Two Civil War veterans buried in England will get official headstones

Two American Civil War veterans buried in Derby, England, are set to be given official US markers. Samuel Lander Hough, of the 2nd New Jersey Cavalry, and Henry Nathaniel McGuiness, of the 65th New York Infantry, are buried in Nottingham Road Cemetery. Both men moved back to England after the war and became friends. They never received appropriate headstones when they died but in October their graves will be marked like those at Arlington National Cemetery. – Read article

Riding the choppy waves: Opening of Sultana Disaster Museum in Arkansas delayed again as another $1.5 million must be raised to offset higher costs

A Harper's Weekly depiction of the April 1865 disaster in the Mississippi River (Library of Congress)

The availability and price of materials needed to create dynamic exhibits will further delay the opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., and require more fund-raising, backers said this week.

“The escalation in cost of exhibit fabrication is the major issue. There have also been change orders that were required but were unanticipated due to working on a building as old as the gym was,” said John Fogleman, president of the Sultana Historical Preservation Society.

Crews are building a more robust Sultana Disaster Museum than the current small location a few blocks away. It will be housed in the gymnasium of an old high school, with a couple additions.

Officials originally hoped the new site would open in April 2025, in conjunction with the 160^th anniversary of the Civil War maritime tragedy. That was not feasible and the timeline shifted to April 2026. Now the board of society has decided to push back the opening several months, into the fall, though no new date has been set.

Acclaimed Sultana historian and author Jerry Potter, a member of the board, said construction cost overruns also were cited in a July meeting. “We are seeking additional funding,” said Potter, adding he is “very confident” in the project’s outlook.

“We need to raise about $1 (million) to1.5 million. We will use every tool available to us to try and achieve our goal, including fundraising events, grants and direct donation requests,” Fogleman wrote the Picket on Aug. 20.

The museum is currently housed in small building a couple blocks away

Marion, close to where the side-wheeler Sultana exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River, will honor soldiers who died in the disaster and residents who helped save others who were plunged into the river in late April 1865.

About 1,200 passengers and crew perished. Hundreds of Federal soldiers, many recently freed from Confederate prisons, including Andersonville and Cahaba, were on their way home.

In mid-2024, the Sultana Historical Preservation Society brought on Jeff Kollath, former longtime executive director of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in nearb y Memphis, Tenn., as executive director.

Kollath sent an email recently to the founder of the Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends, explaining the new outlook.

“We have had some additional delays in getting the building completed, yes, but also we've had a funding opportunity come along that we will not know about until later this year,” wrote Kollath, according to a post on the group’s Facebook page. “If received, it would provide a significant influx of resources into the project and allow us to build the museum we all want with the bells, whistles and whatnot. While we are dismayed that we will not open on schedule, it gives us time to acquire the funding we need.”

The attraction will be housed in the town's old high school gym (Sultana Disaster Museum)

The Picket reached out to Fogleman and Kollath about this funding opportunity but had not received details as of this writing.

Norman Shaw of the descendants group told the Picket he predicted between 200 and 250 people would have come to Marion in April 2026 for their annual meeting.

“We were making plans for a special two-day 2026 Sultana reunion to be held the same weekend in Marion as the museum's opening in April 2026, but not to conflict with any plans being made by the museum's staff. The 2026 Sultana reunion has now been postponed to coincide with the weekend of the opening of the new museum in the fall of 2026, whenever that date is decided,” Shaw wrote.

He said he believes most members of the group are disappointed by the additional delay. But they likely believe they “can certainly wait another six months.”

The soft opening of the museum for public programming and regional events is still planned by the end of this year, officials say.

'Lady Victory' may have lost the battle with the wind, but the toppled statue won the war. Now she's back where she belongs in Mercer, Pa. -- standing tall

Two fallen figures, bent flagpole, broken musket, return of Lady Victory last week (Courtesy of Mercer County)

For about 125 years, motorists, shoppers and those doing business at the Mercer County courthouse in Pennsylvania have been greeted by “Lady Victory,” a statue of a woman solemnly placing a wreath on a kneeling soldier.

All was well until March 2023, when calamity struck.

Sixty mph-winds rushing through Western Pennsylvania toppled the Civil War statue dedicated in 1897, causing damage that reads like something from an NFL injured reserve list:

-- Soldier’s left knee blown out and he is bent backward; his right foot is separated from base plate;

-- Weapon broke off at soldier’s wrist, and butt stock of weapon is broken off base plate.

-- Lady Victory is bent backward and her feet suffered separation from base plate; (photo left, courtesy Mercer County)

-- Flag bent toward the front of the statue; eagle at the top of flagpole twisted to nearly a 90-degree angle;

-- Base bent and mangled and two side plates are broken loose;

Nearly two years after the top of the Civil War monument on the Mercer County courthouse square was knocked to the sidewalk, a crane late last week lifted the repaired statue back in place. (photo below, courtesy Mercer County)

The formal name of the monument, “Victory Crowning the Returned Soldier,” seemed especially appropriate for such an occasion.

“I know it’s kind of an iconic thing, that people were very upset when it was gone. We just had that pillar there for the last couple years,” Grace Reiter, executive director of the Mercer Area Chamber of Commerce, told TV station WKBN.

The return of Lady Victory is being welcomed in a county with significant history related to the Civil War.

There was strong abolitionist sentiment in the first half of the 19^th century, including support of the Underground Railroad, which spirited escaped and freed enslaved people to safety.

“Mercer became a significant stopping point for the slaves,” said the Grove City Area Historical Society. “The Pew family farm was a ‘station’ on the railway. It is believed Joseph Newton Pew and his siblings were personally involved in moving the escaped slaves.”

Numerous regiments drew from the area. That includes the 10^th Reserves, 57^th, 100^th, 140^th and the 145^th Pennsylvania infantry. 

“These regiments fought in the Eastern Theater, with the exception of the 100^th that fought in both Eastern and Western Theaters with the 9^th Corps,” said Chris Conti, senior planner with the Mercer County Regional Planning Commission.    

Among the town’s Civil War heroes was Medal of Honor recipient Lewis Brest, (below) who captured a Confederate flag near war’s end at Sailor’s Creek, Va.

Mercer-born soldier Martin J. Hawkins entered service in Ohio and received the medal for exhibiting great courage during the Andrews Raid in Georgia in 1862. He was among two dozen men who commandeered a Southern train.

Like hundreds of other communities – North and South – Mercer County erected its monument in the late 19^th century. (The county, between Pittsburgh and Erie, Pa., is on the border with Ohio. Youngstown is the closest large city.)

Brian Gruber, facility director for the county, told the Picket on Monday statues of two soldiers representing the cavalry and artillery were not damaged by the windstorm. They stand in the middle of the monument.

The memorial is called “Victory Crowning the Returned Soldier” but for short it is called “Lady Victory.” All three statues on the monument were built by W. H. Mullins of Salem, Ohio, said Gruber.

They were fashioned from stamped copper and bronze. 

McKay Lodge Art Conservation Laboratory of Oberlin, Ohio, performed the repairs and Alex Restoration and Masonry Repairs out of New Castle, Pa., placed the repaired status atop the base.

Early photos of the courthouse monument in the W.H. Mullins catalog

The cost was covered by insurance, Gruber told the Picket.

An August 2024 storm damaged a clock on the west side of the courthouse. "We had a severe storm roll through and the high winds snapped the clock in half, imploding it into the inside of the building," said Gruber. A replacement will be installed March 12.

About 110,000 people live in Mercer County, which has the active historical society.

“As far as our economy, similar to all counties in Western Pennsylvania, we have gone from rural/agricultural to industrial to ‘Rust Belt’ to attempting to diversify and redevelop,” said Conti. One of the largest outlet malls in the nation is located on Interstate 79 in southern Mercer County.

Outsiders, including those in the Pittsburgh area, come to Pymatuning Lake and Goddard state parks and the Shenango reservoir. Other attractions include Keystone Safari and the Avenue of 444 Flags (photo right, Wikipedia).

Reiter, with the Chamber of Commerce, said Mercer – which has about 2,000 residents – is loaded with small-town charm.

“We cherish the moments that give us that classic ‘Hallmark movie’ feeling, and lately, there's been a renewed energy -- a spark of rejuvenation and a strong desire to create meaningful community events and lasting memories,” she wrote to the Picket in an email.

“Our town has a unique character due to its proximity to the courthouse, which brings a strong presence of nonprofits and government-related businesses. However, there's also been an exciting wave of growth, with new retail shops opening on the square and businesses growing.” 

'Painting the Past': At Monocacy National Battlefield on Saturday, bring your inner artist and paint toy soldiers in any scheme you desire. (You have to sign up first)

The forecast Saturday for Monocacy National Battlefield in Maryland is chilly with a certainty of indoor fun for those who come to paint toy soldiers.

“Painting the Past” is scheduled for 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the park near Frederick, with a repeat at the same time on Feb. 8. Participants are asked to be 10 or above and register ahead of time, as rangers limit the sessions to 18 at a time. (See bottom of this post for details)

All paints, brushes and other supplies are provided and participants can take their creations home.

The sessions were launched as an annual winter program in 2018, park ranger Matt Borders told the Picket. The idea was to have an indoor program to draw people to the battlefield during quieter winter months.

“The program looks at the wide range of uniforms in the American Civil War and encourages guests to paint up a toy soldier in whatever sort of uniform they envision,” said Borders.

The park provides infantry soldiers, as it was the largest branch in the service.

There was a wide variety of color used for uniforms, including flamboyant pantaloons and short jackets worn by Zouaves.

“As for the program, we have had everything from standard blue and gray, bright red and camo green,” said Borders.

Guests have painted soldiers with U.S. Colored Troops and even a memorial soldier with both gray and blue elements to their uniform, representing the modern 29^th Division, the "Blue & Gray Division." 

“For those doing dedicated Federal and Confederate forces, it has always been pretty much evenly split.”

Borders will display replica uniforms (right) for attendees to see and feel and discuss aspects of camp life.

Participants also will learn about soldier painting as a hobby for both display and gaming. 

“We use the larger 54mm plastic models now. These are the sort of plastic soldiers you can find pretty much anywhere, including in our shop here at Monocacy National Battlefield,” said the ranger.

“This event does tend to attract a few more young people, but we have had many adults enjoy this program as well,” said Borders.

At Monocacy on July 9, 1864, outnumbered Federals delayed Confederates bent on taking Washington, D.C. By the time Rebel troops reached the capital’s outskirts, Union reinforcements had arrived. 

All photos Monocacy National Battlefield

To register for "Painting the Past," contact the park at mono_mail@nps.gov or 301-662-3515 to let the staff know how many participants will attend.

William Johnson was born enslaved, died a Civil War veteran. A Jacksonville consortium will revitalize a campus cemetery and restore his headstone amid larger effort to honor area USCT soldiers

New headstone, exterior of cemetery and old marker before it was stolen (Jacksonville University)'
Sketch of Black soldiers in Florida (State Library and Archives of Florida)

Perhaps they rest under a live oak or Sabal palm in an overgrown and forgotten plot, tucked away in what is now forest. A few may be beneath unmarked graves along a busy thoroughfare.

Regardless of the setting, a nonprofit in Jacksonville, Fla., is attempting to track down the graves of African-American soldiers – many of them formerly enslaved -- who served in a United States Colored Troops regiment during the Civil War.

The idea is to place government-approved headstones marking their service to country and, when possible, to rehabilitate abandoned USCT gravesites, “bringing these soldiers and their descendants the redemption they have so deserved.”

That initiative got some attention recently after Jacksonville University and the nonprofit, Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC) Jacksonville, announced plans to improve a fenced cemetery on campus that holds the remains of Cpl. William Johnson, Company F, 33^rd USCT.  A new VA-approved headstone, expected to be erected by Veterans Day, will replace one stolen after a university staffer rediscovered the neglected cemetery in the late 1980s.

In a larger effort, LISC Jacksonville, in partnership with the Digital Humanities Institute at the University of North Florida, will use pension and other records to apply for grave markers for other USCT members in the area. (At right, soldiers believed to the be in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later the 33rd USCT)

“After the Civil War, Black veterans and their families fought a completely different battle; however, this one was a true logomachy, a war of words,” says the introduction to a UNF page about the pensioners. “From pleading with Army officials that they were who they said they were to widows who wouldn’t quit, these pension records tell the stories of resilience in the face of institutionalized discrimination and racism.”

Jacksonville University emeritus professor of history Craig Buettinger notified LISC about the unmarked Johnson grave in 2022 when the organization launched its Operation Final Hours initiative. The aim is to help Duval County families receive and install headstones from the Department of Veteran Affairs for an unmarked burial site. About 25 families have been helped thus far, LISC says.

Kristopher Smith, community development program officer at LISC Jacksonville, told the Civil War Picket in an email there could be other African-American soldiers buried in the former Chaseville Cemetery, which predates Jacksonville University. Buettinger said “fragments suggest another USCT veteran.”

Smith (left) said in the coming weeks, LISC will try to track down the locations of other members of  Johnson’s Company F of the 33^rd USCT.

“I won't have a total number until after we complete our preliminary review in mid-June,” Smith said.

James Beasley, director of the UNF institute, told the Picket he is honored to help preserve the memory of the USCT pensioners and help students “engage in research that impacts the community. Students were able to take the skills that we teach in our classes and have it affect social change.”

From enslavement to serving the United States

Buettinger said Cpl. Johnson's “life is also mostly hidden from us, especially before his enlistment.”  

The soldier was likely born enslaved in Duval County and was believed to be a field hand. He traveled to the Union lines at Fernandina, enlisting at Fort Clinch with one of the first Black regiments to be raised after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. (Confederate and Union forces battled over Jacksonville throughout the war.)

The 1st South Carolina before it became the 33rd USCT (Library of Congress)

Johnson was believed to be about 21 when he and two friends enlisted with the 1^st South Carolina Colored Infantry in January 1863.

The 33^rd USCT was later formed from the 1^st South Carolina, according to the National Park Service. It served in South Carolina and took part in several expeditions. The regiment was in occupied Charleston at war’s end and was stationed there several months.

Pension records (below) show Johnson was shot in the hand and chest by a bushwhacker in October 1865, leaving him partially disabled. He was discharged the following year.

William Johnson's pension request details wounding (click to enlarge)

Johnson later lived in the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville and attended a church that was once located on Jacksonville University land. He married Fanny Jackson, who survived him by more than a decade after his 1892 passing. He was believed to be 51 when he died, Buettinger says.

“Because of his wounds, he could only do light gardening and he said he could only earn half of what an able-bodied worker earned,” said the professor.

Johnson has no living survivors. The exact location of his grave in the cemetery is not known.

Now is the time to replace a stone headstone

Established in 1934, Jacksonville University has five colleges, 11 schools and four institutes. Its 235-acre riverfront campus is “minutes from downtown and from beautiful area beaches.”

Dr. Craig Buettinger provides details about cemetery (Jacksonville University)

The last known burial at what was called Chaseville Cemetery was in about 1932. The burial ground served two African-American churches in Chaseville, a largely Black community on the northern end of Arlington. It’s possible Black Jacksonville police officers are interred there as well.

By 1962, the cemetery had fallen into neglect. There are no records, so officials don’t know how many graves are on the site and few, if any, remain marked.

“When it was rediscovered by JU staff member Jim Golden in 1989, only Johnson’s marble veteran’s headstone remained. Golden, himself a veteran, cleared up the grounds and held a ceremony for Johnson. Regrettably, that military headstone was later stolen,” Buettinger wrote in a summary about Johnson and the cemetery.

Buettinger and Ray Oldakowski, professor of geography, led the university effort to replace the headstone.

Artifacts recovered from the cemetery parcel (Jacksonville University)

The wooded site is on the edge of the campus, east of the Jacksonville University warehouse, near the Green Street gate, along University Boulevard. The cemetery is maintained by Jacksonville University.

Smith, with LISC Jacksonville, said it is too early to place cost estimates on the cemetery revitalization and the organization is working on funding sources.

The Haskell Company, which does design, engineering and construction work, is providing pro bono help to LISC and Jacksonville University through design and scoping documents. A company spokesman told the Picket it’s possible Haskell will eventually become involved in contracted work.

“Haskell will continue its pro bono work leading up to Nov 2024 when we anticipate having funding commitments and (a) final design in place for the cemetery,” said Smith. (At left, the current rendering for the overhaul of the campus cemetery, courtesy Jacksonville University)

JU President Tim Cost says the school is committed to honoring veterans. “It’s not only important to us, but especially to the Arlington community, to honor those who occupied this beautiful piece of land before us.”

Beasley, of UNF, said, “It’s been extremely inspiring to see how looking for information and conducting research has led to the physical manifestation of the headstone being created. No matter how small what you’re doing in the classroom is, it might have a large effect in the community,” Beasley added.

Buettinger believes the community and university have an opportunity to honor those buried on the campus.

“We must make sure that this cemetery is not again forgotten,” he said.

Book about underage Civil War soldiers -- and how they were unsuited and unprepared -- wins prestigious Lincoln prize

Co-authors of a book about underage soldiers in the Civil War and a 19^th-century society little concerned about their mental wellbeing have received the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant will be honored April 4 at the Harvard Club in New York City for “Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era” (Oxford University Press).

The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize is awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier or the Civil War era. The award includes a $50,000 prize and bronze replicas of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s life-sized bust, “Lincoln the Man.”

Clarke and Plant “determined that at least 10 percent of Union troops were under the legal age of 21 (later 18 with an act of Congress) -- far higher than the 1.6 percent estimated by previous historians,” wrote Dave Kindy in an article last year at History.net about the topic. Confederate troops had a similar proportion.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gettysburg College recently announced the award.

James G. Basker, president of the institute, said the book "is not only breakthrough history, it is a compelling and moving read, full of the stories of children, some as young as 11 or 12, serving in the Civil War, and the struggles of parents to reclaim or liberate their underage sons from armies into which they had enlisted.

The authors also found African American youths discovered that both Union and Confederate officers ignored their evident age when using them as conscripts or military laborers. 

Kindy wrote the work is “filled with accounts of teens on both sides who heroically answered the call of duty and the tragedy of so many who met their fate on the battlefield or succumbed to the rigors of a military life that was wholly unsuited to young minds and bodies.”

Clarke is an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney, Australia. Plant is a professor of history and an Academic Senate Distinguished Teacher at the University of California, San Diego.

Man up: At Andersonville and other Civil War prisons, captives resisted and coped in a number of ways. They asserted a new form of masculinity

Desperate to be free: Union prisoners tunneling (National Park Service)

Sgt. Maj. Robert H. Kellogg and his comrades in the 16^th Connecticut Infantry, like generations of American soldiers before them, believed the only manly death in war should occur on the battlefield.

But they would find their experience to be different as the Civil War wore on. The green regiment, chopped up at Antietam in September 1862, was captured in only its second engagement 19 months later in Plymouth, N.C.

Gone were the ideas of battlefield victories and fame. Kellogg realized their world had been turned upside down when the regiment surrendered in April 1864.

“On the morning of (April) 21st we awoke to new experiences. Instead of the calls to which we had -been wont to listen, and the labor we had been accustomed to perform, we were but passive beings, subject to the will of a conqueror,” Kellogg wrote in “Life and Death in Rebel Prisons,” published in March 1865 near war’s end.

The soldier could not have predicted the extreme privation and horror he would witness and endure at Andersonville prison in Georgia. He provided colorful details in his book, considered one of the best personal accounts about life and death at Andersonville.

Various photographs of Robert H. Kellogg (Museum of Connecticut History)

What Kellogg and soldiers from both sides experienced at prisons contributed to a change in the perception of 19^th-century masculinity, according to many scholars, including conflict archaeologist Ryan K. McNutt.

As McNutt pointed out in a paper and a lecture in November at Andersonville National Historic Site near Americus, the Victorian ideal of manliness was courage through sacrifice and action – a good death on the battlefield, should it come to that.

“The POW experience was the direct antithesis of this ideal: Capture was socially seen the same as surrender,” wrote McNutt (the men of the 16^th Connecticut said it was not their decision to surrender). “And the wartime experience of POWs in the American Civil War was passive, inactive – waiting. For exchange, for parole.”

The talk by the assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia Southern was titled “But Passive Beings, Subject to the Will of a Conquerer,” pulling the line from Kellogg’s book.

(At left, Father Peter Whalen prays for prisoners, Thomas O'Dea sketch, NPS)

As it turned out, men confined with Kellogg were not all that passive, McNutt told the November audience in the park visitor center. They resisted in a variety of ways, trying to survive while buttressing their sense of manliness.

Tries were usually futile. But they dreamed of escape

McNutt spoke about resistance at both Andersonville (Camp Sumter) and Camp Lawton, another Confederate prison site in Georgia. McNutt directs the GSU archaeological project at the latter site

Andersonville is the emblem of POW suffering at Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War. Of 45,000 men held there, 13,000 Union service members succumbed to horrible conditions. Rather than a quick battlefield death by a bullet or artillery round, they faced death on an hourly or daily occurrence. It could come at any time.

Themes of heroism through endurance, martyrdom and stoicism arose, McNutt argues.

Soldiers engaged in tunneling, trickery and barter with guards. They endured beatings and incidents of cruel treatment – all while trying to stand tall amid the misery.

“Attempting is just as important as being successful,” McNutt said of defiant acts. More than 80 tunnels were found at Andersonville. Only 30-40 men successfully escaped the prison, which held about 45,000 soldiers over its 13 months.

But that did not stop them from trying.

A National Park Service article about escape attempts includes a paragraph that gets at what McNutt and others have studied. By being taken captive, prisoners had to find other ways to “prove oneself” and disprove any notions of cowardice.

“As a result, many prisoners faced the choice of either returning home after the war to be received as failures, or to attempt a dangerous escape. Those prisoners at Andersonville and elsewhere who never successfully escaped would often invent escapes or escape attempts in order to validate themselves in the eyes of their society,” the NPS says. (At right, Thomas O'Dea drawing of escape attempts at Camp Sumter)

'Can this be hell?

Kellogg was 20 years old when he passed through the gates of Andersonville into the chaos and suffering.

"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror…before us were forms that had once been active and erect -- stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin…Many of our men exclaimed with earnestness, 'Can this be hell?'" the sergeant wrote

The soldier survived Andersonville and was transferred after a few months to  prisons in South Carolina paroled in November 1864. He was a changed man.

Robert Kellogg (right) with Oscar Wiel (Museum of Connecticut History)

Kellogg tried to resume his career path as a druggist but found himself disconnected and isolated, according to an article in Zocalo Public Square. When a local deacon died, he wrote in his diary that he felt numb: “Death seems to have lost its solemnity in me since ‘Andersonville.’”

He later moved to Ohio and published his book. Kellogg worked for years to ensure “thousands of brave men” were not forgotten. He died in 1932. The Connecticut Historical Society has his diaries, letters to his parents and military service records, among other items.

The Museum of Connecticut History in Hartford contains numerous photographs of Kellogg and some information about this life. (Special projects curator Christine Pittsley was helpful while I researched this post.)

One of only a handful of photographs of Andersonville (National Park Service)

Mary Gorman, author of a book about the Andersonville Raiders and a member of the Descendants of Andersonville Prison Facebook page, says Kellogg’s is probably the best Andersonville memoir, drawing from his vivid diary.

“If you want to get the truest picture of Andersonville, stick mostly with diaries and the memoirs published within the first 5 years” after the war, Gorman wrote when I asked followers of the Facebook page about Kellogg.

McNutt concluded his paper outlining the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by Civil War prisoners.

“The restructuring of masculine identities, the resistance both physical and symbolic, the creation of crafts and games, such as chess pieces found under the brick oven at Lawton, all served to combat the depression and mental effects of long confinement, a final deadly symptom of structural violence of the internment system, through action and engagement,” he wrote.

“Acts of resistance, effective or ineffective, were acts of survival.”

Fascinating finds in graves of 4 Confederates at Williamsburg

The four Confederate soldiers were buried almost side by side. One still had the bullet that killed him embedded in his spine. Another was buried with his toothbrush and porcelain snuff bottle. And another was buried with two gold coins. These were the latest discoveries to emerge from Colonial Williamsburg’s examination of a Civil War burial found last year at the historical site. – Washington Post article

Gettysburg to remember fallen from Civil War to Vietnam: Pliny White lingered a month after losing arm; Abel G. Peck fell early in battle

Pliny White (top) and Abel G. Peck are buried at the park cemetery

Some of America’s war heroes are famous, their names etched on buildings, remembered in the movies or painted on the transom of a Navy ship.

But the vast majority are lesser-known. This Memorial Day weekend, Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site will share a few of their stories. The program at Gettysburg National Cemetery will discuss the site's creation and highlight several service members, from the Civil War through the Vietnam. They were among 6,000 men and women laid to rest in the hallowed ground between 1863 and 1971.

The free, 90-minute guided program takes place on Saturday, May 27, at 6 pm. Meet at the Taneytown Road entrance of the cemetery.

Park spokesman Jason Martz told the Picket that two Civil War soldiers will be among those featured: Sgt. Abel G. Peck of the 24^th Michigan and Pvt. Pliny Fisk White of the 14^th Vermont. Peck is believed to be buried at the cemetery as unknown.

Here’s more about the two soldiers:

Pvt. Pliny Fisk White, 14^th Vermont, Addison County

When the war brought out in 1861, White was encouraged to stay home to take care of his widowed mother. But he decided to enlist in October 1862 for a nine-month term. After months stationed in the Washington, D.C., area, the regiment was attached to the Army of the Potomac.

While in the army, White frequently wrote home. His correspondence is excerpted from “Among the Things That Were: Letters of a Vermont Farm Family,” by Barbara Freund (2001)

White is buried in Vermont section (Gettysburg National Military Park

He wrote his sister in January 1863:

“After Virginia comes forth from her fiery trial purified it will be a good place to plant northern institutions. In looking at the devastation on every side occasioned by the war, one can but be reminded that the too long unheeded cry of oppressed is being amply avenged. As the tide of oppression commenced here & rolled southward so it may be yes must be with the merited retribution which slavery thus far has met.”

White wrote a letter to Lemira, believed to be his fiancée, on the day before his unit went to the front:

“The chances are very favorable that to-day we shall go into battle. Though it is said that we are to be held in reserve. I do not doubt but before the fight is over we shall be called. I am ready and willing to go into battle and can trust myself in the hands of Him who is our only trust. Though I do not fear, yet it may be if I go into battle this may be the last time I shall write to you. Already the firing has commenced but not briskly. I would like to see you, but as I cannot I thought just a word would be better than nothing. I love you as ever and think of you often, and if we meet no more on earth, I hope I shall be worthy to meet you where there will be no more parting words.”

On July 3, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 25-year-old was wounded by a shell fragment as his regiment engaged with a Florida brigade that was supporting Pickett's Charge.

“His shattered arm was amputated soon after the battle and Pliny was taken to a field hospital set up in Gettysburg's Lutheran Seminary,” the National Park Service says. “There the doctors and nurses believed Pliny would recover.”

Nearly a month after his wounding, on July 31, White wrote his sister again:

“Through the kindness of a good brother I will tell you how I am. I would not have you mourn on account of my condition for I feel reconciled to my lot, although it is hard. You know that we are taught in God’s Holy Word that ‘all things shall work together for the good of those that love God.’ I have excellent care and good nurses, who are doing all they can for me and take a deep interest in my recovery -- I have good food also. I’ve had some fever and my pulse is quite high yet.”

White did not recover and died on Aug. 5 at a field hospital set up in Gettysburg's Lutheran Seminary. He was later buried in the Vermont section of the national cemetery.

“Had he survived Gettysburg, he would have by that date been back at home with his family in Vermont, for the nine-month term of service of the 14th Vermont expired in late July and the regiment was mustered out of service,” says the NPS. (14th Vermont monument at Gettysburg, Wikipedia)

Sgt. Abel G. Peck, 24^th Michigan

The 24^th Michigan was organized in Detroit in August 1862 and became part of the famed Iron Brigade. The regiment had seen limited action until Gettysburg, but it had a real baptism of blood on those three July days.

At age 42, Abel Peck was an old soldier, by standards of the day. The farmer was a father of two girls and twice a widower. “There must have been something about Peck's bravery and integrity for he was soon after selected to carry the regimental flag of the 24th Michigan, a post of high and great honor in a Civil War regiment,” says the park service.

24th Michigan veterans at Gettysburg in 1889

Peck wrote his daughter Alice in August 1862, “With a heart beating high with emotion I attempt to address you. it becomes my duty to say to you that i have enrolled my self as a volunteer for our Country and its flag. pain full as it is I feel it to be my duty.”

And a letter to a few months later: “… if we have to fight I expect to have to take my part and if I fal you must not morn for I think I cam dooing my duty and you must think that the honor of having a Father die in the defense of his Country will make up for the loss you will sustane ..”

Peck was felled on July 1, early in the battle, as the Iron Brigade clashed with Confederate troops in pitched fighting. His commanding officer, Col. Henry Morrow, would later eulogize Peck, calling him a "brave and faithful soldier," and "a man greatly admired for his almost saintly character."

Shot through by twenty-three bullets and its staff splintered, the flag was reduced to a tatter seen here, according to the Michigan History Center. The regiment fulfilled its vow to protect the banner: the flag was never surrendered. (At left, a small piece of the flag, GNMP)

Peck was buried where he fell, but when the color bearer was reinterred at the national cemetery, his remains were not identified and he is likely marked as unknown.

The 24^th Michigan’s casualties at Gettysburg were staggering: It went into action with 496 officers and men. Some 89 were killed or mortally wounded, 218 wounded and 56 captured, for a total of 363 casualties. Five color bearers were killed. But the regiment helped buy time for Union forces to occupy the vital Cemetery Ridge.