Civil War Blog

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on November 7, 2013

John Henry Keen, also known as Henry Keen or John H. Keen, died in Williamstown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, on 13 April 1910.

Previously on this blog, a brief biographical sketch of John Henry Keen was given:

John Henry Keen (1837-1910).  John first served in the 173rd Pennsylvania Infantry, Company K, as a Private.  He mustered in on 3 November 1862 and mustered out 18 August 1863.  During this term of service he got bitten by a horse near Richmond, Virginia.  He then joined the 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Company D, as a Private, and served from 12 February 1864 through 13 August 1865.  It must be noted that there are two persons named John Keen who lived in Wiconisco at about the same time.  They were about the same age and their records may be co-mingled.  The one of this burial is believed to the one who was not the blacksmith.  There are records of a John Keen marriage to Catherine Snodgrass and records of a John Keen marriage to Ann M. Poticher. This John Keen worked as an outside laborer at the mines.

Since that information was posted some facts have come to light which clarify some of the confusion evident in that sketch. Four newspaper entries give the following:

From the Harrisburg Patriot of 15 April 1910:

Henry Keen, a life-long resident of this place [Williamstown] and a veteran of the Civil War, died last evening shortly after six o’clock after a lingering illness.  Chester Post G.A.R. will have charge of the funeral.

From the Harrisburg Patriot of 20 April 1910:

Williamstown – The funeral of Henry Keen took place from his home on Saturday forenoon.  His remains were interred in the Wiconisco Cemetery.  The funeral was in charge of the Chester Post, G.A.R.  Among the other organizations were the members of the [Women’s] Relief Corps and the General J. P. S. Gobin Camp, Sons of Veterans.  A delegation of the Patriotic Sons of America formed the firing squad.  Rev. W. N. Boyer officiated.  Mr. Keen was a member of the One Hundred and Seventy-Third regiment [173rd Pennsylvania Infantry] , and after his enlistment expired re-enlisted in a cavalry company.

From the Lykens Standard, 22 April 1910:

HENRY KEEN

Henry Keen of Williamstown died at 8 p.m. on Wednesday last week of paralysis age 72 years.  He was a Civil War veteran of Company D, 11^th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry from 14 February 1864 to 13 August 1865, discharged in Richmond, Virginia.  He was twice married.  Two daughter of the first wife survive:  Mrs. James Miller and Mrs. Charles Shell.  One brother William Keen of Dayton, one sister Mrs. Mary Kellman of Tower City.  He married Ann Poticher, 22 March 1897, and she and these children survive:  Katie Keen, Rosie Keen, Ellen Keen, Margaret Keen, Joseph Keen and John Keen.  He was buried in Wiconisco.

Finally, from the Harrisburg Patriot, 12 May 1910:

Arrangements are being made to send the children of the late Henry Keen to the Soldiers’ Orphan Home.  This has been done chiefly through the efforts of the members of the Grand Army of the Republic.

While some things are clarified by these articles – for one, that Ann Poticher was the second wife of Henry Keen and they were married in 1897 – other things are now more confused.  Of the names of the children that appear in the obituary, there are only two matches with names that appear in Ancestry.com family trees – Kate and Joseph.  It appears from those family trees that Kate was a child of the first marriage (born about 1860) and Joseph (born about 1897), a child of the marriage with Ann.  New information is that the children (assuming to be those under 16) were sent to the Soldiers’ Orphan Home – but which children and of which wife?

The Pension Index Card (shown above) is from Ancestry.com.  It shows that John H. Keen applied for an invalid pension in 1886, which (if the information on the Ancestry.com family trees is correct, is about 5 years before his first wife died – and eleven years before his second marriage).  The pension was awarded and presumably was collected until his death in 1910.  Noticeably absent from the Pension Index Card is any reference to a widow’s application or minor’s application – surprising because copies of papers from the pension file do indicate that Ann [Poticher] Keen did apply.  However, she was rejected.

In the pension file there is a statement of how Henry Keen received his disability:

[H]e was disabled by a strain in the back resulting from the bite of a horse, near Richmond, Va., latter part of February or beginning of March 1865.

Henry Keen did receive a pension; after he died, Ann Nora [Poticher] Keen submitted her paperwork.  She proved she was married to Henry Keen, but she could not prove anything about the previous marriage of Henry Keen although she stated the date of death of Henry’s first wife.

Her marriage to Henry Keen had taken place on 22 March 1897 in Williamstown and his first wife had died 11 June 1891.  After extensive attempts to prove that Henry was legally married before she married him, she withdrew her pension application with the following statement sent through Justice of the Peace William Blanning:

The above name Annie N. Keen, could not get all the proofs required especially witness to her husband’s first marriage.  So now she will bother no more; she has gone to the county poor house.

Research on this veteran is on-going.  The Gratz Historical Society only has copies of some parts of the pension application file.  Perhaps another researcher can tell the rest of the story.  Was Henry Keen really married to his first wife?  Was Ann [Poticher] Keen entitled to a widow’s pension?  Did she end up in the county poor house?  And, what happened to the children?  Comments can be added to this post or e-mailed to the Civil War Research Project.

Category: Research, Resources, Stories | Comments Off on John Henry Keen of Williamstown – Civil War Veteran of Infantry and Cavalry
Tags: G.A.R., Tower City, Wiconisco, Williamstown

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on November 5, 2013

Additional information has been located on Jacob L. Weaver of Elizabethville, Dauphin County, who served in the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Civil War.

The obituary of Weaver appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot on 22 January 1903:

Jacob L. Weaver, who died of pneumonia on Friday, was buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery on Monday.  Services were held in the Reformed Church and the sermon was preached by Rev. Mr. Zimmerman.

The next day, the Lykens Standard published the following information:

JACOB L. WEAVER

Jacob L. Weaver died of inflammation of the lungs in Elizabethville will be buried in Maple Grove Cemetery.  He was a son of the late Jacob Weaver, brother of Josiah Weaver of Killinger.  He was 63.  He was brought up in Lykens Valley, lived there except while he was in the Civil War.  He was a Private in Company B, 9^th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

According to information found on the Pennsylvania Veterans’ Index Card (available from the Pennsylvania Archives), Jacob L. Weaver enrolled in the 9^th Pennsylvania Cavalry on 19 September 1861 at Berrysburg.  He was mustered into service as a Private in Company B at Harrisburg on 7 October of the same year.  He was 22 years old, 6’1″ tall, had brown hair, dark eyes and dark complexion.  He was born in Dauphin County and at the time he enrolled was living in Dauphin County and working as a farmer.  On the 1 January 1864, he re-enlisted at Mossy Creek, Tennessee, for three years or the duration of the war.  His honorable discharge came on 18 July 1865.

Jacob was married to Elizabeth Hassinger who survived him.  According to records at the National Archives, he never applied for a Civil War pension.  However, his widow Elizabeth did apply and she received benefits until her death in 1926.

The name of Jacob Weaver appears on both the Lykens G.A.R. Monument and the Soldier Memorial in Millersburg:

Jacob is buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Elizabethville and his wife Elizabeth is buried next to him.  The grave marker (show at the top of this post) recognizes his service in the 9^th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Additional information is sought about Jacob L. Weaver and his service in the Civil War as well as family information.  Add comments to this post or send by e-mail.  Does anyone have a picture of Jacob L. Weaver that they would be willing to contribute?

The pictured news clipping is from the on-line resources of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The transcribed obituary is from the collection of the Gratz Historical Society.

Category: Research, Resources, Stories | Comments Off on Jacob L. Weaver – Private in 9th Pennsyvlania Cavalry
Tags: Berrysburg, Elizabethville, Killinger, Millersburg

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on November 3, 2013

A listing of the October 2013 posts on The Civil War Blog with direct links:

Lincoln Ancestral Home – Photo Essay

September 2013 Posts

Israel Seiders – Pennsylvania Railroad Employee

Charles E. Riegel – Coachmaker and Clerk to Dauphin County Commissioners

Edmund L. Umholtz – Dauphin County Mercantile Appraiser Dies of Small Pox in Gratz

Where Is the Cannonball that John Deppen Took from the Gettysburg Battlefield?

Obituary of George S. Klinger from West Schuylkill Herald

Government Shutdown Affects Tourism and Civil War Research

Cornelius Martz – Died of Consumption – Honored on Lykens and Millersburg Monuments

Wilhelm Weaver of the 177th Pennsylvania Infantry

Emanuel Kembel – Militiaman and Miner

David H. Smith – Turnkey at Dauphin County Prison

Alfred D. F. Steese – Civil War Railroad Engineer

Victorian Home: Bedrooms (Part 7)

Aged Widow of One-Day Civil War Veteran Died in Gratz in 1940

Williamstown G.A.R. Post Severely Rebuked for Bigotry

Civil War Ghosts

Category: Overviews | Comments Off on October 2013 Posts
Tags: Table of Contents

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on October 31, 2013

The population of the United States was only about 30 million at the time of the Civil War.  More than a half million lost their lives in the war.  Few went off to war expecting not to return.  Many believe that ghosts of the men and women whose lives were suddenly cut short still wander the earth today hoping to find some satisfactory conclusion to the unfinished business they left behind as living persons.  A whole body of literature has emerged to describe the supernatural phenomenon that has occurred surrounding the loss of so many in such a short time.  Two works are described here – one purporting to be fact and one admitting to be fiction.

Ghosts of Gettysburg: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield, written by Mark Nesbitt, was published in 1991 by Thomas Publications of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Nesbitt, a Gettysburg resident and National Park employee, has put into writing the stories he has heard about and researched for more than twenty years.  The “spirit-tales”, as he calls them, are still being told today by visitors to the battlefield, many of them descendants of those who fought there.  In his preface, Nesbitt states:

As far as finding an event that should supply America with innumerable stories [of happenings after death] – explained or inexplicable – there cannot be one more ripe than the Civil War, that greatest of all American spiritual calamities, the horrible, monstrous manifestation of Cain and Abel right from Genesis, where the two sections of the country tore at each other’s entrails until we were fortunate that either side remained….

More often than not, when the men of the 19th century wrote about the dead of the battles, they spoke of “leaving” them on the field.  in fact, the way they refer to it, it sometimes grows confusing – do they speak of mortal remains, or spiritual?

So it it is perturbed spirits who return to – or remain at – the place where they reluctantly left some unfinished business, or to the spot where they resigned this world too suddenly for their journey into the next, or to some touchstone where they need to find the answer, not to why the died, but why they ever even lived, Gettysburg is as likely a place as any for them to be.

Nevertheless, as these stories will attest, something has been happening at Gettysburg since the battle, a a lot of people have seen things they cannot explain, but were certain enough they saw them to repeat them.  Whether you believe all these witnesses to the unexplainable or not is not part of the caveat.  Nevertheless, here they are….

The second chapter of the book talks of the photographers who discovered mysterious images on the pictures they took at Devil’s Den and of the mysterious stranger dressed like a ragged hippie who pointed out to them where to take the pictures.   Other chapters tell of strange groups of re-enactors that appear and disappear on the battlefield.  The stories seem to cover every aspect of the battle and of the battlefield.

The second book is pure fiction and is a compendium of short stories about ghosts and the Civil War as told by relatively well-known American authors.  Civil War Ghosts was published in 1991 by August House Publishers, Little Rock, Arkansas.  It was edited by Martin Harry Greenberg, Frank McSherry Jr., and Charles G. Waugh.  Stories in this volume are:  “Miranda, ” by John Jakes; “The Army of the Dead,” by John Bennett; “The Shot-Tower Ghost,” by Mary Elizabeth Counselman; “Iverson’s Pits,” by Dan Simmons; “The Drummer Ghost,” by John William DeForrest; “The Last Waltz,” by Seabury Quinn; “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce; and “Fearful Rock,” by Manyl Wade Wellman.

The introduction reveals why the stories were chosen – for their “drama, entertainment, and power to chill.”

From one of the stories:

“What is it that goes by in the night?”

“It is the Army of the Dead going by.”

“Where on earth are they going?”

“To reinforce Lee in Virginia.  They are the dead who died in the hospital here before the war came to an end.  At the end of the war came peace for the living.  But no one could sign a peace for the dead.  So they, not knowing that peace has come, rise from their graves at midnight and march off, forever, until Judgment Day, to reinforce Lee in Virginia.  While all still went well for the South, they slept and rested from battle.  But when the armies of the North came crowding down and the army of the South began to bend, they who lay dead in the hospital yard pushed off their coffin lids, rose from their graves, and marched to strengthen the bending battle line.  They do not know that peace has come, and so, until the last trumpet sounds, they rise and march to Virginia forever.”

John Bennett, who told that story, was born in 1865, was educated at the University of South Carolina and had successful careers as a writer, mapmaker, guitarist, illustrator and advertiser.  In 1946, he wrote, Doctor to the Dead, based on legends of Charleston, many of which dated back to the Civil War.

Whether a believer or a skeptic, these ghost stories are sure to entertain.  The literature can be approached  from the perspective of fact (as in the case of Ghosts of Gettysburg) or as fiction (as in the case of Civil War Ghosts) and there are many other works not mentioned here that could be included.  Ghost stories, published and unpublished, are sought by the Civil War Research Project, especially if they pertain to veterans who have some connection to the Lykens Valley area.

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This post first appeared on 31 October 2011.

Category: Culture, Stories | Comments Off on Civil War Ghosts
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Posted By Norman Gasbarro on October 30, 2013

An article that appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot of 18 September 1906, stated that “Mandamus is Refused in Williamstown Matter.”  The article referred to an opinion handed down by Judge George Kunkel in the matter of the School Board of Williamstown, Dauphin County, and the request of Catholic parents to allow Catholic students to be absent from school during the reading of the Bible.  The article stated:

Some pupils refused to be present during the reading of the Bible.  The Court says that the reading of the Bible is manifestly a matter relating to the management of the schools, which is committed by law to the School Board, beyond the control of the Court.

“If the reading of the Bible is the schools is unlawful, it may be enjoined,” says the opinion; “if it be lawful and a proper exercise of the discretion vested in the School Board in the conduct of the schools, the petitioners have no ground for complaint.  But the question is not necessarily involved her and we do not pass upon it.”

The Patriot then went on to editorialize on the matter:

Judge Kunkel’s decision that the court has no power to compel the school directors of Williamstown Borough to permit certain pupils to come to school at a different time from that perscribed [sic] by the board, is undoubtedly, as good law as it is good sense.  The Judge did not feel called upon to pass upon the right of the School Board to require the reading of the Bible, at the opening session each day.  That question was not specifically raised.  If the parents who do not wish their children to listen to the reading of the Bible in school, are not satisfied the decision made by Judge Kunkel yesterday, they can bring a bill in equity asking for an injunction forbidding the school directors to require the reading of the Bible.

What these two items failed to describe was the manner in which the School Board of Williamstown was “compelled” to make the decision to require Catholic pupils to attend the Bible readings, the additional requirements imposed on Catholics, and the names of the organizations that presented the petitions.  For that information, an examination of the Sacred Heart Review of Boston College is required.  See:  Sacred Heart Review, Boston College, Volume 36, No. 17, October 1906.

The article in the Sacred Heart Review states the following:

At [the time] (August) when the group of small bore gentlemen, called the School Board of Williamstown, met, several petitions were presented to them, demanding two things: (1) the Protestant Bible be read in the schools, and that all the children be compelled to attend the reading; (2) that all the Catholic teachers be dismissed.  The petitions were presented by the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the Patriotic Sons of America, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and, strange to say, Chester Post, Grand Army of the Republic.  The School Board immediately acquiesced, the Protestant Bible was ordered read and all the Catholic school teachers dismissed.  The matter was carried to the courts, which refused to interfere.

After the courts refused to intervene, the Catholic parents refused to allow their children to attend the public schools and refused to pay the fines for violating the compulsory school attendance laws of Pennsylvania – for which they were arrested and sent to jail in Harrisburg.  Under these circumstances, the Catholic pastor started a school in the parlor of his house pending the renovation of the church basement as a school – to which the Williamstown School Board responded that they would force the health authorities to condemn the basement for school purposes.  Seeing no other alternative, the Catholic pastor, Father Dougherty, took up the matter with the immediate past Commander-in-Chief of the National G.A.R., James Tanner, who responded by issuing a severe rebuke to the Chester Post, G.A.R., at Williamstown:

The very day your letter reached me in Minneapolis, I headed the line of a parade, which numbered twenty-three thousand of my veteran comrades, and by my side in my carriage rode my comrade, personal friend and aide-de-camp, Col. John Ireland, the eminent archbishop of your Church, and forty-eight hours after that parade the representatives of the quarter of a million members of the Grand Army of the Republic in convention assembled by unanimous vote, amid great enthusiasm, elected the venerable archbishop our chaplain-in-chief for the current year.  Let this stand happily as an answer of the supreme body of our order to the little souls who in any part of the nation, under any guise, name or title of the nation, whatsoever, shall endeavor to disqualify from any of the rights of American citizenship any man or woman or body of men or women, who may differ from them in conscientious belief as to how they can most fitly serve their God.

The commander of Chester Post, if he had done his duty, under the plain and unmistakable laws of our order, would instantly ruled out of order any such resolution.  I am as deeply grieved and shocked at this action as you can be.  so far as I can speak for the whole order [G.A.R.] at large, I repudiate it utterly.  On every battlefield I trod I saw the cowled priest of the church ministering to the suffering.  Personally I was the beneficiary of the blessed ministrations of the Sisters of Charity in the hospital.  The flag we all love was drenched time and again in Catholic blood, and those who would now raise such an issue, as you quote, are themselves false to the first principles of American institutions, namely, “Liberty for all.”

In that the national G.A.R. lacked the authority to discipline or expel local G.A.R. posts, nothing further appears to have been done. However, one local result was the establishment of a system of Catholic schools in Williamstown.

Ironically, this bigoted action of Chester Post, G.A.R., came less than two years after the death of Capt. Richard Budd, who with his brother William Budd, (who died in 1897) were Irish immigrants, were founders and supporters of the Catholic Church in Williamstown, and were notable Civil War veterans as well as members of the Chester Post.  See also:  Rev. Hugh A. Logue, Catholic Priest at Williamstown (1888-1901) and Capt. Richard Budd – 96th Pennsylvania Infantry.

Further research is required to identify the members of the Williamstown School Board who voted to require the reading of the Protestant Bible and expel the Catholic teachers – as well as to identify the members of the Chester Post, G.A.R. of Williamstown (the leadership and the rank-and-file) who formulated and presented the petition to the School Board.

In 1963, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Abington School District v. Schempp, that school-sponsored Bible reading in the public schools was unconstitutional.  Abington is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

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James Tanner

James Tanner was a Civil War veteran who lost both legs at the Second Battle of Bull Run.  He was the stenographer who took testimony at the Petersen House of witnesses to Lincoln’s assassination.  His original stenographic notes can be found at the Union League in Philadelphia.

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The articles from the Patriot are from the on-line resources of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The portrait of James Tanner is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

Category: Research, Resources, Stories | Comments Off on Williamstown G.A.R. Post Severely Rebuked for Bigotry
Tags: G.A.R., Hate, Lincoln Assassination, Williamstown