Common Men in the War for the Common Man: The Civil War of the United States of America History of the 145Th Pennsylvania Volunteers from Organization Through Gettysburg

Copyright © 2013 by Dr. Verel R. Salmon.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012907900

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4771-0687-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-0689-1

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Front cover artwork of the author drawn by Kevin John Jobczynski.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1:      The Growing Up of Soldiers

CHAPTER 2:      Sharping the Dirk: Organization of the 145th Regiment

CHAPTER 3:      A Hurrying Time Since We Left Erie: Antietam and Aftermath

CHAPTER 4:      Harper’s Ferry, Bolivar Heights, and Warrenton: Hotter Here than Home in Haying

CHAPTER 5:      A Tremendously Strong Regiment: Where Is It From?

CHAPTER 6:      Fredericksburg: Stay There and Be Shot at Like Dumb Beasts

CHAPTER 7:      Winter at Falmouth

CHAPTER 8:      Land of Dixie, God be praised that we git out of your clutches: Chancellorsville

CHAPTER 9:      Erie Pennsylvanians Return to Pennsylvania: Gettysburg

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been assembled over a thirty-year period. The initial impetus must be credited to my father, Ray J. Salmon, who had vivid recollections of his early years talking with George Washington Salmon of Company C of the 145th, his great-grandfather. It is nearly impossible to credit all the friends and contributors. My wife, Sandra, and my four children, Gwendolyn, Ray John, Susannah, and Jonathan have been main lines of support. All have stories of visits to battlefields, museums, and libraries. Dating Sandra in the 1960s when she lived in Chesapeake, Virginia, provided a great excuse for this Erie County, Pennsylvania, native to visit battlefields and routes of march of the Army of the Potomac. My siblings, Vincent, Elaine, Jim, and Lowell were cheerleaders over the years. Gwen’s husband, Noe Castellanos, even accepted a request to visit the Army War College for me to pull records. Cousins added encouragement, including the late Dean Weed of California who had preserved and gave me our ancestor’s diary. Soldiers’ descendants who provided information are acknowledged in endnotes.

Pat Knierman, a native of Erie, and an employee of many years of the National Park Service, much of that time assigned to Gettysburg, has provided numerous records, letters, photos, and information he has assembled in his private collection on the regiment. PK in bibliographic reference indicates sources Pat obtained.

Barry Davis, coauthor of I’m Surrounded by Methodists, the annotated diary of Chaplain Stuckenberg, lived a number of years in Fredericksburg. When he came to Erie as a former army chaplain and as a Methodist minister and showed up at the Roundtable, we met and worked together for several years researching the 145th. He joined the faculty of Millcreek Schools and soon was popular with high schoolers for his ability to bring history alive. BD indicates sources Barry researched.

Dennis Libra is a friend and Millcreek Schools principal who discovered the grave of Joe Marsh next to his property in McKean Township and researched the young soldier he adopted. Dennis, a third-generation Italian-American, demonstrated that the Civil War belongs to every American as it may well be the most defining element of our history.

Brian Pohanka and Michael Kraus are two exceptional Civil War historians who visited northwest Pennsylvania over the years. They offered first-person workshops for Millcreek middle schoolers. We lost Brian in 2005, but Michael continues the school program past the date of this publication. A curator of the Soldiers and Sailors Museum in Pittsburgh, Michael is also an eminent artist who we in Erie know as the sculptor of the statue of General Strong Vincent we display at our library. Brian was researching and writing the Fifth New York regimental history over many of the years I was working on the 145th Pennsylvania.

The leadership of the Erie Civil War Roundtable has always been encouraging of this enterprise. George Deutsch, a descendant of James Jordan of Company K and ardent student of Erie’s Eighty-third Regiment, was always a willing ally. GD indicates sources he provided. The late Dr. Roy Stonesifer of Edinboro University offered good advice in an early stage of the manuscript as well, as did the wonderful historians at the Civil War battlefield parks.

Laura Savelli of the McDowell English Department patiently edited most of the manuscript. I say most only because there seems to always be one more piece of relevant information to insert into edited copy. My thanks go also to the many individuals who have supported this lengthy project in some way and who I have not mentioned.

PREFACE

I grew up on a farm just outside the historic village of Waterford, Pennsylvania. My parents’ first date was to visit the dedication of the monument of George Washington which was placed in the middle of High Street. By the time I was born, 1947, George had been moved to the south side of High Street [U.S. Route 19] to avoid drunken motorists. Young George had traveled to Waterford’s Fort LeBoeuf to carry the English order to the French to vacate the territory. You can’t grow up in one of America’s most historic locations without some of it rubbing off.

My parents were both teachers of, from what I have been told by their students, uncommon stature. My older siblings and cousins studied or lived in places such as New England, Maryland, Arizona, California, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Mississippi, Florida, New York, and England. Any trip we made to visit them included a history lesson and an opportunity for research. My career in education afforded opportunities for research when traveling to state and national conferences. I had many exceptional teachers and in my career worked with many more who nudged me along life’s path.

While completing a family history, I made my first visit to the National Archives to learn more about First Sergeant George Washington Salmon, GW to me. That was the first of many visits over the years to this remarkable institution. After completing my family story, I could not help but research the records of GW’s friends in Company C. The story just continued to build over the years as the individual soldier’s stories tied together to bring new meaning to the military histories of the great war.

My ancestors were pioneers of western New York and, from 1823 on, of Erie County, Pennsylvania. Whigs to the extent of giving their children names like Henry Clay Salmon, they enthused to the candidacy and principles of Abraham Lincoln and became Republicans.

The firsthand accounts and reminiscences of the common men of the 145th fused together with the understanding of America as the land of opportunity, the country where common citizens can accomplish and enjoy great things. The Civil War did more than just make us into one nation; it redirected our course and enabled us to begin to eliminate serious flaws in our national character. Thus, the title of Common Men in the War for the Common Man was selected many years ago.

As time passes, information on the Civil War continues to emerge. Readers who hear of additional information are encouraged to send it to me via the publisher. And finally, the reader is advised to skip over sections or paragraphs which have more detail than they prefer. Some have suggested I eliminate the medical details—others soldiers’ genealogies, others the repetition which comes from multiple soldiers’ recollection of the same event.

One publisher said Americans will only buy or read single moderately sized books and that half of the material in these pages should be eliminated. Instead, this is the first of two books on the regiment. It covers some prewar biography, the organization of the regiment, and their exploits through Gettysburg. A subsequent book includes the stories following the Gettysburg battle until the conclusion of the war.

The original guiding principle for this regimental history was to have the soldiers tell this story in their own words. Not always accurate in the eyes of the historian, it is the war as they recorded it. I hope you enjoy the approach I have taken. Inevitably, errors which may be found should be reported to the publisher so that they might be corrected in future editions.

Verel R. Salmon, PhD, 2012

Erie, Pennsylvania

CHAPTER ONE

The Growing Up of Soldiers

SYNOPSIS—The stories of the origins of a few soldiers of northwestern Pennsylvania are typical of those of the stock of men who represented the region in the great conflict: Hiram Loomis Brown of Erie, David Barclay McCreary of Mill Creek Township, John D. Black of Union City, John W. Reynolds of Erie, John H. W. Stuckenberg of Erie, Stephen Allen Osborn and Amos Yeakel of Greenville in Mercer County, Dyer and Lamartine Loomis and Jonathan Bingham of North East, John and Theron Briggs of Waterford Township, Samuel Valentine Dean of Springfield in Conneaut Township, John and Francis Trimmer Proudfit of Franklin Township and Edinboro, James Riley Jordan of Harborcreek Township and Erie, Horatio Lewis of Swanville, and George Washington Salmon of Colt’s Station in Greenfield Township of Erie County.

Hiram Loomis Brown Jr.

Hiram Brown Sr. was born in 1800 in Massachusetts. Brown migrated west to North East, Pennsylvania, by 1830 where he and his wife ran a tavern and began their family. Hiram posted an advertisement in the Erie Gazette which appeared May 29, 1828, Hiram L. Brown of North East will be a candidate for Major of the 1st Battalion of the 104th Regiment at the ensuing election. The Browns’ second child, Hiram Jr., was born at North East in 1832 and would grow up with deep martial interests.¹ In 1835, the young Brown family moved to Erie where the Browns ran the Eagle Tavern at Second and French streets.² Young Hiram grew up in the surrounding neighborhood. He attended Public School No. 2 on the north side of Second Street between Peach and State streets. It was a two-room school: boys attended on the first floor under the tutelage of Mr. Cachicen; girls attended class on the second floor. Boys and girls were kept apart most of the time, but one young girl vividly recalled the daily exceptions to this practice.

The very hardest trial endured was running the gauntlet of the rough boys generally loitering about the door on our arrival and departure to and from school. Sticks and stones [were] hurled at us with epithets loud and clear suiting the occasion and appearance, such as pigtails, spindle-legs, lank shanks and like complimentary remarks. Among the boys, the fiercest were the Browns and the Vosburgs - for Hiram Brown… was one of these rude boys.³

Hiram had three younger siblings. In 1847, Brown, now fifteen, began his study of the printer’s trade at the Erie Gazette and later at the Observer. Upon reaching manhood, Brown was described physically as a burly six footer.⁴

In 1849, Hiram’s older brother, Seth, along with several other young Erie men, were transported by Perry Oliver, a livery man, to Dunkirk, New York, by wagon. Seth and his friends then reportedly took the New York and Erie Railroad to New York City where they boarded a boat for California in search of their fortune. At age eighteen, Hiram, no doubt intrigued by letters from Seth and the possibility of high adventure, traveled west; his mission was also necessary as word had arrived at Erie that Seth Brown had passed away. He would take care of his brother’s affairs before returning to Erie to another family travail in 1851. When he was still nineteen, Eagle Tavern, his parents’ business since he was sixteen, burned. Much of the next two years was spent by the family in constructing and opening a new four-story brick hotel, Brown’s Hotel, on the northwest corner of State Street and North Park Row, right in the heart of Erie on Perry Square. Hiram Sr., apparently exhausted with the effort, passed away in 1853, the year Brown’s Hotel opened for business. Young Hiram assisted his mother in running the hotel, his principal vocation for the next eight years.

Sometime in the 1850s, Brown spent a year in Chicago gaining new life experiences. In 1860, the Erie City Directory listed him as the proprietor of the establishment. Brown’s Hotel was a fine place, as attested by the ad in the same directory, both the house and furniture are of a quality unsurpassed by any house west of New York City. The conveniences and arrangements are unexcelled by any hotel in the State and the proprietor hopes to receive a liberal share of patronage.⁵ Brown had traveled enough to feel confident with these claims.

Hiram Brown’s fierceness as a youngster gradually transformed itself into an avid interest in military science. He became active in Erie’s disciplined Wayne Guard military organization. On November 19, 1853, John Kilpatrick, Brigadier General, Second Brigade, Twentieth Division of Pennsylvania Militia, appointed the twenty-one-year-old Brown to serve as captain. On August 30, 1858, Brown became brigade paymaster of the Second Brigade, Twentieth Division of the Pennsylvania Militia, the appointment made by Mathias Schlaudecker, Brigadier General.

A year later, on August 15, the rank of captain was added to his credentials by Governor William F. Packer.⁶ He shifted his political allegiance from Union Democrat to Republican after the fall of Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861. Recruitment of the first three-month regiment began on April 21, 1861, only nine days after the start of the attack on Fort Sumter. Governor Andrew G. Curtin sent notice to Brown of his commission as captain of Company B. On April 27, a portly Hiram Brown assumed the duties as the captain of Company B of the new McLane Regiment. The new regiment drilled extensively on open ground at Sixth and Parade streets until May 1 when it traveled by rail to Pittsburgh via Cleveland. They would drill in Pittsburgh area camps until July 20 when they returned to Erie, not having been called into the war.

Authorization was received on July 24, 1861, to form the Erie region’s first three-year regiment, the Eighty-third Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. Hiram Brown would be selected to command Company I, with the rank to date from August 27, even though the governor’s appointment wasn’t dated until October 22. The Eighty-third was mustered into service on September 8 and left for Washington on September 16, 1861. Here, they trained extensively for six months. On March 8, orders came to move, and heavy fighting on the Virginia peninsula was the result. In the fight at Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862, Captain Brown was shot in the left groin. One report had the ball entering just below the heart, passing quite through, and exiting in his watch pocket and was supposed to be mortal. Upon hearing this news, William Walker, Brown’s brother-in-law, left Erie for Washington, obtained a pass to the front after some difficulty, and made his way to the field hospital at Savage Station where he organized Erie’s wounded for the trip home to Erie to recuperate. Brown was received back in Erie as a war hero. As he recuperated and his energies renewed, along with his unflinching martial spirit, he followed the development of a new regiment from the Erie region throughout August 1862.⁷

The events surrounding Hiram Brown’s return to Erie through the efforts of his brother-in-law, William Walker, were chronicled years later in an article in the Erie Daily Times. Two prominent politicians of the day, Morrow Lowery and Glenni Scofield, play a part in Hiram Brown’s story. Morrow B. Lowery was a delegate from Erie County to the Republican National Convention in 1860 which selected Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president. Lowery was elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 1862. He held the position through the war years and afterward until 1870. Lowery did many services for the men of the 145th during the war.⁸

Glenni William Scofield was born in Chautauqua County, New York, on March 11, 1817. Scofield attended the common schools, learned the printing trade, and went on to graduate from Hamilton College in 1840. He taught for a short time and then practiced law for four years in Warren, Pennsylvania, being elected as district attorney in 1846. In 1848, he was elected as a representative in the Pennsylvania House. Scofield affiliated himself with the fledgling Republican Party in 1856. He served in the Pennsylvania Senate from 1857 to 1859. In 1861, he was appointed president judge of the eighteenth judicial district of Pennsylvania. Scofield was elected to the thirty-eighth United States Congress and five succeeding congresses, serving March 4, 1863, through the war years until 1875.⁹

Some time after the seven days battle before Richmond Va the relatives and friends of Capt Brown and other wounded soldiers adjatated [sic] the sending for them.

William Walker a brother in law of Capt Brown proceeded to Washington, D. C. and Congressman Glenn Scofield went with him to Secretary of War Stanton to procure a pass to go to the front after wounded Capt. Brown and other wounded soldiers. They were refused a pass by Mr. Stanton.

Washington was full of fathers, mothers, sisters and soldiers’ friends wishing to go to the front after their sick and wounded friends. None of them could procure a pass from the war department.

Mr. Walker met Morrow B. Lowry, . . . state senator from Erie, on the street in Washington after he parted with Congressman Scofield, and told Mr. Lowry of his troubles. Hell, said Lowry, come with me. It is no use, said Walker. Come with me, again said Lowry, and he led the way to the war department and strode into Secretary Stanton’s private office unannounced, past doorkeepers, not even taking his hat off. Walking up to Mr. Stanton, Lowry said: Mr. Stanton, I vouch for this man Walker, and I want you to issue him a pass to proceed to the front or wherever he has to go for wounded soldiers, and give him transportation.

Mr. Stanton cleared his throat and readjusted his eye-glasses, and said: Really, Mr. Lowry, I can’t at present issue any passes.

Mr. Lowry, in his earnest, vigorous way, pointed across the street towards the White House and Abraham Lincoln, saying: Do you want me to go across the street for a pass?

Mr. Lowry was a man that Mr. Stanton couldn’t bluff and he ordered a clerk to issue Mr. Walker a pass and transportation.

When Mr. Walker returned to his hotel, one man offered him $200.00 for his pass and transportation. Mr. Walker said: Money can’t purchase this pass. Mr. Walker left on an evening transport steamer down the Potomac and over Chesapeake Bay, arriving at Fort Monroe the next morning. Found a quarter-master and that a small steamer would leave soon for York River and the Pamonkey [sic] River to the White House. Mr. Walker met a nice elderly lady from Philadelphia who had five nurses with her. She had waited for four days to be passed to the front. Come with me, said Walker, and he took them on board of the boat under his pass from Stanton.

On arrival at the White House, they were taken in an army wagon to Savage Station, not far from Richmond, Va, where the old lady and her nurses were to work, and Mr. Walker found Capt. Brown and the other four wounded soldiers he had come for. The few buildings and tents were full of sick and wounded soldiers while many were laying on the grass under great majestic American elms. A large musket ball had struck Capt. Brown in the groin close to the hip joint and had ricochade [sic] like the worm of a rail fence, between the outer skin and the tough lining to the bowels, plowing a road through the fat and lodging in the flesh of the right thigh. [One account says in his vest pocket, which is incorrect.]

Capt. Brown was quite a fleshy portly man. The wound had healed some when Mr. Walker arrived after Capt. Brown. The captain saved his sword by stitching it into a straw tick on which a badly wounded soldier was lying. The rebels took all the other officer’s arms.

Mr. Walker did not meet or see a rebel soldier. He put Capt. Brown and the four wounded men [have not their names] on stretchers with the help of lesser wounded men, put them into army wagons and brought them to the White House landing where willing hands helped to carry the wounded men to the steamer which brought them to Baltimore, Md. Here willing persons helped carry them to the cars. They were delayed a day at Pittsburg [sic] before they could get a train for Cleveland. There were no Erie & Pittsburg or Philadelphia & Erie railroads then; had to go by Buffalo and Elmira, or by Cleveland, O., to get to Pittsburg, Harrisburg or south.

At Pittsburg Mr. Walker had the wounded men on their stretchers in the parlor of a hotel, and sent out for an army surgeon to dress their wounds. Big-hearted Capt. Brown, who was always thinking of others, not himself, insisted upon the four men having their wounds dressed first. When the surgeon looked at the captain’s gaping wound and learned of the road the musket ball had ploughed around the bowels, the surgeon said, Captain, the enemy will never kill you with bullets, and they never did, although they filled him with led [sic] two or three times.

On arriving at Erie, Pa., Capt. Brown got up from his stretcher on the platform against the advice of Mr. Walker and other friends, saying: "I am going to see my dear mother, and walked to Charles Vosburg’s carriage in waiting for him.

No man ever reverenced and loved his mother better than Hiram L. Brown did. Either at Savage Station or at Erie the large bullet was cut out of Capt. Brown’s thigh. Nursed by his mother and sisters, he recovered, yet it was some time before he was well enough for field duty.¹⁰

J. W. Smart’s previously unpublished drawing

of Hiram Brown at work in tent, 1861

[Verel R. Salmon Collection]

J. W. Smart asked Captain Hiram Brown, Company I,

Eighty-third Pennsylvania, if he minded being sketched as he worked

in his tent one day, his faithful dog at his side. Brown consented.¹¹

Colonel Hiram Loomis Brown

[Roger D. Hunt Collection

at U. S. Army Military History Institute]

David Barclay McCreary

Joseph F. and Lydia Swan McCreary were natives of Lancaster County and Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, respectively. In 1802, the young couple traveled to the western Pennsylvania frontier and the lands newly annexed from New York State in Erie County, and settled near Walnut Creek in western Mill Creek Township, six miles west of downtown Erie. Joseph and Lydia McCreary raised a family of nine children—five boys and four girls—on the farm they established, the youngest son, David Barclay, being born in his parents’ home on February 27, 1826.

As a child growing up in western Mill Creek, David Barclay McCreary matured with the duties attendant to farm life. He showed an active interest in literature and science. An early playmate of David was Andrew H. Caughey, their fathers being cousins and their farms being near to each other. As Andrew recalled

The centre of education and Sunday school instruction, and of religious services on Sunday night, was Love’s school house, situated on a low browed hill on what was then called Joiner road. The school was maintained by the farmers of the community; for it was before the days of taxation and free schools established by law. The people, mostly descendants of Scotch or Scotch-Irish ancestors, had great regard for education, and taxed themselves freely for this important purpose. And the trustees of the school, usually a McCreary, Caughey, Love and Reed, were very careful to secure the best teachers available, although they could afford to pay but $12 a month.

The teachers under which young McCreary and Caughey studied in the summer season were women. One of the first of these ladies whom they would always remember was Ms. Martha Scott whose brother was the county sheriff. After Ms. Scott came Ms. Delia Grubb, a most faithful teacher, the daughter of a judge and niece of Captain Grubb who led a company of Pennsylvania militia in 1795 to Presque Isle for protection against the Indians of the corps of engineers sent by the governor to lay out the town of Erie.

She not only taught the three Rs to her pupils, but also the Ten Commandments and the Shorter Catechism; and she was accustomed to impress upon the children under her care the sin of torturing and killing dumb, innocent creatures, even extending her protection over flies, (though mosquitoes were excepted); and to this day at least one of her pupils never kills a fly without a prick of conscience therefor.

Winter sessions of school were conducted for McCreary and Caughey by men: William R. Miller, Matthew R. Barr, and Peter Wright.

The school that was kept in Love’s school house was one of great repute in all the region round about. Not only reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, including a thorough study of English grammar, were taught, but under teachers capable of giving the instruction, algebra and Latin, and even Greek, were studied by boys aspiring to a higher education.

At night, the community conducted debates in the building. The Q. P. Fraternity was made up of seven members, three from the McCreary family, two from the Caugheys, a Stewart, and a Barr. David McCreary as a debater used many illustrations and stories to make his points, a practice he would employ throughout his adult life. At sixteen, McCreary prepared for college at the Erie Academy, clerking in a store part-time and walking the five miles to and from school each day with his friend, Andrew Caughey. With the onset of the winter term, McCreary began teaching school himself. Evenings were filled with hard study and preparation for teaching. McCreary’s parents provided a horse and buggy for travel into the Erie Academy the next summer and autumn. Andrew Caughey described the Erie Academy as a great school.

Reid T. Stewart, the principal, was a teacher of great ability, tact and energy, filled with enthusiasm and bubbling over with good humor; and these qualities he was able to communicate by induction into the boys and girls under his care. Lazy Lawrences had no kind of a good time under his dominion, and the strap and ferule were not mere ornaments about his throne, but for use: and every stroke on the dull or idle boy’s back or legs was accompanied by a smile and a chuckle on part of the master and a corresponding groan from the writhing victim. He never pretended that this severe discipline hurt the teacher more than it did the lazy scholar. No good and faithful student was ever in danger of any strap practice or any kind of severity. All his students loved and admired him, even those that had sometimes been welted for their good… But he had studied law while he was in the academy; and in 1845, being ready to be admitted to practice, he resigned his position in the academy and married Miss Reid… But his married life was of short duration. He was seized with typhoid fever while the happy pair were on their wedding journey, and died…

McCreary and Caughey attended the academy for two more years, joined in their travel in the one-seated buggy by their common cousin, John C. McCreary. Their studies turned to Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry, rhetoric, and composition. Young David found some time to spend with Annette Gunnison.

In 1848-49 and 1849-50, David McCreary and Andrew Caughey studied and roomed together at Pennsylvania’s Washington College. Board at the Old College, as students dubbed it, was $1.50 per week. They complained of the modest diet but found an abundance of wit and humor among their twenty-five or so fellow boarders. McCreary, as Caughey recalled, enjoyed it all to the full, and furnished his full share of the wit and fun. McCreary was very active and diligent as a student, and particularly enjoyed the Washington Literary Society, . . . bearing his part in the debates with great interest and corresponding success.

College was a delight to McCreary and Caughey. They returned to Erie after the two-year college program. In the fall of 1849, McCreary went to work for attorney and preceptor, John H. Walker. McCreary read law with Judge John Galbraith and W. A. Galbraith. He threw himself into the study of law, while Caughey became the principal of Erie’s new West Ward School. By the fall of 1851, McCreary passed the legal exam and became a member of the Erie County Bar.

True love had been taking its course. In 1851, David B. McCreary married Annette Gunnison, the daughter of E. D. Gunnison, an early pioneer in the area. The newlyweds left Erie County to begin their marriage. David, at age twenty-four, became the principal of a high school in Winchester, Kentucky, which he served from 1851-53. He and his wife, Annette, returned to Erie in August 1853. He immediately began practicing law in partnership with J. B. Johnson, an arrangement which lasted two years. An Erie Railroad War was on the verge of breaking out. Johnson owned a pro-Whig newspaper, the Constitution, which supported the railroad men, and McCreary and Caughey expressed their editorial opinions on the railroad controversy over the several years of the controversy. The printing office of the paper was destroyed by a mob in the spring of 1856. During this same time frame, McCreary and Caughey were active in the organization and building up of Park Presbyterian Church.¹² In the mid-1850s, McCreary was appointed aide to General Pollock, holding the militia rank of lieutenant colonel. He joined the law firm of Jonas Gunnison and continued to practice until the outbreak of Civil War. He was impressed with a young man in his office who was studying law, Charles H. Riblet. McCreary enthusiastically affiliated himself with the new Republican Party.¹³

McCreary was a lieutenant in Captain Hiram L. Brown’s Wayne Guard Company B of the three-month Erie Regiment which was formed and led by Colonel John W. McLane in the late spring of 1861. Colonel McLane was killed in service with the Eighty-third Regiment which had been the first three-year regiment to form in the area. McCreary joined an Erie group which chose as its name, the McLane Avengers. In the summer of 1862, McCreary helped organize the 145th Regiment at Erie. An early recruit was Charles Riblet, the young law student.¹⁴ David and his wife, Annette, had two children: Sophia Gertrude [Sophie] and Wirt, who were still young when McCreary left for the war.¹⁵ He began his service in Company D of the new regiment as its captain on August 27, 1862, but was named lieutenant colonel of the regiment nine days later.

David B. McCreary

[Roger D. Hunt Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute]

John D. Black

The first John Black emigrated Ireland. A son, William, was born near Pittsburgh. John had served in the War of 1812 and resided many years at Meadville in Crawford County. William Black farmed, carried mail on horseback between Pittsburgh and Warren, and engaged in the mercantile trade at Meadville. William Black moved to Miles Mills in 1859. Miles Mills would become Union City as the war to preserve the Union got underway. W. O. and John D. were sons of William. They had been reared on a farm. W. O. Black was a salesman in Meadville who then took up similar work at Erie in 1844.¹⁶ In 1858, he returned to farming in Union Township. In 1859, he was elected as Erie County treasurer. At the outbreak of the war, W. O. allegedly assisted in raising the Eighty-third, 111th, and the 145th regiments in the area and volunteered as a surgeon, doing active work at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, where his brother John D. was pierced by three bullets.¹⁷

John Dick Black was born July 10, 1841, in Meadville to William and Phebe Black. At enlistment, he was five feet 9 3/4 inches tall, had a fair complexion, dark blue eyes, light hair, and claimed tinner as his occupation. He lived at Union Mills (Union City). Black enlisted in the Erie Zouaves’s three-month unit on April 15, 1861, three days after the opening of the attack on Fort Sumter. He was discharged in July. He was one of the earliest members of the 145th, signing up on July 1, 1862. At the age of twenty-one and weighing about 150 pounds, he mustered as first lieutenant into Company E of the 145th on August 27, 1862, and within a year would go on to serve as the adjutant for the

regiment.¹⁸

John W. Reynolds

John W. Reynolds was born on July 3, 1836, in Evansburg, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He received his early schooling there. He attended Burlington College in New Jersey, northeast of Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River. He left college in his sophomore year and settled in Erie. As a seventeen-year-old, he worked as a clerk at J. M. Smith & Co. and lived on Sassafras between Fifth and Sixth streets. He entered the engineering corps of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1853 and, in 1854, he also worked at a crockery store at Six Bonnell Block. His parents, his sister, Mary, and other relatives lived in Pottstown during this period. While in the engineering service, Reynolds helped to build the railroad from Sunbury to Erie.¹⁹

Prior to the war, Reynolds was becoming serious about an Erie belle, Ms. Mary Emma McAllister. She was not so sure about the relationship, and as he signed up for and helped to organize a company in the newly forming regiment, his heart was sad but he was determined to persevere in his pursuit of the maiden. Both John and Mary attended St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Reynolds had recently turned twenty-seven when he mustered in to the 145th Regiment in August 1862. He was quite popular and was selected by the men as captain of Company A.

John W. Reynolds

[Patrick Knierman Collection]

Chaplain John H. W. Stuckenberg

John Henry Wilburn Stuckenberg was born in Bramasche, Germany, January 6, 1835. His family had arrived in America when he was only four years old. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1857 from Wittenburg College where he completed theological studies a year later. His first pastorate was in Iowa. During that year, he decided he needed more study in theology. He returned to Germany where he completed two years of advanced work at the University of Halle. When he returned to America in the summer of 1861, it was a nation at war, a nation struggling to break in two. Reverend Stuckenberg settled at Erie, Pennsylvania, where he assumed the pastorate of three area Lutheran churches. He was well received in the churches he served. He became very interested in the war as it developed. He was perhaps the best educated of the men who came together in August 1862 to form the fourth infantry unit born at Erie, the third of the three-year regiments which were spawned by the original three-month enlistment Erie Regiment.²⁰

Stephen Allen Osborn

Stephen Allen Osborn was born April 2, 1840, in Jackson Township in Mahoning County, Ohio. His father was of Scotch-English extraction, his mother of the Connecticut Yankee strain. His mother, Abigail Allen Osborn, was reputedly a descendant of Ethan Allen of the nation’s Revolutionary period. When Stephen was ten, his family had settled in Salem Township, Mercer County, near Greenville, Pennsylvania.²¹ The Osborn log cabin stood in the center of a few acres of land cleared out of the forest, adjacent to an excellent spring. The 18’ x 20’ cabin consisted of two rooms with rough boards laid on round sleepers with the top hewed flat. The upper floor was about four feet below the top wall. The clapboard roof let in some of the elements. In winter, Osborn woke to several inches of snow on his bed on many occasions. He got to his bedroom via a wood ladder. At one point, the cabin held twelve Osborns.

Osborn recalled never owning underwear or boots until after age sixteen. His clothes as a child were of homemade cloth, the woolen and linen goods spun and wove by the family, cut, fitted, and assembled by the women of the house who had also carded, spun, colored, warped, and wove the cloth in the first place. They grew their own flax, pulled it at maturity, tied it in sheaves, and stood it in rows to dry. The dry flax was hauled to the barn on a sled drawn by Buck and Bright, the Osborn’s team of horses.

Father and the boys threshed the seed out by grasping the small three inch sheaves in their hands and mauling them over a large round stone or over the bottom of a large iron kettle… The flax was spread evenly on the grass.

This accomplished what was called rotting, the bleaching process. After this stage, the flax seeds were dried over a fire and then put through a device to break up the woody part of the stem, called skives. The process of scutching shook out the skives.

After this the finishing touch, heckling, was given which was usually done by the women who were the most skilled in the manufacture of fine linen cloth. The coarser flax was called tow and was weaved into cloth which was used for straw tick, grain bags, toweling, etc. The fine flax aside from being woven into the finer linen was used for thread.

Osborn recalled the process used to harvest grain using an old sweepstake grain cradle and the manual raking, binding, gathering, and shocking and the threshing which followed later. The grass was cut with the scythe swung by a strong, skillful pair of sunburnt arms, and after drying in the sun, manually raked into windrows and then pitched into hay stacks or stored in the small log barns of the Osborn farm. Major work projects were usually done by a gathering of neighboring families for what they called frolics. Hard work combined with good times and good farm food. Typical projects included house and barn raisings and in the fall, log rolling.

The farm was expanded by cutting the native trees, axing off their limbs, and eventually rolling the logs together in piles. As many as forty or more farmers would come together to manage the log rolling. They usually subdivided into teams to add a dimension of competition to the work. The next day, the men would move on to help another neighbor accomplish the expansion of his tillable farmland in like manner. Thus cleared, a new field was ready to become next spring’s field. Planting would occur for many years around the great stumps. Supper was served by the women at a rough board table in the yard, . . . heaps of eats piled on that long table. After those logs were gathered into heaps, the small limbs and brush was gathered and thrown on the heap and the heap was set on fire. Once the ashes were cooled, they were

hauled later to the ashery, where the lye was extracted and boiled down to what was called black salts and finally refined into saleratus (baking soda), etc. The sale of the ashes very often being the means of furnishing the little money that was required to pay their taxes.

Most of the trade of the times occurred through barter; there was very little money in circulation. Osborn noted that their farm of 106 acres would eventually be sold for nine bushels of rye.

When it came to entertainment

The young people thought nothing of walking two, three or even four miles to meeting or to a singing or spelling, girls as well as boys, through the woods a good share of the way, ‘lit’ by the moon, a hickory bark torch or by a tallow dip in a tin lantern, which gave just about light enough to make darkness visible. There were very few meeting houses, religious services being held in school houses or at private residences.

Osborn’s youth was before the days of telegraph, telephones, or even railroads. He recalled a man talking about the idea of the telegraph, Yes, I believe that the thing might work all right in sending letters, papers, and light parcels, but when it comes to hardware and heavy goods, I believe it will prove to be a failure. Osborn described the frequency of superstition in that period. In his old Ohio neighborhood, witches, spooks, and goblins were supposed to walk at night. He described an old lady who lived a half mile away from his home

. . . who was supposed to be a witch, and her effigy had been shot with a silver bullet and wounded in the leg, which caused the old lady to have a lame leg, etc. All of which was firmly believed by some. I remember, small as I was, of going one night with several larger boys and watching near an old, abandoned house to see a headless man or spook, as he was called, come out and take to the woods. But he must have had other business on hand for he failed to put in his appearance.

Osborn described the school he attended which was located about 1 1/4 miles through the woods from the family’s cabin. His school was typical of schools sprinkled across the northwestern Pennsylvania region in the mid-1800s. The small log school housed forty to forty-five students of different ages, all taught by one teacher.

Our school house was an old, log pen, about 16 x 20 feet, with nearly half of the back end occupied by a tremendous old-fashioned fire place. The desks ran along either side of the house about two feet from the walls with bench seats firmly nailed to the walls and floor. About the center of those long desks there was a small aisle where one could edge through; this in connection with an entrance at the ends of the desks enabled the future professors, lawyers, ministers and soldiers to crawl in and out just in front of the desks. There was a permanent bench seat for the smaller ones, but the carpenters or wood butchers were very careful to see that they were so high that the little fellows when seated could not reach the floor with their feet by several inches… The teachers and the books were fully as different from the teachers and books of today as were the school houses. The parents had to provide the books, etc., and almost any old kind of book went. The arithmetics used were the Western Calculator, Adam’s, and Ray’s. I remember I had for a reader the winter of ’50 an old English reader printed in very fine or small, indifferent type with words not quite as long as my legs…

With two months of such schooling in the winter and two or three months in the summer is it any wonder that there were few good scholars. As for me I thought more of having a good time than anything else.²²

Stephen Osborn’s growing up was similar to the experiences of so many of the men who would heed the call to volunteer into the 145th Regiment being formed at Erie, Pennsylvania. Osborn’s first name was recorded both as Steven and Stephen.

Amos Yeakel

Amos Yeakel was from West Greenville in Mercer County. He was born February 26, 1843, the son of Edward M. and Matilda Drake Yeakel. His parents and two sisters, Emma and Sarah, were sad and worried at his decision to join in the war effort. At nineteen years old, Amos thought a great deal about his family as he contemplated what lay ahead. Dad was forty-six; Mother was thirty-six. Emma was sweet sixteen and Sarah was six. He still thought at length about his brother Sam who had died six years previous at age six. Grandpa Abraham and Grandma Sarah Yeakel were now seventy-two and sixty-nine, respectively. Grandpa was a millwright. His grandparents had remained in Upper Hanover, Pennsylvania, when his father had moved west to Greenville. Abraham was one of the ten children of Caspar and Anna Yeakel. Caspar was the son of Balthasar Yeakel who had bled to death as a result of an accident which had occurred one hundred years previous. Caspar had arrived with his parents in Pennsylvania in 1734, settled in Macungie, Pennsylvania, and earned his naturalization as an American in 1759. Balthasar had been the youngest boy in the family of the twelve children of David and Susanna Yeakel. Susanna had passed away and David was seventy-five when many members of his family decided to leave Nieder Harpersdorf to begin life anew in the new world. Amos Yeakel enlisted on August 11, 1862, in the 145th Regiment along with the other boys from Greenville. He declared his occupation as a typographer.²³

Cyrus Wilson

Cyrus Wilson was born on September 25, 1829, near Espyville in southwestern Crawford County. He was married on October 31, 1851, to Catharine Kate Mason, who was born March 8, 1833. Their first child, Isoline, arrived on October 23, 1852. Alice, their second child, was born on February 11, 1855. The Wilson farm home, located two miles south of Espyville in Crawford County, was owned by a man by the name of Dickey. Wilson worked for Dickey in the summer and for Jacob Foner, a wheelwright or wagon maker, the rest of the year. He learned the trade of wheelwright from Foner.

The Wilson family was a happy family. The young and kind parents talked a lot with each other and with their children. Cyrus would play the violin for entertainment many evenings. Listen to the mockingbird, listen to the mockingbird; the mockingbird is singing where she lies. Growing up was pleasant for the two young ladies.

Eventually, the Wilsons moved to a farm neighboring their grandmother’s when Dickey sold his farm and moved west. The girls played in the nearby stream and helped to care for the flock of sheep, their two cows, Rose and Lilly, and the pair of oxen, Beard and Spark. Mother and grandmother wove cloth and made the family’s clothing. The two girls walked a mile to a schoolhouse for the three-month summer term and the three-month winter term. Older students who lived nearby included their young aunt and uncle, Will and Margery, and a neighbor boy, John Schofield, who carried the two girls on their backs through the winter snowdrifts. When the war started, Schofield enlisted and was killed in an early battle.

The discovery of oil at Titusville would change some of the Wilson’s way of life. Cyrus moved his young family into the north wing of grandmother’s house nearby, and traveled to Corry, improving his wages by engaging in the manufacture of oil barrels. Cyrus and Catharine Wilson had a son, Wilford Murry, on January 24, 1860, only months after Cyrus had cast his vote for Abraham Lincoln.²⁴

As the prospect of war became a daily reality, things in the southwestern Crawford region began to change. A unit of home guards was formed from North and South Shenango men, with Cyrus Wilson soon serving the unit as its captain. Such local militias were part of a state militia. John W. Patton, the editor of the Crawford County Record, was active in another guard unit. He wrote to Captain Cyrus Wilson on April 22, 1862, asking for his support in the election for brigadier general of the Brigade.²⁵

The young men in the neighborhood began to enlist and soon word came back from the front about some of them, killed in action. Isoline or Lina Wilson, Cyrus Wilson’s daughter, described the women’s activity which ensued.

The women brought out their worn linen sheets and table cloths and began to pick lint and roll bandages. Many a time I was called from play to pick lint because Mother had pledged so many pounds of lint to be ready when the next box was sent forward to the hospital. She was the president of the Soldiers Aid Society.

The worn linen was cut into squares about two inches in diameter, Lina recalled. The threads were then all picked apart and used the same as cotton in dressings for wounds. Cotton, a product of the southern states, was of course, in short supply. Prices in general started to rise.

Muslin was $1 to $1.50 per yard; Calico $.75 to $1., and a dress had to be four or five yards around to accommodate the crinoline which every woman in those days wore. Sugar was .50 to .75 per pound; coffee out of reach of most people, for the soldiers had to have coffee. Such substitutes as corn, wheat, rye and potatoes were used. We like potato coffee the best. It was made by cutting raw potatoes into small cubes, drying and roasting them as we used to roast green coffee. They were then ground in a coffee mill. Grandmother was fortunate as she made her own maple sugar. It was the only time I ever knew her to be stingy with it was during the war.

Lina Wilson could read in her parent’s faces that things were becoming serious. Her father was on the verge of enlisting in the Union service. Her uncle, Wilford Eberhart, a former engineer, teacher, merchant, and railroad man and, since 1859, a Methodist minister, had stopped by on the way home from the annual conference of the church. Young Lina observed that her uncle was all stirred up . . . Someone at the conference had made an appeal for ministers to go to the front as chaplains. He asked Catharine’s sister, Harriet, if she would go to their Springboro, Crawford County, home and stay with his wife, and she agreed. He accepted a commission as the chaplain of the First Pennsylvania Artillery Reserve Corps and thus became the first of the extended family to go off to war.²⁶

Dyer and Lamartine Loomis

Connecticut and Rhode Island Yankees respectively, Dyer and Nancy Loomis had traveled from New England to buy land and cast their fortune in Erie County in 1796. Dyer Loomis established first a log house and then his farm on lands purchased from the Pennsylvania Population Company on the edge of North East borough, all this occurring at the end of the eighteenth century, just after peace with the Indians was secured.²⁷ Dyer and Nancy Wood Loomis built a large home a few years later at the corner of Loomis Street and Buffalo Road from the walnut lumber of trees cut while clearing fields on the farm. He was the first constable and deputy sheriff in what was then known as Upper and Lower Greenfield.

Dyer Loomis Jr. was born in the big house at Loomis Street and Buffalo Road in 1810, one of fifteen Loomis siblings. Young Dyer attended school in North East as he was growing up and, at age eighteen, taught school there, this pursuit lasting for four years. Dyer Loomis, in concert with six friends, founded the North East Temperance Society in 1830. He became a member of the Presbyterian Church in December 1831. He studied a term at the academy at Worthington, Ohio, and for a term at Milan, Ohio. His father’s health began to fail, and Dyer returned to Erie County to run the farm. His mother died in 1838. He courted and in 1839 married Eliza M., the daughter of another pioneer settler, Thomas Robinson, the township’s first justice of the peace [JP]. Dyer Sr. died in 1842. Dyer Jr. and Eliza had three children, Joseph W., George Lamartine, and Mary E. Dyer followed his father-in-law’s footsteps by being elected JP in 1845, an office he would hold for thirty-five years. Dyer was elected as an elder in the Presbyterian Church in 1849.

By the time the Civil War broke out, Dyer was well-established with the farm and other business ventures and, due to a fine personality, was well-respected in North East. He operated a brick manufacturing business, his brick used in numerous buildings in the area. His oldest son, Joseph W. Loomis, mustered into the 111th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the second three-year regiment to form at Erie, on November 25, 1861. Joseph was nineteen years old. Young Joseph’s letters home were vivid and served to raise his father’s patriotic fervor.

And so it was, at the age of fifty-two, that Dyer Loomis Jr., leading citizen of North East, came to raise a company for the 145th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers which was in the process of formation. He worked at it for two weeks in August 1862, filled Company C, and raised an additional twenty men for another company. Dyer Loomis was named captain of Company C; Lamartine, his eighteen-year-old son, was a private in the same company his father commanded. Dyer would be respected by his men because of his affable ways and his sense of humor.

Franklin Bingham

Jonathan and Mary Bingham and a half-dozen kids migrated to North East from New York State in 1848. They built their home on land west of Sixteen Mile Creek. Bingham rented a sawmill on the creek at Hamot Hollow. He and his sons cut the logs from their farm and turned them into lumber at the mill. After a number of years, the two older sons bought the farm from their father, and Jonathan and Mary and their younger son, Franklin, sought their fortune in the sunny South, purchasing a farm near the city of Richmond, Virginia.

It wasn’t long before the war broke out. The Binghams were an object of great suspicion among their neighbors, but not so much when conscription started, as young Franklin found himself apparently being recruited for the Southern army. Franklin, with the assistance of two of his young friends, plotted an escape from the clutches of the army to Erie County, traveling as a peddler. Spotted crossing the Mason-Dixon line, Franklin was arrested as a spy. The story he gave of his family’s move proved convincing, and he was released by the Northern authorities and allowed to continue his journey the long distance to Pennsylvania’s northwest,  . . . to North East, Pennsylvania. He visited his brothers and quickly made his decision to enlist in the 145th Regiment’s Company C, the unit being formed by Dyer Loomis.²⁸

Thomas Osborn Jr., John L. and John Hearn Osborn

James and Mary White Osborn married in Saint Michael’s Church in the parish of Shebbear on January 22, 1812, started their family in this southwestern realm of their native England which borders the English Channel. The financial times were getting rough for Devon farm workers and, by 1845, several of James and Mary Osborn’s older children had already established themselves in America. America had great appeal because of the opportunity it afforded to the young Osborn men [John, James, Jr., Thomas, and Charles] who had been apprenticed at the age of nine to neighboring farmers, working only for room and board.

James Jr., and his wife, Mary Ann, and their daughter, Ann, settled in McKean Township in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1839. Letters home encouraged other family members to move into the new world and in 1845, James Sr. and Mary and their younger children made the giant move, sailing from England’s shore on April 11, 1845, arriving in Canada, eventually making it to Erie where a great family reunion occurred. The Osborns settled in eastern McKean Township. Some of the Osborn families ended up in Summit Township when it was formed from parts of surrounding townships in 1853.

Thomas Osborn was baptized December 19, 1819, at St. Michael’s Church in Shebbear. By 1841, Thomas was working as a servant on a local farm owned by Hugh Brent. A fellow servant was Johanna Hearn. Thomas Osborn, age twenty-five, with his wife, Johanna Hearn, and two children had traveled with his parents to McKean Township where they settled on South Hill Road and proceeded to clear and develop a 120-acre farm. Thomas and Johanna eventually had eight children. Thomas Jr., being the second oldest, was born on October 12, 1844. Thomas Osborn Jr. enlisted in the 145th Regiment on July 14, 1862, eighteen years old and anxious for the cause. He enlisted at Camp Russell in Erie on July 14, 1862, and was mustered into Company B on August 26 as a private.

John L. Osborn was a grandson of James and Mary Osborn and a son of John and Martha Longman Osborn. It had been something over seventeen years since James and Mary Osborn had established their family in Erie County, and now their grandsons were off to fight a war for the common man of the Osborn’s new homeland. John L. Osborn was twenty years old when he enlisted on July 20 at Camp Russell in Erie, and was mustered into Captain Oliver’s Company B on August 26. John received his $25 bounty and $2 premium. His mother had given him a Bible to carry with him as he set off for war. Martha Longman Osborn’s heart was heavy as she thought of her young son going off to battle. She lovingly wrote inside John’s Bible,

This Bible belongs to John L. Osborne of Erie Co., Pa. It was presented to him by his Mother Martha Osborne If John should fall in battle or by Camp Disease will some kind Soldier Please return to the adress of John Osborne Erie Pa. and oblige

-Martha Osborne

John Hearn Osborn was the eldest son of Thomas and Johanna Hearn Osborn. He had enlisted at McKean with A. Grant, the recruiting officer, on August 20, 1862, to be mustered into Company B on the Twenty-sixth, 5’ 8", blue eyed, and brown haired. John had already begun his career as a farmer. His interests were with service to the cause as a teamster.²⁹

John and Theron Briggs

Francis and Betsey Briggs were both New York State natives. Francis was born there in 1784. Edwin was their third son among nine children, and was born in 1813 at the family farm at Stephentown, Rensallear County, New York. The Briggs were Baptists. In 1842, Edwin Briggs had married Harriet Hill, who had been born in Vermont. Edwin’s father, Francis, died in 1844; his mother, Betsey, lived until 1867. In 1849, Edwin Briggs was ordained as a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Edwin and Harriet Hill Briggs operated a 112-acre farm west of Waterford, Pennsylvania, which they had developed since their arrival in Erie County from New York in 1851. Although Edwin preached throughout his life, he preferred to raise his family at Waterford.

The Briggs had eight children. The two oldest boys, John and Theron, were old enough to provide great assistance on the