Category: quickPost/Pix

Raised a farmer, Adam Swartlander left a wife and 3 small children at home in Butler County near Pittsburgh, PA when he enlisted in July 1861 as a Private in Company C of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves. He was killed just over a year later at Antietam on 17 September 1862, not quite 30 years…

I’ve occasionally found Confederate veterans of the Battle of Sharpsburg who were later captured but were released from prison by taking an oath and enlisting for United States Army service in US Volunteer Infantry regiments – soldiers known also as Galvanized Yankees. Apparently more than 5,000 ex-Confederates served in those units before the end of…

I came upon this photograph while looking into men of Colonel Evander McIver Law‘s brigade staff at Sharpsburg in September 1862: it’s in the collection of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, VA and originally titled Common Soldiers from Charles City, possibly a reference to where the photograph was taken in Charles City County, VA southeast…

Looking into Captain William F Dement, commander of the First Maryland Artillery on the campaign of September 1862, I came upon this scrap of paper – a receipt for ammunition issued to his battery at Leesburg, VA on 5 September 1862. He and his battery crossed the Potomac River into Maryland at White’s Ford that…

Franklin Gaillard, standing between his wife Catherine Cordes “Tattie” Porcher (1832-1856; m. 1853) and niece Catherine Marianne Gaillard (1835-1869). Front row: Franklin’s sisters, Lydia Henrietta (1831-1913), Elizabeth Octavia “Betsy” (1825-1908) and Marianne Gendron “Nan” (1833-1912). A newspaper editor in Columbia, SC before the war, Gaillard was Major of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry on the…

William Riddle, from a prosperous and well-known Pittsburgh family, was 19 years old when he enrolled as 2nd Lieutenant of Company F of the 5th Pennsylvania Reserves in October 1861. His First Lieutenant, from Towanda in Bradford County, was Addison G Mason – also from a wealthy family. He’d enlisted at age 19 in June…