘Slaughter House'” depicted the suffering of Union soldiers at the Confederacy’s Salisbury Prison Camp (Charles S. Greene, Sparks from the Campfire, 1889, public domain).

While it is true that the majority of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers managed to avoid being killed or imprisoned as POWs, it is also true that a significant number of them suffered serious emotional trauma — either personally because they were wounded or became ill as a direct result of their military service, or vicariously — because they saw one of their comrades fall in battle or watched as a sibling or friend succumbed to disease-related complications at a Union Army hospital. So, it’s often heartbreaking for present-day descendants to read diary entries and letters that were penned by their 47th Pennsylvania ancestors as they tried to convey their thoughts in shaky, cursive handwriting while cycling between happy memories of home, their hope for better days and their profound feelings of bewilderment, grief and despair.

While scribbling one such letter during church services on Sunday, December 29, 1861, for example, Private Abraham N. Wolf told his wife that the 47th Pennsylvania’s Regimental Band was playing a hymn at that moment, and went on to state, with childlike wonder and incandescent joy, that he’d received the gift box she’d sent him, adding “everything was in it yet what you said was in it and it came on the second day of Christmas.” But his words then turned bittersweet as he reported that he had already “fried some of the sausages” that she’d sent him in order to take with him for dinner as he headed out for duty to chop wood for the regiment. “They tasted pretty good to me for it was something new to me for it was from home.”

The next year, homesickness and grief darkened the holidays for a very pensive Henry Hornbeck, as evidenced by this diary notation:

“How different this Christmas from last year when all was Joy at home. Mary & myself for the sake of a Joyful surprise, placed upon the plate (before Breakfast) of Dear Mother, a Christmas Gift, and how pleased she was for that present, which was entirely unexpected. Now, alas, she is no more, never more are we to see her in this world. No one who has not lost a dearly beloved Mother, can feel that loss or have the least idea of what the loss of his or her dearest friend on earth is, until he or she experiences what we have, Standing at the death bed of a dying parent, and to feel as we felt, alone in this wide world…. Retrospection is often times pleasing and also horrifying. I wish you a Merry Christmas.”

The Consequences of Untreated Suffering

Placed by loved ones at the Bloomfield Cemetery in Perry County, Pennsylvania, this gravestone expresses the hope that the heart of 47th Pennsylvania veteran Ephraim Clouser is no longer distressed (public domain; click to enlarge).

One of the many heartbreaking truths of the American Civil War era is that soldiers who were battling depression or other mental health issues rarely received sympathy or support from their superior officers because those officers were advised by military physicians to respond harshly, rather than with compassion, to any behavior that might be perceived — or misperceived — as “malingering.” That surprising guidance was given by those surgeons because they had received medical school training which had taught them that any failure to shake off feelings of homesickness, sadness or grief was a sign of “weakness” or a “character flaw” rather than a symptom of a legitimate disease that required prompt and ongoing treatment. According to Horwitz:

“Military and medical officials recognized nostalgia as a serious ‘camp disease,’ but generally blamed it on ‘feeble will,’ ‘moral turpitude’ and inactivity in camp. Few sufferers were discharged or granted furloughs, and the recommended treatment was drilling and shaming of ‘nostalgic’ soldiers.”

In more than a few cases, the untreated or poorly-treated nostalgia experienced by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen became so severe that it broke the hearts of those 47th Pennsylvanians — figuratively and then literally — as it led to the development of damaging heart or brain diseases that would later be termed “Soldier’s Heart” or “PTSD” (post-traumatic stress disorder).

One of the earliest casualties of that sub-standard treatment was Private Adolph Finster of the 47th Pennsylvania’s A Company, who ended his life by suicide in Key West, Florida on May 15, 1863. A twenty-five-year-old who had been employed as a clerk in Easton prior to the war, Private Finster was subsequently buried in grave number 180 “of the Key West Post Cemetery,” according to historian Lewis Schmidt.

Another was D Company Private Ephraim Clouser, who was hospitalized for months at one Union Army hospital after another, following his release from captivity as a POW on November 25, 1864. (Shot in the knee during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9th, he had been force marched to Camp Ford in Texas, where he had then been subjected to starvation and dangerously unsanitary living conditions). Awarded a U.S. Civil War soldier’s invalid pension in 1866, he was then diagnosed with dementia (1868), described as “an insane veteran” by his hometown newspaper (1896) and “jailed as a dangerous character” (1898), before he was finally committed to the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Asylum (later known as the Harrisburg State Hospital).

Two of the other post-war casualties were William H. Sieger, a field musician from Company G, who died by suicide eight years after receiving his honorable discharge and eleven days after his twenty-ninth birthday, and Daniel Battaglia, a Swiss immigrant who served as a private with Adolph Finster in Company A and later battled mental health issues for decades before he was finally committed to the “Government Hospital for the Insane” (later known as St. Elizabeths Hospital) in Washington, D.C. — forty-five years after receiving his honorable discharge.

Still others, who managed to survive and be welcomed home with huzzahs and hearty backslaps after the war, seemed “just fine” to neighbors and co-workers but, in reality, were actually suffering greatly from physical or mental illnesses that would plague them for the remainder of their days — quiet casualties of a war that continued to claim lives more than half a century after it ended.

* Note: To see an image and read more of Abraham Wolf’s letter, read the article, “1861: Abraham Nicholas Wolf, Jr. to Sarah (Trexler) Wolf,” by Spared and Shared.

 

Sources:

  1. Da Costa, Jacob Mendez. “Observations on the diseases of the heart noticed among soldiers, particularly the organic diseases,” in Contributions relating to the Causation and Prevention of Disease, and to Camp Diseases; together with a Report of the Diseases, etc., Among the Prisoners at Andersonville, GA. New York: United States Sanitary Commission and Hurd and Houghton, 1867.
  2. Da Costa, Jacob Mendez. “On Irritable Heart; a Clinical Study of a Form of Functional Cardiac Disorder and Its Consequences: Result in Two Hundred Cases,” in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, vol. 61, no. 121, p. 17. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Henry C. Lea, 1871.
  3. Friedman, Matthew J. “History of PTSD in Veterans: Civil War to DSM-5.” Washington, D.C.: National Center for PTSD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, retrieved online, March 23, 2026.
  4. Greene, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles S. Sparks from the Campfire: Thrilling Stories of Heroism, Adventure, Daring and Suffering, Re-Told by the Boys Who Were There. New York: W. A. Houghton, 1889.
  5. Horwitz, Tony. “Did Civil War Soldiers Have PTSD?“, in Smithsonian Magazine. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, January 2015.
  6. Pollard, Harvey, Chittari Shivakumari, et.al. “‘Soldier’s Heart’: A Genetic Basis for Elevated Cardiovascular Disease Risk Associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” in Frontiers in Neuromolecular Science, September 23, 2016. Switzerland: Frontiers Research Foundation.
  7. “Resolutions of Condolence” (report regarding the death of former Andersonville prisoner of war, Sergeant William Fry, at his home in Sunbury). Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Sunbury American, April 15, 1865.
  8. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

 

A Past That Seems Distant — But Wasn’t

47th Pennsylvania veteran John Edward Saylor with his sister, Mary Alice (Saylor) Hangen, and his son, Robert Henry Saylor, (The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, August 1929, public domain).

Many Americans tend to think of the American Civil War as part of the United States’ long distant past. Waged more than one hundred and sixty years ago, it began at a time when the art of photography was still in its infancy and the average newspaper contained mostly written text without any accompanying illustration.

As the war dragged on, though, newspaper publishers began sending Winslow Homer and other artists to far-flung locations, hoping that any sketches they sent back would give readers a better sense of the battles that were killing countless young men and destroying entire communities. Matthew B. Brady and Alexander Gardner, who had gained a measure of fame by photographing President Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet, went on to revolutionize war reporting by turning their cameras on carnage so horrific that it could not be conveyed by mere words or pencil illustrations. Their black and white photographs are the ones still viewed most often by history students in classrooms across the nation, contributing to the persistent notion that the American Civil War is distant, rather than recent history.

But that’s not quite correct, as the lives of Robert Henry Saylor and Edward John Saylor will show us. Born in the city of Toledo, Ohio during the early 1920s, the Saylor brothers could both lay claim to have been cradled in the arms of their father, John Edward Saylor (1846-1931), a veteran of the American Civil War who had served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s K Company from early 1864 until early 1866.

Veterans of World War II, both brothers also made it through their respective tenures of military service and lived well into the last decades of the twentieth century, with the youngest brother nearly surviving long enough to witness the dawn of the twenty-first, making him a genuine “living bridge” between the not-so-distant past and present.

Their life stories help us to better understand just how recent so much of American History is. Reflect on that as you learn more about the Saylors’ lives by reading our new bio of Corporal John Edward Saylor.

 

Sources:

  1. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
  2. Conway, William (boarding house operator) and Ollena; Saylor, John [sic, “John Edward Saylor”] (lodger and eighty-four-year-old Civil War veteran) and Robert (lodger and Civil War veteran’s ten-year-old son); et. al., in U.S. Census (Toledo, Lucas County, Ohio, 1930). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  3. “Edward Saylor” (obituary of a son of John Edward Saylor). Coshocton, Ohio: The Coshocton Tribune, August 5, 1999.
  4. “Former Resident Dies” (death notice of John Edward Saylor). Port Clinton, Ohio: News-Herald, September 4, 1931.
  5. John Saylor [sic, “John Edward Saylor”], in Death Certificates (registration district no.: 769, death of death: August 28, 1931). Columbus, Ohio: State of Ohio, Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics.
  6. “Man, 84, Has Son Aged 9” (photo with caption of John Edward Saylor and his son, Robert, and John’s sister, Mary A. (Saylor) Hangen). Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Morning Call, August 25, 1929.
  7. Mary Alice Hangen (a sister of John Edward Saylor), in Death Certificates (file no.: 67765, registered no.: 858, date of death: July 12, 1932). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
  8. “Mrs. Mary A. Hangen” (obituary of a sister of John Edward Saylor). Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Morning Call, July 13, 1932.
  9. “Putnam Group Inducted Into Armed Forces” (notice of the impending World War II service of John Edward Saylor’s son, Robert Henry Saylor). Lima, Ohio: The Lima News, May 11, 1943.
  10. Robert Henry Saylor, in U.S. Headstone Applications for Military Veterans (Vista Memorial Gardens, Hialeah, Florida, year of death: 1977). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  11. “Saylor” (obituary of Robert Henry Saylor, a son of John Edward Saylor). Coshocton, Ohio: The Coshocton Tribune, January 4, 1977).
  12. Saylor, Edward J. (the groom and the youngest son of John Edward Saylor), John Saylor [sic, “John Edward Saylor”] (father of the groom) and Catherine Pyfer [sic, ” Pfeiffer”] (mother of the groom); and Loretta Wehrly (the bride), in Marriage Records (Putnam County, Ohio, June 10, 1946). Ottawa, Ohio: Putnam County Probate Court.
  13. Saylor, Edward J. (the youngest son of John Edward Saylor), Loretta, and Gloria J., in U.S. Census (Pleasant Township, Putnam County, Ohio, 1950). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  14. Saylor, John, in Civil War Muster Rolls (Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  15. Saylor, John, in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  16. Saylor Robert (a son of John Edward Saylor) and Edwina, in U.S. Census (Coshocton, Coshocton County, Ohio, 1950). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  17. “Saylor, Robert H.” (obituary of a son of John Edward Saylor). Miami, Florida: The Miami Herald, January 4, 1977.

 

Black History Month: Say His Name, Then Share His Story

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, 5 October 1862 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Our realization, as researchers, that there were at least nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War was sparked by a single index card for a soldier named “Presto Garris” that we found in the Pennsylvania Civil War Veterans’ Card File, which is maintained by the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Our ability to determine the true name of that soldier and correct the historical record about his life by researching and writing his biography was made possible by reading the dozens of pages contained in his U.S. Civil War Pension file and Compiled Military Service Records, which are maintained by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

It was worth every penny of the roughly one hundred and ten dollars that we spent to obtain copies of those records from the National Archives because one of those documents confirmed the precise location of where that soldier had been enslaved prior to the war while others told us that he had survived the war and had lived out his life as a farmer. Another document even provided clues to the location of his grave.

That knowledge was so much more than we could have ever have hoped to gain because so many of the millions of men, women and children who were sold into, born into and re-sold throughout the American system of chattel slavery were never identified by name on state and federal census records prior to the war or were listed under names that had been created for them by their enslavers.

So, it matters that we’re able to tell you, for certain, that the true name of the soldier listed on that aforementioned index card was Bristor Gethers, that he lived near Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina after the war and that he resided with his wife and son near Beaufort, South Carolina after that. Please take the time to learn more about him by reading his bio on our educational program’s special website, Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Then, look through the records that document his life’s journey.

Mr. Gethers’ story teaches us all that it is possible to find a new way forward after surviving the darkest of times.

 

Sources:

  1. “Garris, Presto,” in Civil War Muster Rolls (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  2. “Garris, Presto,” in Pennsylvania Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  3. “Geddis, Brista” and “Geddis, Rachel,” in U.S. Census (Beaufort Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina, 1880). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  4. “Geddis, Brister,” in “Agreement Between B. J. Whitesides and Fifteen Freedmen” (Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, 12 February 1868), in “Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  5. “Gethers, Bristor,” “Garris, Presto” and “Geddes, Bristor,” in U.S. Civil War Pension and U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files (widow’s pension application no.: 598937, widow’s certificate no.: 447893, filed by the widow, Rachel Geddes, from South Carolina, 27 July 1894). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Seven Continents: The Year of 2025 in Review

“The Blue Marble” (Earth, photographed by Apollo 17 astronauts, December 7, 1972; NASA, public domain).

Another year almost gone. More milestones achieved for a personal research project that has grown into a multi-faceted, educational outreach program with connections on all seven continents of our planet.

Seven out of seven continents.

That statistic is the one that astonishes me most of all as I sit here compiling our annual Year in Review report for 2025. 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is truly now a global community of lifelong learners.

Children and adults are engaged, at the moment I write this, in a quest to understand what it actually meant to be a member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War. As they do so, they are learning that the light of hope persists even when the world is filled with darkness.

Key Project Statistics (as of 6 p.m. Pacific Time on December 31, 2025):

  • First Content Posted to Website: May 25, 2014
  • Total Website Page Views to Date: 967,350
  • Total Number of Website Visitors to Date: 767,532
  • Total Number of Facebook Followers: 2,213
  • Total Number of Instagram Followers: 1,160
  • Total Number of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Gravesites Documented Via the Project’s Virtual Cemetery: 1,446
  • Total Number of Individual Officers and Enlisted Men Profiled to Date: 345
  • Most Popular Post in 2025: Finding Your 47th Pennsylvanian: Use “Bates’ History” — But With Caution

Why Is There So Much Interest, Globally, in a Single, Seemingly “Obscure” Civil War Regiment from Pennsylvania?

The light and dark blue areas of this map show the reach of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story as of December 31, 2025 (image courtesy of Snyder Family Archives).

What started as a personal research interest of one descendant of a 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantryman soon became the research focus of a half dozen descendants of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers — and then dozens more as the website and social media sites for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story launched and gradually attracted followers, including family historians, Civil War enthusiasts, history professors, and students in high schools and universities across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — and beyond.

In 2020, the project’s audience grew substantially as teachers and students turned to distance learning and the “47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ Project” as a way to keep minds sharp during the COVID pandemic that prompted the closure of schools and businesses worldwide. It was that year that educators from India residing in the United States and teachers across India found our website and began helping their students better understand the history of the United States by encouraging them to “see” the American Civil War “through the eyes of” the soldiers and families whose biographies were available on our website.

As more people heard about our website, supporters of our work began donating photographs of young soldiers in uniform and letters penned by 47th Pennsylvanians stationed far from home — each artifact a “log on the fire” of expansion — growth that continued even as in-person instruction returned to classrooms across the globe. Since that time, Pennsylvanians have been reading and learning from the same content as students in:

  • Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
  • Bangkok (Thailand)
  • Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain)
  • Bengaluru and Mumbai (India)
  • Brussels (Belgium)
  • Bogota (Columbia)
  • Dubai (the United Arab Emirates)
  • Dhaka (Bangladesh)
  • Dublin (Ireland)
  • Falkenstein, Bielefeld, Frankfurt, and Koeln (Germany)
  • Glasgow (Scotland)
  • Helsinki (Finland)
  • Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
  • Hrebinka (Ukraine)
  • Istanbul (Türkiye)
  • Jakarta (Indonesia)
  • Lagos (Nigeria)
  • Lima (Peru)
  • London, Durham, Leeds, and Manchester (Great Britain)
  • Luleå (Sweden)
  • Manama (Bahrain)
  • Manila (the Philippines)
  • Melbourne and Sydney (Australia)
  • Montreal, Courtenay, Edmonton, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Toronto, and Vancouver (Canada)
  • Nairobi (Kenya)
  • Santiago (Chile)
  • São Paulo (Brazil)
  • Seongnam and Seoul (South Korea)
  • Warsaw and Witkowo (Poland)
  • Singapore (Republic of Singapore)
  • Tokyo and Kumamoto (Japan)
  • Vientiane (Laos)
  • Xiamen, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Zhengzhou (China), and
  • Christchurch (New Zealand).

We now even have contacts at McMurdo Station in Antarctica! (Not a bad way to close the book on a challenging and often heartbreaking year.)

A Resolution for 2026

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers fought long and hard to help end a devastating civil war, eradicate the shameful practice of slavery and rebuild their shattered nation, and for those reasons alone, should be remembered for their service to the nation.

But perhaps the most important part of their collective story is that soldiers who somehow managed to survive unimaginable horrors never gave up trying to make their world a better one.

And neither should we.

My hope for 2026 is that more individuals in our world will “see wrong and try to right it” while also doing what is humanly possible to heal suffering in ways that “send forth ripples of hope and change.”

Happy New Year!

 

On Crutches, Convalescing in Carolina: The Fight by Pocotaligo’s Wounded to Recover

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).

Still ruminating about the carnage that he and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen had survived just weeks earlier during the Battle of Pocotaligo, C Company Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin sat down in his quarters at his regiment’s encampment in Beaufort, South Carolina in mid-November 1862 and began to pen an update to a letter that he had recently written to friends back home. Despite his belief that he had “nothing to write home about,” his letter proved to be an important historical artifact — a handwritten, dated and signed eyewitness account that detailed what happened to multiple Union Army soldiers who had been wounded in action at that 1862 battle in South Carolina.

Head Quarters Co. C 47 P.V.
Beaufort S.C. Nov. 13. 1862

Dear Friends

I have just learned that a mail leaves for the North tomorrow morning although I have nothing particular to write about, and there is no telling when you will get it, as I understand vessels from here are now quarantined ten days at New York. Still I suppose you will be anxious to hear from me.

I have not heard from Sergt. Haupt today. Yesterday he was still living and improving, and I now have hopes of his recovery. I was down on Saturday last and both nurses and doctor promised me to do everything in their power to save him. If money or attention can save him it must be done.

The rest of the wounded of my Company are doing very well. All will recover, I think, and lose no limbs, but how many will be unfit for service I cannot yet tell. Billington, Kiehl, Barlton [sic, “Bartlow”], Sergt. Haupt and Leffler are yet at Hilton Head. Billington is on crutches and attending to Haupt or helping. Barlton [sic, “Bartlow”] and Leffler are also on crutches. Kiehl is walking about, but his jaw is badly shattered. Corp S. Y. Haupt is on duty. Haas’ wound is healing up nicely. Corp. Finck is about on crutches. O’Rourke, Holman, Lothard, Rine [sic, “Rhine”], and Larkins are in camp, getting along finely. Those who were wounded in the body, face and legs all get along much better than Sergt. Haupt who was wounded in the foot. His jaws were tightly locked the last time I saw him.

The Yellow fever is pretty bad at the Head, and I do not like to send any body down. I am holding a Court Martial, and keep very busy. The fever creates no alarm whatever here. No cases at all have occurred save those brought from Hilton Head. We have had two frosts and all feel satisfied that will settle the fever. Some good men have fallen victims to it. Gen. Mitchell [sic, Major-General Ormsby Mitchel] is much regretted here.

Sixty of my men are on picket under Lieut. Oyster, Lieut. Rees [sic, “Reese”] having been on the sick list. However he is well again. The balance of the men are all getting along finely. Warren McEwen had been sick but is well again. My health is excellent. Spirits ditto. I suppose however by the looks of things I will be kept in Court Martials for a month longer, the trial list being very large. The men begin to look on me as a kind of executioner as it seems I must be upon every Court held in the Dep’t [Department of the South].

We are waiting patiently and anxiously for a mail, not having had any news from the North since the 24th of last month. Three weeks without news seems a terrible time, when you come to realize it.

I wrote home from the Head the last time I was down. Was my last received. Write soon and give me all the news. With love to all

I remain
Yours JPSG

What Ultimately Happened to the Men Identified in That Gobin Letter?

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

The “Rees” and “Oyster” mentioned by Captain J. P. S. Gobin were his immediate subordinates, First Lieutenant William Reese and Second Lieutenant Daniel Oyster, who both ended up surviving the war. Reese would later be accused of cowardice during the 1864 Red River Campaign but cleared of that false charge, while Oyster would rise through the regiment’s ranks to become captain of Company C before being wounded in two different battles of Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

The “Billington” and “Barlow” who had sustained leg wounds were Privates Samuel Billington and John Bartlow. Although both ultimately recovered from those wounds, Private Billington would later be deemed unable to continue serving with the 47th Pennsylvania and would be honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on July 1, 1863, while Private Bartlow would go on to become a sergeant with the 47th’s C Company, effective September 1, 1864, only to be killed in action just over a month later, during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia.

“Corp. Finck” was Corporal William F. Finck, who had also been wounded in the leg and who also subsequently recovered and returned to duty. Unlike Sergeant Bartlow, however, he would survive a second wound that he would later sustain during the Battle of Cedar Creek and would be promoted to the rank of sergeant on April 1, 1865.

“Haas” was Private Jeremiah Haas, who had been wounded in the breast and face. Known as “Jerry” to his friends and family, he also eventually recovered and returned to duty, but was then mortally wounded in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads near Mansfield, Louisiana on April 8, 1864 and died “almost instantly,” according to a letter written by his Company C comrade, Henry Wharton.

The “Haupts” were Sergeant Peter Haupt and his brother, Private Samuel Y. Haupt. Sergeant Peter Haupt, whose foot and ankle had been wounded at Pocotaligo, later developed lockjaw and died after contracting tetanus from the lead in the canister shot that had struck him. His brother, Samuel, however, survived. Wounded in the face and chin, Samuel would later be cleared for active duty and then be promoted steadily up through the ranks to become a first sergeant.

“Holman” was Private Conrad P. Holman, who had also been wounded in the face and who also recovered and returned to duty, would later be captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill in Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and be held as a prisoner of war (POW) at Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22 of that same year.

“Kiehl” was Private Theodore Kiehl, whose jaw had shattered when his mouth was struck by a rifle ball at Pocotaligo, also recovered and returned to active duty. Sadly, he would later be killed in action on the grounds of Cooley’s farm near Winchester, Virginia during the Battle of Cedar Creek in October 1864.

“Larkins” and “Leffler” were Privates Michael F. Larkin and Charles W. Lefler, who had sustained wounds to the hip and side and/or arm and stomach (Larkins) and leg (Lefler) at Pocotaligo. They also both recovered and returned to active duty. Unlike so many of their comrades, however, they both survived their respective tenures of service and were both honorably discharged.

“Lothard” was actually Charles L. Marshall — one of several “mystery men” of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. A native of Virginia who had relocated to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania to work in a coal mine prior to the American Civil War, he had enlisted as a private with the 47th Pennsylvania under the assumed name of “Thomas Lothard.” Shot in the head and/or body at Pocotaligo, he would ultimately recover and return to active duty, only to be wounded again in his head (top), body (right side) and left shin left during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads in Louisiana on April 8, 1864. Later mistakenly labeled as a deserter, his military records were subsequently clarified to reflect his honorable discharge on January 7, 1866, as well as his legal name and alias.

“Warren McEwen” was Private Warren C. McEwen, whose illness would later become so persistent that he would be honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on December 7, 1862.

“O’Rourke” and “Rine” were Privates Richard O’Rourke and James R. Rhine, who had also sustained wounds to the side (O’Rourke) and leg (Rhine) at Pocotaligo, and would also recover, return to active duty, serve out their respective terms of enlistment, and be honorably discharged.

Veteran Volunteers

Samuel Y. Haupt, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1863, public domain).

John Bartlow, William Finck, Samuel Haupt, Charles Marshall (as “Thomas Lothard”), Richard O’Rourke, and James Rhine were among multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry who would go on to be awarded the coveted title of “Veteran Volunteer” when they chose to re-enlist for additional tours of duty and helped to bring an end to one of the darkest times in America’s history.

Remember their names. Honor the sacrifices that they made.

 

Sources:

  1. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
  2. Gobin, John Peter Shindel. Personal Letters, 1861-1865. Northumberland, Pennsylvania: Personal Collection of John Deppen.
  3. MacConkey, Alfred. “Tetanus: Its Prevention and Treatment by Means of Antitetanic Serum.” London, England: The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 2806, October 10, 1914, pp. 609-614.
  4. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
  5. Wharton, Henry D. “Letters from the Sunbury Guards.” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Sunbury American, 1862.

 

Election Day 1864 — Lincoln or McClellan? How the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers Voted

The platforms of the Union and Democratic parties, U.S. Presidential Election of 1864 (courtesy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; click to enlarge).

Even in the midst of a devastating civil war, Americans across the United States managed to come together to fulfill their civic responsibilities by voting on Election Day. Fathers and sons flocked to city and small town polling places while soldiers on active duty filled out ballot forms wherever they were stationed during the early to mid-1860s.

With respect to the Presidential Election of 1864, which was held in multiple states across America on November 8, 1864, that voting took place for members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry at their encampment near Newtown, Virginia, according to a letter that was subsequently penned by 47th Pennsylvanian Henry D. Wharton to his hometown newspaper in Sunbury, Pennsylvania on November 14:

“The election passed off quietly and without any military interference, not the influence of officers used in controlling any man’s vote. In the regiments from the old Keystone, the companies were formed by the first Sergeant, when he stated to the men the object for which they were called to ‘fail to,’ and then they proceeded to the election of officers to hold the election – the boys having the whole control, none of the officers interfering in the least.”

Were the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers pro-Lincoln or pro-McClellan?

Excerpt from Henry Wharton’s letter to his hometown newspaper, November 14, 1864 (The Sunbury American, November 14, 1864, public domain; click to enlarge).

Wharton reported that, after the votes from members of the regiment were counted, President Abraham Lincoln was the favored choice of most of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Lincoln had garnered one hundred and ninety-four votes to General George B. McClellan’s one hundred and twenty-one (a margin of seventy-three votes). Those votes, by individual company, were tallied as follows:

  • Company A: President Lincoln (ten); General McClellan (one)
  • Company B: President Lincoln (twenty-six); General McClellan (two)
  • Company C: President Lincoln (twenty-nine); General McClellan (thirteen)
  • Company D: President Lincoln (thirty-one); General McClellan (eleven)
  • Company E: President Lincoln (twenty-four); General McClellan (three)
  • Company F: President Lincoln (eighteen); General McClellan (sixteen)
  • Company G: President Lincoln (nine); General McClellan (thirteen)
  • Company H: President Lincoln (ten); General McClellan (twenty-four)
  • Company I: President Lincoln (nineteen); General McClellan (sixteen)
  • Company K: President Lincoln (eighteen); General McClellan (twenty)

But Wharton’s figures for the men from Company K were incorrect, according to historian Lewis Schmidt, who noted in his book, A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, that “Fifteen of the members [of Company K] voted for the Lincoln electors and seven for the McClellan electors” when they “voted on the battlefield of Cedar Creek, November 8, 1864.” The members of Company K who cast votes that day were: “David H. Fetherolf, Mathias Miller, John Keiser, Phaon Guth, James D. Weil, Daniel Strauss, Paul Strauss, George Sherer, Lewis G. Seip, Henry Hantz, Charles W. Abbott, George Kase, Charles Stoudt, William Schlicher, William F. Knerr, E. F. Benner, George Delp, Tilghman Boger, William H. Barber, William D. Schick, Frank Beisel, and David Semmel.”

Apathy or Attrition?

One of the first things that researchers notice when looking at those figures for the 1864 election is that the number of votes tendered by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers that November day was lower than it should have been — shockingly so when considering that each company of the regiment had been staffed by roughly one hundred men when the 47th Pennsylvania left Camp Curtin and headed for Washington, D.C. three years earlier. The turnout of 47th Pennsylvanians was not a sign of voter apathy, however, but of a simple, ugly truth. The regiment had just recently lost the equivalent of nearly two full companies of men in combat. According to Wharton, “The battle at Cedar Creek thinned our ranks by which we lost many votes – this number and those away in hospitals would have increased the Union majority to three hundred.”

* Note: When Henry Wharton wrote the phrase “Union majority,” he was referring to the National Union Party, which had been established during the 1860s by prominent Republicans as a way to bring members of their party together with “War Democrats” and potential voters from border states to vote for President Lincoln and others who supported the Republican platform for eradicating chattel slavery and ending the nation’s secession crisis and civil war.

What Happened After That Election in 1864?

President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 (W.E. Winner, painter, J. Serz, engraver, circa 1864; public domain, U.S. Library of Congress).

Successful in his bid for re-election, both in terms of the electoral college and popular vote, President Abraham Lincoln went on to deliver one of his most inspiring addresses to the nation, urging his fellow Americans “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and “do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” He then continued to shepherd his nation through one of its darkest times until the war was finally over.

Food for Thought

If Henry Wharton and his fellow soldiers could make it to the polls on Election Day after all they endured in battle, so can you. Please vote. Your voice does matter.

 

Sources:

  1. “Political Party Timeline: 1836-1864,” in American Experience: Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided. Boston, Massachusetts: GBH Education for WGBH-TV (PBS), 2001.
  2. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
  3. “The People’s Candidate: Lincoln’s Presidential Elections,” in “Illinois History & Lincoln Collections.” Urbana, Illinois: Main Library, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, retrieved online November 3, 2025.
  4. Transcript of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (delivered Saturday March 4, 1865), in “UShistory.org.” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Independence Hall Association, retrieved online March 4, 2020 and November 3, 2025.
  5. Wharton, Henry D. “Letter from the Sunbury Guards, Near Newtown, VA, November 14, 1864.” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: The Sunbury American, November 26, 1864.