Just about everyone in the Lykens Valley area of Pennsylvania knows the story of Gratz baseball star Carl Scheib and his quick ascent to the big leagues, becoming the youngest person ever signed to a American League baseball contract when he joined the Philadelphia Athletics at the age of 16 during the 1940s. Now a […]
The number of Jews who served in Civil War military units is in some dispute, but most authorities contend that it was somewhere around 10,000 soldiers and sailors. Several attempts have been made to identify specific veterans with the first comprehensive study published in 1895. That 1895 study by Simon Wolf named 7038 veterans […]
A listing of the November 2010 posts on The Civil War Blog with direct links: Gratz Area Veterans Monument Lykens Township Veterans Monument Enders Family Civil War Veterans Hoffman Family Civil War Veterans – Part 1 of 2 Hoffman Family Civil War Veterans – Part 2 of 2 Rebecca Gratz & 19th Century America Thanksgiving […]
Alfred Mordecai (1804-1887) Alfred Mordecai (1804-1887) was born into a Jewish family in North Carolina. His father Jacob was a pioneer educator. Because Alfred was a good student, he was admitted to West Point in 1819 and four years later graduated at the top of his class. After a stint as a teacher at West […]
(Part 4 of 4). Just after 10 March 1864, Ann Ellen [Carson] Gratz received a third piece of bad news in just more than two years. The mother’s pension she had requested for her son John C. Gratz‘s Civil War service was rejected. Previously, she had been notified of her son’s death due to fever […]
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