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Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

Halifax Bank Robbery – Charles W. Ryan

The murder victim of the Halifax bank robbery of 14 March 1901 was Charles W. Ryan.  Ryan was one of the three bank officials who were present in the bank at the time that Wesley Keiper and Henry Rowe entered the bank attempting to rob it.  In the gunfire that ensued, Charles W. Ryan was […]

Women and the Civil War (Part 5)

“Women and the Civil War” is an exhibit of photographs and stories of women who had family connections with soldiers of that war.  It was first displayed at the Gratz Fair in September 2013, where it received “first place” in a non-profit division.  Afterward, it was displayed in 2014 at the Williamtown-Williams Township Historical Society; […]

“It would have been better if Mr. Ryan had not seized the pistol….”

On 14 March 1901, a Civil War veteran, Charles W. Ryan was shot and killed during a robbery at the Halifax National Bank in Halifax, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, by one of the two men committing that robbery.  Ryan, who was serving as cashier at the bank, was also one of the bank’s founding shareholder members.  […]

Jacob Zerby of Elizabethville – Cavalryman and Blacksmith

Jacob Zerby, Civil war veteran of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry, died on 19 November 1913.  His death was reported in the Harrisburg Telegraph of the next day: Elizabethville — Jacob Zerby, a member of Sherman’s Cavalry during his famous march “to the sea,” died of the infirmities of old age yesterday after a year’s illness […]

John W. Simonton – President Judge, 12th Judicial District of Pennsylvania

John W. Simonton, the presiding judge at the trial of Keiper and Rowe, the two Halifax National Bank robbers and murderers of bank cashier and Civil War veteran Charles W. Ryan, was himself a Civil War veteran, having served as a Private in the 1st Pennsylvania Infantry (Militia of 1862), Company K.  The biography and […]