History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 25

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340

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Roster, Field and Stuff .- Henry J. Madill, colonel, September 5,

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

1862; brevet brigadier-general, December 2, 1864; brevet major general, March 13, 1865; wounded at Petersburg, April 2, 1865.

Guy H. Watkins, lieutenant-colonel, August 22, 1862; promoted from captain ; wounded and captured at Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863; killed at Petersburg, June 18, 1864.

Casper W. Tyler, promoted from captain to major June 22, 1864 ; to lieutenant-colonel July 4, 1864; discharged on surgeon's certificate March 1, 1865.

Joseph H. Horton, lieutenant-colonel, promoted from captain March 18, 1865. Israel P. Spalding, promoted from captain to major December 10, 1862; died July 28, of wounds received July 2 at Get- tysburg. Charles Mercur, promoted from captain to major February 28, 1865. Daniel W. Searle, adjutant, wounded July 2 at Gettysburg ; discharged on surgeon's certificate June 2, 1864. Elisha Brainard, adjutant, promoted July 1, 1864. Robert W. Torrey, quartermaster, discharged on certificate October 24, 1864. Charles D. Cash, quarter- master, promoted from sergeant major June 24, 1865.

William Church, surgeon, promoted from assistant surgeon One Hundred and Tenth P.V., September 2, 1862; discharged September 22, 1864. Fred C. Dennison, surgeon, promoted December 3, 1864. Ezra P. Allen, assistant-surgeon, promoted to surgeon of the Eighty- third P. V. December 13, 1862. John W. Thompson, assistant- surgeon, died July 4, 1864. Wellington G. Beyerle, assistant- surgeon, promoted December 27, 1864. David Craft, chaplain, dis- charged on surgeon's certificate February 11, 1863. Andrew Barr, chaplain, died at Coatsville, Pa., April 11, 1864. Lilburn J. Rob- bins, sergeant-major. Henry U. Jones, promoted to first lieutenant Company B, December 5, 1863. Joseph G. Fell, sergeant-major, died of wounds received at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863. Martin O. Codding, quartermaster-sergeant, second lieutenant Company C, April 19, 1865. C. J. Estabrook, commissary-sergeant, and Isaac S. Clark, commissary- sergeant. Isaac S. Clark, hospital steward ; Michael G. Hill and Gil- bert B. Stewart, musicians.

Company A .-- Capt. George W. Jackson, resigned October 31, 1862. Capt. Joseph H. Horton, wounded at Spottsylvania C. H., May 12, 1864 ; promoted to lieutenant-colonel March 18, 1865. Capt. Joseph H. Hurst, commissioned April 1, 1865, wounded at Chancel- lorsville May 3, 1363; at Spottsylvania C. H. May 12, 1864. First Lieut. James W. Anderson, commissioned April 22, 1865. Second Lieut. William T. Horton, discharged on surgeon's certificate Decem- ber 22, 1862. Second Lieut. James Van Auken, killed at Morris Farm, Va., November 27, 1863.

Company B .- Capt. Guy H. Watkins [record given above]. Capt. William T. Davies (Lieutenant-Governor), promoted September 1, 1862; discharged on surgeon's certificate May 23, 1863. Capt. Benj. M. Peck (President Judge), commissioned captain December 5, 1863 ; wounded at Chancellorsville May 3, 1863. First Lieut. Henry Keeler, discharged on surgeon's certificate February 9, 1863. Henry U. Jones, first lieutenant, commissioned December 5, 1863.

Company C .- Capt. Abraham J. Swart, killed at Chancellorsville

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

May 3, 1863. Capt. William J. Cole, wounded at Chancellorsville May 3, 1863 ; promoted to captain December, 5, 1863; discharged on surgeon's certificate June 27, 1864. Capt. George W. Kilmer, pro- moted from sergeant to first lieutenant December 5, 1863; to captain August 8, 1864 ; prisoner from October 27, 1864, to April 14, 1865. Second lieutenant, Harry G. Goff.

Company D .- Capt. Isaac A. Park, discharged April 22, 1863. Capt. Thomas Ryon, promoted December 26, 1863; discharged August 6, 1864. Capt. Marcus E. Warner, promoted to captain December 20, 1864. First Lieut. Henry J. Hudson, promoted Febru- ary 14, 1865. Second Lieut. Morgan Lewis, promoted August 23, 1862; discharged February 10, 1863.

Company E .- Capt. Joseph B. Reeve; resigned December 10, 1862. Capt. John F. Clark; resigned June 16, 1864. Capt. Mason Long, promoted to Captain December 20, 1864. First Lieut. Stephen Evans; resigned November 3, 1863. First Lieut. John M. Jackson, promoted January 24, 1865; wounded at Chancellorsville May 3, 1863. Second Lieut. George C. Page; resigned December 29, 1862.

Company I .-- Capt. Israel P. Spalding; promoted to major, December 10, 1862. Capt. Edwin A. Spalding; wounded at Chancel- lorsville, May 3, 1863, and at Wilderness, May 5, 1864. Capt. John G. Brown, promoted captain, January 24, 1865; wounded at Gettys- burg, July 2, 1863. First Lieut. Charles Mercur; transferred to Company K, January 5, 1863. First Lieut. John S. Frink, promoted January 24, 1865.

Company K .- Capt. Jason K. Wright, resigned December 2, 1862. Capt. Charles Mercur, promoted to major February 28, 1865. First Lieut. Henry R. Dunham, discharged on surgeon's certificate Decem- ber 9, 1862. First Lieut. Beebe Jerould, promoted December 5, 1863. Second Lieut. John S. Diefenbach, died October 11, 1862.

Seventeeth Cavalry Regiment .- Under the President's call of July 2, 1862, Pennsylvania was required to furnish three cavalry regiments. This was one of those regiments organized October 18, 1862.

Company D. This was from Bradford and Susquehanna counties. Capt. Charles Ames, resigned May 22, 1863; Capt. Warren F. Siinrall. First Lieut. Charles F. Willard ; succeeded by Johnson Rogers. Second Lieut. Stanley M. Mitchell.

One Hundred and Seventy-first Regiment .- (Nine months) drafted militia, was called into service in 1862. Four companies, B, C, D and G were mostly from Bradford county. Theophilus Humphrey, of Brad- ford, was made lieutenant-colonel. The regiment was in no important engagement ; was most of the time in North Carolina.

Company B .- Capt. Ulysses E. Horton. First Lieut. William Jen- ings. Second Lieut. William J. Brown.

Company C .- Capt. William B. Hall, resigned. Capt. C. E. Wood, promoted April 11, 1863. . First Lieut. Sanderson P. Stacey. Second Lieut. James H. Van Ness.

Company D .- Capt. Minier H. Hinman. First Lieut. Hiram A. Black. Second Lieut. Loomis B. Camp.

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

Company G .--- Capt. Albert Judson, First Lieut. Samuel C. Robb, Second Lieut. Samuel B. Pettingell.

Two Hundred and Seventh Regiment .- One year's service, organized September 8, 1864. No separate company was organized from Brad- ford county, but there were men from here in companies B, E and G.

Militia of 1862 .- The threatened invasion of the State caused the Governor to call out all the able-bodied men to arm and prepare for defense. September 10 the invaders appeared in Maryland. Every man was to prepare to march at an hour's notice. The notice to report at once came to Bradford county on the 10th, and on Monday follow- ing four full companies were on their way to Harrisburg, as follows : Capt. E. O. Goodrich's from Towanda, Capt. J.W. Evans' from Athens, Capt. Gorham's from Wyalusing and Pike, and Capt. Daniel Wilcox's from Canton. In the meantime Gen. Mcclellan had been recalled to the command, and fought the battle of Antietam, but the emer- gency passed and the men returned to their homes. These soldiers were out only ten days.

Emergency Men, 1863 .- In June, 1863, Lee commenced his invasion that culminated and ended with the battle of Gettysburg July 1, 2 and 3. The Government called for 50,000 men from Pennsylvania to serve six months unless sooner discharged. A company of the Twenty- sixth Regiment, under this call, Capt. Warner H. Carnochan, was enlisted at Troy, and at once saw severe service in the preliminary skirmishes around Gettysburg. Capt. Carnochan and a part of his men were captured.

In the Thirtieth Regiment was Capt. S. H. Newman's company, of Canton. They encountered no serious service.

Governor's Call .- On the 30th of June, 1863, Gov. Curtin issued a supplemental call for 60,000 additional men-ninety days. Under this call two companies were raised in Bradford county, and assigned to the Thirty-fifth Regiment.

This is the brief outline of the organization of the Bradford county men in the Civil War; the beginning of the sacrifice in behalf of the Union. Their record in the field, in sieges and battles, is that of the war from the first to the end. Like every county in the Union the peo- ple were all deeply in the sacrifice ; home ties were sundered and lives were the sacrifice. On both sides nearly four million of men were in some way identified with the army in the field, while each man left behind him anxious and bruised hearts, whose morning and evening prayers went out in behalf of " the boys" at the front. When the war- burst came it sent its terrible thrill to every hamlet and cross-roads in the land-meetings assembled in every county, at every church and school-house. While men were frenzied with the ringing call to arms, but few to any extent realized the situation in its full force, the unthinking regarded it as a mere passing storm, and welcomed it as a purifier of the elements, and going to the war more as a recreation for a few days than anything very serious. There were thousands of men, North and South, who at the preceding election had deliberately voted with the full knowledge that they were casting a ballot for war ; their philosophy was, and you can yet hear this said, that there were irrecon-

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cilable differences between the sections of the Union and that war only could settle it permanently; that as war was inevitable, then the sooner it came the better. "It had to be" is to this day the judgment of many. The only people who were agreed in all the preliminaries before the rise of the curtain were the Fire Eaters of the South and the High Law fanatics of the North. Both hated the Constitution as our great Fathers made it. One because it recognized African slavery ; the other because it bound them to the section where ran the many parallel lines of the Underground Railroad. The intelligent Abolitionist believed that war was the only destroyer of the institu- tion of slavery, and he was consistently for war; the slaveholder believed that with a separation of the sections a foreign nation would not encourage the theft of his slave property ; and the average South- ern man, deep in his soul, believed that the loss of the slaves would be the doom of the South; they argued that the whole South and its splendid wealth and prosperity was based on slave labor, and with that gone, as their country was unsuited to white labor, as they supposed, it must lapse into a primitive waste and wilderness. The same con- tingent of demagogues, North and South, were playing their selfish part in the preliminaries of the life-and-death struggle. A chronic average office-seeker is always for his own selfish interests first, last and always. The liberality of these men in dispensing solicitude in behalf of hoped- for-voters pales the whole world's Christian charity. Jeff Davis wasa characteristic American demagogue-that is all. The only place he deserves in history is silent contempt ; in the great highway of civili- zation he was a mere toad or wart, and while called a statesman was as ignorant of that science as a Choctaw Indian ; he should be written as a specimen of " great war-times-men," who are great solely because they were figureheads when many of their betters were cutting each other's throats. Had the South now its coveted separation, all the same, their chieftan would have been a cheap fraud -- a dirty fetich and nothing more. This is not kicking the dead lion, because it was a ground-hog and not a lion by any means. North and South the cheap demagogue was a part of the play ; generally he was the one-eyed fiddler in the dance of death, and he piped his soulful strains to the pea- nut gallery ; it was the rarest accident when he was found at the front with a musket ; but behind the mountains, firing his jaw, he was not only brave but a terror-an animal this country has coddled and bred until they can show blinding pedigrees. The thoroughbred demagogue and the man who sells his vote for a drink are Siamese twins-they are for or against war, drouthi or chinch bugs as it happens; great in loud pretensions, and the vilest of snobs by instinct and education.

As related in the opening of this chapter, when the direful news came of Fort Sumter the people spontaneously came together to hear war speeches. A great county meeting. was held in Towanda in 1862 ; the hey-day of war had now passed away, and bitter tears coursed their way down the cheeks of many of the mothers and wives of the land. The battle and mob rout of Bull Run had passed into history, and the black war-cloud lowered over the North. At this meeting the one purpose was to raise recruits for the army. It was plain that

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

there were hundreds of men eager to go and would go if only there was a way to keep their families from starving in their absence. The county had no ready money on hand, nor was there any provision in the law to provide for or give it. At this meeting the County Com- missioners in conjunction with the Associate Court Judges were appealed to, to act and take the chances on the Legislature approving their action. They agreed to borrow the money, and certain citizens gave them an indemnity note agreeing to pay the money back to the county if the Legislature refused to legalize their action. In this way every volunteer was paid $25 when enlisting out of the $20,500 ad- vanced by citizens, as follows: B. S. Russell & Co., $12,500; David Wilmot, $500; Pomeroy Bros., $5,000; M. C. Mercur, $500; John Passmore, $500; John Adams, $500; George Landon,. $500; N. N. Betts, $500. Each one of the Bradford men in the One Hundred and Forty-first Regiment was paid $25 from this fund. The payments to soldiers were as follows : 1861, $2,459.99 ; 1862, $900.37; 1863, $17,- 981.44; 1864, $1,555; 1865, $673.30 ; 1866, $450; 1868, $25; 1870, $25, and 1876, $50-total, $22,118.10.

There are now within the county, according to official returns, 2,457 old soldiers and soldiers' widows. The once active mailed millions are slowly fading away, gathering beyond for the last roll call.

CHAPTER XIII.

INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS IN THE COUNTY.

INTRODUCTORY - REPUBLICAN-FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICAN-DEMO- CRATS-POLITICAL QUESTIONS-NEWSPAPER AND OTHER ADVANCE- MENTS-MISCELLANEOUS.

"-A few agree To call it freedom when themselves are free."

A MERE compilation of the records is not exactly what is at this day required of even the local historian. The genealogies, tradi- tions and recorded facts are interesting and valuable matter, and deserve the most careful preservation. These things can not be too full and explicit. Of themselves, however, they are not true history, but rather materials in the hands of the historian. The truth is real history in an account of cause and effect; the growth and spread of new ideas, cus- toms, habits and laws; the why and wherefore of the movements of men's minds. The first essential in the hunt for cause and effect, tracing them with any certainty, is time or permanency in their appli- cation ; the next important item is numbers or quantity. The great law of averages must have full play, and this beautiful and unvarying principle can have no application to one or two or three, or scarcely any to one hundred or one thousand, instances or persons. Thus in a

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HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY.

large number of people, existing socially and politically, for a long time as a distinct body, there is necessarily a true science in the study of all their movements. This real history is the true philosophy of the movements of the human mind; too abstruse often to be per- ceived by even the ablest historian, while the mere annalist is content to simply give dates and records, with no attention whatever to the deeper truths of the study. Yet a family, even an individual, may be truly historical. The permanent effects of a single person's life may be great, either for good or bad, and thus he may give influences that shape history, but the effects even here flow out upon the many, and in the long lapse of years. It is a modern growth, the idea that history deals mostly with things that are somewhat permanent in their effects, and passes lightly by those things, however notable or notorious in their time, that are but transient in their influences. A great battle may mean very little, compared to Fulton's steamboat; the battle of Waterloo was as the death of a house fly to the discovery of Columbus. This, like all thoughts that are new, has had a slow growth; it has yet to dawn upon the average mind, but that it will come in time in all its fullness need not be doubted ; that pretty much all history is a true account of the struggle in the world that has gone on and will go on between right and wrong-truth and error-ignorance and knowledge ; that rather frightful picture of the conditions of mankind given us by the most modern schools of philosophy wherein men are caged beasts for- ever fighting and struggling and only " the fittest survive " is most true. After all, this is but a new form of expressing the old truth that right and wrong must be at perpetual war, and in that war truth is always in the minority, and ignorance and wrong are not only in an overwhelming majority, but are panoplied in power, and are supreme and pitiless. Ignorant force organizes armies and levies war, and to-day it has made of Europe a vast military encampment; and cruel, cruel Russia has liberated its millions of serfs, and made many more millions of its people political prisoners, suspects, and the most wretched of sufferers. The world's scandal, its unspeakable monster to-day, is Russia, religious Russia, educated Russia and its public and compulsory schools, its freed serfs and its Kremlin and cathedrals and Siberia. The concensus of mankind should rise up and blot out that infernal despotism. It is a wrong that has slowly grown and fattened on its cruelties; and now that the usurper can usurp no farther, like all wrong it reacts as well on the government itself as it has for centuries inflicted its cruelties on the people. Yet " truth is mighty and will prevail," but there need be no reference to the long, long time that must elapse before there comes about any noticeable "pre- vailing" of limping and slow-going truth or justice. Another

form of stating this "struggle," is that of "precedent and doubt." Every oppressor and every usurper clings to precedent, while every movement toward liberty is preceded by doubts as to the wisdom of precedent. Hence, we find the tyrant always vigorously suppress- ing doubt-outlawing and turning loose upon it his armed police, and in the end his army, where there are no William Tells when ordered to

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fire. The Czar a prisoner-a miserable nightmare, trembling in fear, immured in the great palace walls, driven by his phantoms to madness ; his condition might call down the pity of his dumb brutes ; and at the other end are his miserable subjects in the mines, in the gloomy iron casements, driven through the winter's storm where men, women and children-the most pitiful sight beneath the bending heavens-are shot down or bayoneted or knouted, and by the long wayside are dying and freezing. Here is wrong and usurpation ripened to the full, and commencing with the Czar and running through all classes is but an unending horror. This is all the dreadful handiwork of ignorant ambition-grasping for power, greed for supposed greatness, ambition to be the great rulers, has in time brought these Dead Sea apples to both King and subject-the whole group is the progeny of ignorance- following blindly precedent and rigorously suppressing doubt. The people are " my children ;" heaven pity them ! that " my government must care for and protect." The King " is divinely appointed to rule over us-the King can do no wrong," is the fatuous education of the people, of every people that have groaned under the most shocking tyrannies. To this fatality both King and subject are educated. A remarkable feature of the development of tyranny, is that both ruler and subject are educated in the faith that it all comes of God, and. could not and should not be otherwise; that any doubt, therefore, is

blasphemy added to treason. Hence, to-day, if the best man in the world was made the Czar of all the Russias, he would be helpless to relieve his suffering people, who have been so long trained and educated, out of all conception of man's natural rights to liberty and justice.

The war of the Colonies for Independence-that long and cruel war -commenced in the unconscious struggle of the people for human rights against the divine order of kings -- the infallible rulers, and a standing army. There are abundant evidences that our noble fathers had but little idea of the falseness of the doctrine of the divinity of kings, in the early stages of the struggle with the mother country. We can have but little conception, even now, how the fate of mankind hung trembling in the balance at that awful moment when the "crown was offered Washington." Here was the most eventful moment in all history. Washington and Franklin, supplemented by Jefferson, gave the world practically the sublime truth that man can best care for him- self; that the ruler is not only fallible, but is the servant of those who appoint him, and must render to his masters an account of his steward- ship. We can now know that there was but a little remnant of all those who buckled on their armor and offered their lives as a sacrifice for their country, who clearly perceived that it was in fact a struggle of the people against the "divine order." They mostly, no doubt, demanded "no taxation without representation," and, had the king granted this, results might have been radically different. Long pre- ceding circumstances had tended to educate the colonists away from that fatal king-school. They had been driven across the face of the world by religious persecution, when the king was heaven's vicegerent on earth, to kill and crush out heresy. The State and the Church were one, and dissent from either by so much as a look or wink, a breath or

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a secret thought, even, was to call down upon the victim the cruelest conceivable torture and death; the world was full of the church mili- tant, but was without charity and without mercy, and civilization was in a condition of petrifaction that most surely could never have advanced one jot or tittle without the timely revolt of the American Colonies, where men fought and died for liberty-blessed liberty ! the supremest thing in this world, whose chief enemy always has been the ruler-the governing power, who has started out on the false and malignant motto : The king can do no wrong, the people can do no right. The truth is the people of themselves can do no wrong; if wrong comes from them, it is done through their representative rulers always, and this has been preceded by a long course of mis-education enforced among the people.

These preliminary explanations are deemed necessary before enter- ing upon the consideration of the fact in American history that, when our fathers had emerged from the long war, and their independence had been granted, and they were confronted with the greater task of founding a democracy, there should arise two political parties-the Republicans and Federalists. In Bradford county, at the very begin- ning of its existence as a civil body, these parties were called Repub- lican-Federalists and Republican-Democrats.

In forming our government they had nearly literally transplanted the English government, simply leaving out a king and giving the people the right to choose their ruler for stated periods. The departure from the mother government was very slight, but little as it was the sole question between the two political organizations arose over the slight change there was in the fundamentals of government between the new democracy and the old monarchy. The seed, of course, of this division among the people had come from the first day of the rebellion against King George. There were many good people who loyally opposed the movement in its inception, and continued their opposition during life. The honest Tory would have, of course, been more easily recon- ciled to his new surroundings had we crowned our own king at the end of the war, and gone on in the adoration of the national fetich-the good King. This sentiment was modified into one of eventual striving, for as near an approach as possible to the old forms of government. The opposite of this was that broader idea that regards the hereditary king with contempt and anchored in the faith that the people were every- thing. In short, they held that the people, if allowed to freely ex- press themselves, knew as well or better what they wanted for their own good, than could any born king. Both believed in the necessity of a head, a controlling, ruling power in government. These questions among parties had received the modifications of the years that consti- tute nearly the life-time of a generation. When Bradford county was formed the original Tories had become wild Federalists, and the Repub- lican-Democrats had fed upon the bold democracy of Jefferson and learned to more and more have faith in the people-which, after all, was but another name for a greater and a growing love of liberty. In- deed, it is highly probable that by the time of the first action in Bradford county, as soon as this was after the establishment of our

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History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections, Part 25

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.) Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Bradsby, H. C. (Henry C.)
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago, S. B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1340