Category: biography
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Deadly crash of two trains
Corporal John H “Highly” Coulston, Company A, 51st Pennsylvania Infantry was wounded at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain in September 1862. He was Captain by January 1865 and mustered out in July. Tragically, he was severely injured in a train crash – known afterwards as the Exeter Station wreck – on 12 May 1899 while…
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Crapsey and the Bucktails in Maryland
Sergeant Angelo M Crapsey of the “Bucktails” – the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves. Eyewitness to the Maryland Campaign. After fighting at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September he wrote a friend at home: … It looked like a task to storm the mountain for it was very steep and more than one mile to…
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Surgeon and Major William James Harrison White, USA
Washington, DC-born William J.H. White was 35 years old in September 1862 and had been an Army doctor since he graduated from the Columbian College Medical School (now George Washington University) in 1849. At least 10 of his 13 years service had been in the frontier West, with the 2nd US Cavalry in Texas and…
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Ben Witcher’s Story
“A comrade by my side suggested we had better leave … but noticing the [dead] men lying along the fence I replied no, we have a line, let them come.”
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Samuel W. Evans decorative discharge document (1905)
This lovely piece is a decorative military record – “very tastefully printed in 10 colors” – for Private Samuel Wilson Evans of the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves. He served from 1861 to 1864 and saw action at South Mountain on 14 September and at Antietam on 17 September 1862. This certificate was produced by the Army…
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Rorty and Kelly making their escape.
County Donegal native Lieutenant James McKay Rorty was Ordnance Officer of Brigadier General Israel B. Richardson’s First Division, 2nd Army Corps at Antietam. He was heroically and famously killed at Gettysburg in July 1863 while in command of Battery B, 1st New York Light Artillery – a remnant of the old Irish Brigade/2nd Artillery Battalion…
