Pvt. Christopher Fritz was a tip of the spear clearing roads during the Atlanta Campaign. At Kennesaw Mountain, a descendant is paying tribute this week

John Fritz describe weapons during a  talk May 22 at Kennesaw Mountain (NPS photo)

John Fritz’s great-great-grandfather, Christopher, toted a rifle and a whole lot more during his service in the 105^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry -- namely, axes, hatchets, files, saws and augers.

Pvt. Fritz was likely picked for an Army of the Cumberland XX Corps detachment known as pioneers because he was a carpenter and dependable. During the Atlanta Campaign, the acting engineers followed Union skirmishers and made sure roads and bridges were in place or passable for the main army, among other duties.

They were, in essence, tips of the spear.

John Fritz, a reenactor from Chandler, Ariz., this week is making short presentations about Federal infantry weapons at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park near Atlanta. He has a pioneer chevron on his uniform sleeve as a tribute to his ancestor, who fought in many campaigns, including in June 1864 at Kolb’s Farm near Kennesaw Mountain.

“Those guys had their work cut out from them,” the electronic engineer told me over the phone, without first realizing the pun. “They were responsible for going ahead and clearing the roads and muddy creek crossings.”

Fritz, 61, will give talks at 1:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday near the park visitor center. (Photo left, National Park Service)

Fritz has volunteered at the park for the last 10 years during visits to Georgia to attend events. He just attended a reenactment in Resaca, Ga. (where the 105^th Illinois fought), and will attend an anniversary event Saturday at the Pickett’s Mill battlefield west of Kennesaw Mountain.

Fritz wanders the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield and talks with visitors about the life of an infantrymen and specifically his ancestor, who fought in North Georgia and at Peachtree Creek in Atlanta. “I feel people like to hear that connection.”

This week, he has set up a table displaying four guns the Federal army used.

The reenactor did not know of his great-great-grandfather’s service until his father died in 2011. “The family didn’t say anything about it, even my grandparents,” John Fritz told the Picket.

His father, Dale, was from Elgin, Illinois, and the family moved to Southern California when John was young.

He has since learned that Christopher Fritz, a native of Germany, enlisted early in the war while in his early 30s. He served in the 105th's Company G.

“I basically followed his whole route, pretty much traced his footsteps from Belvidere, Illinois, to Washington, DC,” where Christopher mustered out in June 1865, two weeks after the Grand Review of the Armies.

The soldier lost a thumb to gunfire while on guard duty for several months at Fort Negley in Nashville. The incident apparently was accidental, John Fritz says. Christopher received a pension about 15 years after the war

The veteran had a family in Belvidere and died in August 1903 at age 73. John helped arrange for a new Veterans Administration headstone to be placed at the grave.(Photo courtesy of John Fritz)

John is a member of the Scottsdale Civil War Roundtable in Arizona. He has been to several battlefields where the 105^th Illinois fought, including a couple in North Carolina.

“I just really got interested in learning about my ancestor and it turned into a project to honor him, learn more about him. I enjoy traveling. I had never been to the South.” 

Honoring 44th U.S. Colored Troops: From slaves to Union warriors

His clothing ragged, Hubbard D. Pryor made his way into Union lines in Tennessee in April 1864.

Pryor (left), an escaped slave from Polk County, Ga., quicky joined up with Company A, 44th U.S. Colored Troops. A photographer captured these images before and after he took on the blue Union uniform.

Perhaps because of the photography style of the day, or because of his ordeals, Pryor’s expression gives little evidence of the pride he surely felt.

The 44th, which was organized at Chattanooga, Tenn., and Rome and Dalton, Ga., eventually saw action in Georgia, one of the few African-American units to fight in the state.

Recruitment of colored regiments began in full force following the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863.

On Wednesday, a marker honoring the service of the 44th and other African-American units will be dedicated at Fort Hill School in Dalton. It was one of many regiments formed during the war, in which 200,000 African-Americans fought for the Union army and navy.

Former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young will make the keynote address.

The sign, sponsored by the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Battlefields Association and the Georgia Department of Economic Development, honors the 44th USCT, whose enlisted men were mostly former slaves.

By late summer 1864, the 44th USCT contained some 800 black enlisted men and was commanded by Col. Lewis Johnson, who was white, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

On Aug. 15, 1864, the regiment helped drive off a Confederate cavalry attack on the Western and Atlantic Railroad.

Approximately three-fourths of these black soldiers were doing garrison duty in Dalton on the morning of Oct. 13 when advance units of the 40,000-man Army of Tennessee, commanded by Confederate General John Bell Hood, converged unexpectedly upon the little village, cutting off all avenues of retreat.

According to the encyclopedia, Hood vowed to take no prisoners if the Union defenses were carried by assault and later added that he "could not restrain his men and would not if he could."

Although Johnson claimed that his black troops displayed the "greatest anxiety to fight," he surrendered to Hood and secured paroles for himself and the 150 or so other white troops.

“The black troops, by and large, did not want to surrender. They knew that capture for them would mean death or beatings or at the very least being returned to slavery,” Robert Jenkins, a member of the Dalton-Whitfield 150th Civil War Anniversary Committee, recently told the Daily Citizen in Dalton.

The regiment's 600 African-American enlisted men suffered a harsh fate. Some were re-enslaved, while others were sent to work on fortification projects in Alabama and Mississippi. Many ended the war as prisoners in Columbus and Griffin, Ga., where they were released during May 1865 in what one of them described as a "sick, broken down, naked, and starved" condition, the encyclopedia says.

Pvt. Hubbard Pryor survived the war and married in 1870. In 1890, he wrote to learn if he were eligible for a pension, but he died that August before he could apply.

The enduring photos of him are among the finest of tributes to African-Americans who fought for their country.

• Official report from Col. Johnson on Dalton
• African-Americans in non-combat roles

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