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Civil War Blog

A project of PA Historian

The 1863 Draft for Upper Dauphin County

| May 1, 2011

In July of 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation ordering a draft to raise five hundred thousand men for the Union army. It was the first compulsory draft in American history.  The draft was intended to encourage enlistment, but in many cases it had the opposite effect.  Federal troops had to be called out in […]

Dietrich Family in the Civil War

| January 23, 2011

In yesterday’s post, two immigrant ancestors of Dietrich‘s from the Lykens Valley area were presented.  The information on those immigrant ancestors was printed in Our Dietrich Lines, a genealogy by William Dietrich, a direct descendant of both Dietrich immigrants, Michael Dietrich and Lenhart Dietrich.  It was also pointed out that there was no ancestral connection […]

Tower City, Porter, and Rush Township Veterans Memorial

| December 30, 2010

The Tower City Borough, Porter Township and Rush Township Veterans Memorial is located at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church Cemetery which is located along Route 209 in Tower City, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. The memorial consists of a wall of names of those who served in all of America’s wars, a patio of commemorative bricks provided by […]

Pvt. Peter W. Miller – Mental Health & the Civil War

| December 2, 2010

This story appeared in the Tyrone Daily Herald, Tyrone, Pennsylvania, on 29 July 1895: Being unable to longer keep the wolf from his door, Peter W. Miller, an aged and disabled veteran of the late rebellion, made the journey to Washington on foot, and after having shown Pension Commissioner Lochran the scars from wounds received […]