Civil War Blog

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on January 21, 2011

In the post of yesterday, the Pennsylvania Veterans’ Card File was discussed as originally intended as an index to Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, the official five volume history of the Pennsylvania’s volunteer involvement in the Civil War.

Samuel Penniman Bates (1827-1902) was from Meadville, Pennsylvania, and was well known as an educator, preacher, author, and historian.  His anti-slavery views were well-known, often calling for the overthrow of the institution.  In 1864, he was appointed Pennsylvania State Historian and given the task of compiling the history of Pennsylvania’s involvement in the war.  The five volumes produced between 1869 and 1871 remain today as the standard reference for the commonwealth’s regimental histories and unit rosters.

Fortunately for researchers today, the volumes are readily available, both in libraries and on-line.

The Philadelphia Free Public Library has all five volumes available for reference on its open stacks.

Bates is also available in two places on-line.  The first, is through the University of Michigan web site.  This source reference is accessed through the Pennsylvania Archives web site or can be accessed directly through the Unversity of Michigan.  Each of the five Bates volumes is provided on a separate web page and links are provided on that page to individual pages in the volumes.

The regimental histories are followed by a roster of the men in each company.  Essentially, the regiments are grouped by the order formed and the term of service, with the three month regiments found in Volume 1.  Volume 5 contains histories of the United States Colored Troops from Pennsylvania as well as any of the independent regiments – plus a comprehensive, general index to all five volumes.  I’ve refrained from printing actual sample pages from the editions of the Bates volumes found on the the University of Michigan web site because of their statement of reproduction restriction:  “These pages may be freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically.”  However, I have provided direct links to the page listings for each volume (click on volume number below), to the two page table of contents for each volume, and to the first page of the comprehensive index.

In the example given yesterday of the Pennsylvania Veterans’ Card File for William W. Rothermel, the Bates volume and page was given as 1-1284.  Going to page 1284 in the page listing in Volume 1 below, the following was  readily found:

Note that in the case of William Rothermel, the information is the same as on the index card, so consulting Bates only confirms that the index card and Bates matches in information.

Volume 1. Table of Contents Page 1. Table of Contents Page 2.

Volume 2.  Table of Contents Page 1.  Table of Contents Page 2.

Volume 3. Table of Contents Page 1.  Table of Contents Page 2.

Volume 4. Table of Contents Page 1.  Table of Contents Page 2.

Volume 5. Table of Contents Page 1. Table of Contents Page 2.  Comprehensive Index.

If you intend to make extensive use of Bates as a resource in your research, I suggest you print out the ten table of contents pages and the 67 pages of the comprehensive index.  If you intend to save any the pages to disk (right click with the mouse), the pages will save as GIF files.  To save them in JPEG format, you will have to right click, choose copy, and then paste into a new window (properly sized) in a graphics program.

Fortunately, for those who prefer working with documents in the PDF format, at least one of the Bates volumes is available through Google Books as a free download:

Volume 5. Click on PDF in upper right corner and then save the PDF file to your disk.  The book should be fully searchable with your PDF reader program.

Additional information about Samuel Penniman Bates can be found in Wikipedia and in the Pennsylvania Archives Samuel Penniman Bates Papers.

Category: Research, Resources | Comments Off on Bates – History of Pennsylvania Volunteers 1861-1865
Tags: Regiments, Rothermel family

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on January 20, 2011

The Civil War Veterans’ Card File of the Pennsylvania Archives is an excellent resource for information on individual Civil War soldiers who served in Pennsylvania regiments during the Civil War.  It is one of many on-line resources available through the Pennsylvania Archives which are maintained by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission at their web site.

While the card file was originally created as an index to the five volume Samuel Penniman Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, published in Harrisburg between 1869 and 1871, it now contains more information about the veterans than is found in Bates.  Basically, there is an individual file card for each veteran and for each regiment and company in which he served.  The cards with the least amount of information are those which only reference the veteran, the regiment in which he served, and the volume and page of Bates’ work where the veteran appears.  Cards could also contain information such as date and place of enrollment, “muster in” date and place, “muster out” date and place, discharge information, age at enrollment, a physical description of the veteran (complexion, height, eye color, hair color), occupation at time of enlistment, residence at time of enrollment, and some remarks (things such as wounded, killed, missing, deserted, re-enlisted, promotions, etc.).

There is a page called “Interpreting Your Civil War Record Card” which gives a key to the abbreviations used and a table of regimental equivalents.   Most Pennsylvania regiments were numbered (1 to 215) and most of the regiments were “Infantry.”  However, if the regiment was a cavalry, reserve or artillery regiment, it was given a second number.  For example, cavalry regiments were numbered from 1 to 22, reserve regiments were numbered from 1 to 13, and artillery regiments were numbered from 1 to 6.  Thus, the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry is also known as the 92nd Pennsylvania Volunteers.  Pennsylvania Archive Veterans’ Card use the cavalry, reserve and artillery number designation unlike Steve Maczuga’s Civil War Project, a subject of a previous post, which uses only the sequential numbers from1 to 215.  Thus, the Civil War Veterans’ Card File refers to the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry as “9 C” while Maczuga refers to the same regiment as “PA 92.”

To locate a card for a veteran, it is helpful to know the exact spelling of the veteran’s name, although in some cases where the veterans name has multiple spellings, there is “see” card referring to the place in the alphabet where the card for that soldier is found.

A sample card is shown below – one that has been previously posted here.

At the top center of the card is the company, regiment, and type of unit in abbreviation (A -50 I) indicating Company A, 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, the “I” designating “infantry.”  The Bates reference, I – 1284, is indicated in the upper right corner (Volume I, page 1288).

Note that William W. Rothermel gave his age as 21 at the time of enrollment.  Other sources give his birth date as 2 May 1842 which would have made him just over 19 years and 3 months old at the time of his enrollment. Since enlistees did not have provide proof of age, many younger men inflated their ages to seem older and many older men gave lower ages in order to seem younger.  In William’s case, he received two promotions during his time in service and was mustered out at the rank of sergeant.  Perhaps he felt that a younger man would not have received the promotions, so he added almost two years to his age.

One important thing to remember about the Civil War Veterans’ Card File is that it is a compiled index and there could be errors in transcription.  As with any secondary source, it is always best to check with an original source, if available.

In tomorrow’s post, Bates’ work will be discussed and links will be given to on-line access to the five volumes.

Category: Research, Resources | Comments Off on Civil War Veterans’ Card File – Pennsylvania Archives
Tags: Regiments, Rothermel family

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on January 19, 2011

The election of 1860 was held throughout the United States on 6 November 1860.  The result was that Abraham Lincoln won a majority of the electoral votes and thus was elected President of the United States.  His election supposedly was the trigger that brought about the secession crisis.  South Carolina voted to secede from the Union on 20 December 1860.

In a previous post some data were examined to try to determine how the people of the Lykens Valley area voted.   Generalizations about the election were examined and questions were asked about voting patterns within the state of Pennsylvania.  Was it possible to break down the vote by counties?  by divisions within counties? by by ethnic groups?  Four limiting factors were noted:  (1) In 1860, there was no universal suffrage.  (2) Convenience of the voting place to the home or workplace of the voter may have been a factor in the number of eligible persons who actually voted. (3) Voting was done not by secret ballot as is done today, but by eligible persons calling out their votes in open meetings – thus open to influence.  (4) The Lykens Valley area that is referred to in this Civil War Project is not a “political division” because it consists of parts of three counties – Dauphin, Schuylkill, and Northumberland.

The first step in this “second look” at the Election of 1860, is to see what data is generally available on how people voted within the state of Pennsylvania and to see how that information is presented.

One of the first textbook maps for the Election of 1860 which shows how the popular vote was distributed by counties is found in A History of the United States (1983), authored by Daniel Boorstin and Brooks Kelley.  Four colors were used to represent the votes for each of the candidates.  A blue-green was used for Lincoln.  Six patches of orange (or yellow) can be seen in Pennsylvania, indicating that at least six counties voted for someone other than Lincoln.  But exactly which counties these patches represented is not clear.  It looks though that the area of the Lykens Valley triangle is blue-green – a fact that will have to be verified from another source.

The orange, with the yellow shading, could indicate a vote for Stephen Douglas on the “Fusion Ticket,” as that was one of the options for voters in Pennsylvania (see post on Election of 1860 and the Lykens Valley).

With the advent of on-line encyclopedias, information is available on elusive subjects as how people voted within counties in 1860.  An election map is available through Wikipedia which shows specific county boundaries and who got the majority or plurality of votes in each county – but it only gives percentages in ranges rather than in actual numbers and the map doesn’t indicate how many people voted within the counties nor does it give the breakdown of votes within the county.  By enlarging that portion of the area of the map for the Lykens Valley area, and labeling the counties, we can get a general idea that the counties of Dauphin, Schuylkill and Northumberland were strongly in favor of Abraham Lincoln.

It appears from this map that Dauphin County supported Lincoln very strongly while Schuylkill County and Northumberland County supported Lincoln strongly.

But the accuracy of the information on this map is in question for several reasons:  (1) The color green indicates that some Pennsylvania counties gave John Breckinridge a plurality of votes.  According to previously obtained information, it was Stephen Douglas who received a plurality of votes in Pennsylvania countries that Abraham Lincoln did not win.  (2) The map from the Boorstin & Kelley history text only shows six areas where Lincoln did not receive a majority or plurality while the Wikipedia map shows eight areas.  (3) The raw data (how many actual votes were received by each candidate in each county) are not presented, nor is there a source given for the information.  Note:  To be fair, the third point also applies to the Boorstin and Kelley text.

Because of the inaccuracies and limitations of the above data, we still cannot draw any conclusions about how the people of the Lykens Valley area actually voted.  Actual raw data must be found for each Pennsylvania county and subdivisions within each county.

Research continues into this topic.  Contributions and ideas are welcome.

The portions of the above maps are taken from the sources indicated and are presented for the purpose of criticism and literary review under the “Fair Use” doctrine of the United States Copyright Law.

Category: Queries, Research, Resources | Comments Off on Election of 1860 – A Second Look
Tags: Abraham Lincoln

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on January 18, 2011

(Part 3 of an on-going series of posts on the Battle of Gettysburg).

George Gordon Meade (31 December 1815 – 6 November 6 1872) was a career United States Army officer and civil engineer involved in coastal construction, including several lighthouses. He fought with distinction in the Seminole War and Mexican War.  During the Civil War he served as a Union General, rising from command of a brigade to the Army of the Potomac.  He is best known for defeating Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Portrait of Gen. George G. Meade from Library of Congress

Gen. George G. Meade – Walk of Valor, National Civil War Museum, Harrisburg

Gen. George G. Meade – Grave Marker – Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

Gen. George G. Meade – Statue on Pennsylvania Monument at Gettysburg

Gen. George G. Meade – Historical Marker, 19th Street, Philadelphia

Gen. George G. Meade – Meade Home, Delancey St., Philadelphia

Gen. George G. Meade – Statue, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

The portrait photograph of Gen. Meade was taken from the Wikipedia article and is in the public domain.  The photograph of the Gen. George G. Meade Statue in Fairmount Park was taken by J’Chiu Chiu and is used with permission.  The other photographs are in the collection of the Civil War Research Project.

Category: Memorials, Stories | 1 Comment »
Tags: Monument

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on January 17, 2011

William W. Rothermel was the son of Isaac Rothermel (1820-1896) and Hannah [Wiest] Rothermel (1823-1887), and was born on 21 May 1842 in Upper Mahanoy Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

William was known to his Sunday School class at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church as a story teller with many interesting tales.  As a young man, he grew up in the valley north of the Mahantongo Mountain, Northumberland County.  In 1860, at age 18, he was still living with his parents in Rebuck, Jordan Township, Northumberland County,and gave no occupation.  His father was a farmer and William was probably a helper on the farm.  William’s early church documents – birth, baptism, and confirmation – were written in German – an indication that the language of the home was also German, or probably Pennsylvania Dutch.

After the Civil War began, William enlisted at Mahantongo on the 19 Aug 1861.  He was mustered into service in the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, Company A, at Harrisburg on 9 September 1961.  He re-enlisted at Blaines Crossroads, Tennessee, on 1 January 1864.  On 18 March 1865, he received a promotion from Corporal to Sergeant.  On 30 Jul 1865, William was mustered out with his company on 30 July 1865 with the rank of Sergeant.

A file card highlighting the military record of William W. Rothermel was found in the Pennsylvania Archives and is shown above.  The card indicates William was 5 foot 5 inches tall, had hazel eyes, brown hair, and dark complexion.  His occupation at the time of enlistment was farmer.  In some records his name is spelled “Rothemel” and in other records it is spelled “Rothermal.”

During William Rothermel‘s time in the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, the regiment was engaged in the following battles in South Carolina:  Port Royal, on 7 June 1862; Beaufort, on 21 June 1862; Pocotaligo, on 1 August 1862.  The regiment then moved into Virginia for the 2nd Battle of Bull Run, fought from 27 August 1862 to 30 August 1862, and Chantilly, fought on 1 September 1862.  Then to Maryland:  South Mountain, 14 September 1862;  Sharpsburg, 17 September 1862; and Antietam, 17 September 1862.  Back to South Carolina for fighting at Pocotaligo, 22 October 1862.  Back to Virginia for the Battle of Fredericksburg, 13 December 1862.  A long march south followed with no battles until Jackson, Mississippi, on 16 July 1863.  Then into Tennessee, for Blue Springs on 16 October 1863 and Knoxville on 19 November 1863.  Back into Virginia for the fighting at Mine Run, 14 December 1863.  A long wait, and then fighting at the Wilderness on 6 May 1864 and six days of fighting at Spotsylvania Court House from 9 May 1864 through 15 May 1864.  Remaining in Virginia, the regiment foungt in battles at:  North Anna River, 30 May 1864; Cold Harbor, from 1 Jun through the 7 June 1864; Petersburg, from 17 June through 17 August 1864; the Weldon Railroad, on 19 August 1864; Poplar Springs Church, 30 September 1864; and finally at Petersburg, from 28 March to 2 April 1865.  About mid-April the regiment was sent to Washington where it remained until June 30 when it was sent to Gettysburg to represent the Union infantry at the 4 July 1865 corner-stone ceremonies for the National Monument.  Afterward it returned to Georgetown, Washington, District of Columbia, where it was mustered out on July 31, 1865.  It is not clear whether William Rothermel saw action in all the above-named battles as his actual military records have not yet been consulted.  The 50th Pennsylvania Infantry saw much action and took many casualties.  In all, 156 men were killed or mortally wounded and 180 died of disease or accident.  There is no known record that William was wounded in battle.

The only record found that indicates that William was injured during the war is from the pension files.  When he was 55, in 1897, he swore an affidavit that he had been injured at the Weldon Railroad:

On 19th day of August 1864, at the Battle of Weldon R.R., while assisting three comrades in removing Geo. Zimmerman, who was shot through the body, from the field of battle, and in crossing a corn field, it being at night, I stepped in a gutter about 2 ft. deep; the wounded man falling on me, and with the fall I received in stepping in said gutter, gave me such a severe pain in my back that I had to be assisted to our camp by the aforesaid comrades, I remained in camp for about two weeks unable to do anything, and ever since I have pains at the spot in my back there injured, and do not think it can ever be cured and must therefore be permanent.  My comrades who were with me that night are to the best of my knowledge all dead, consequently I cannot get their testimony.  From the above you can see that my injury is not due to my vicious habits and I do so testify.

After the Civil War, William returned to the valley area around Klingerstown and married Sarah Ann Schaffer.  Some sources refer to her as “Schreffler.”  The marriage was performed by Rev. J. Fritzinger.  William and Sarah made their home in Jordan Township, where they built a log house utilizing materials from the local forest and planks and beams from old buildings in the area.  The house was located on a stream which provided water and William farmed the rolling hills behind the house.

Sarah [Schaffer] Rothermel (1849-1913)

To the union of William and Sarah were born six children:  Emma Savilla Rothermel (1866-1943); Manassas (1870-1947); Mary S. “Polly” Rothermel (1873-1930); Monroe W. Rothermel (1881-1961); Jennie Sarah Rothermel (1888-1978); and Minnie Edna Rothermel (1892-1952).  At first glance it may appear that their son “Manassas” was named after the first major battle in which William’s regiment participated, the 2nd Battle of Bull Run (also referred to as 2nd Battle of Manassas).  However, William had a younger brother named “Manassas” who was born around 1857.  It is not known for whom he was named.

William W. Rothermel died 18 May 1922 in Jordan Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.  He is buried in the churchyard at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Klingerstown.

William W. Rothermel was previously mentioned in a post on the Walk of Valor at the National CivilW ar Museum in Harrisburg and his brick is pictured.  Information from this post (including pictures and documents) was taken from the files of the Civil War Research Project.  Military information on the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry was taken from a regimental history available at Ancestry.com.  The military file card was obtained through the on-line resources of the Pennsylvania Archives.

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Tags: Jordan Township, Klingerstown, Mahantongo, Pennsylvania Dutch, Rebuck, Rothermel family, Schaffer family, Upper Mahanoy Township, Women