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Captured on film

13 min read
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Edward S. France of Monongahela

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William A. Lockhart of Houston

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Morris Smith of Walkertown

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A.T. Anderson of Washington

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William H. Mahaney of California

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Civil War veterans assemble for a portrait in front of Washington County Courthouse.

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J. Ferree Anderson of Charleroi

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William D. Welch of Dunlevy

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The Rev. Jacob Ruble of West Alexander

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Clinton V. Lewis of Lone Pine

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Mary Pollock of West Alexander, a nurse in the Union Army

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George Harshman of Washington

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T.A. Anderson, who eventually would become the oldest Civil War veteran living in Washington County, alights from an automobile parked in front of the Washington County Courthouse in 1938 when Washington hosted the Pennsylvania Grand Army of the Republic convention.

Much has been made of this year’s 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.

In addition to being the single most deadly conflict in American history, it is also considered to be the first major war to be extensively photographed.

The Civil War Trust places the number of Union soldiers at 2,128,948 and those who fought for the Confederate States at 1,082,119. Of those, between 620,000 and 850,000 died from combat, accident, starvation and disease during the four-year duration of the war,

Local historian Earle R. Forrest estimated that 3,700 men from Washington County served in the Civil War. Out of the 34 companies from Washington County, 11 full companies were cavalry troops.

But a handful of Civil War veterans from Washington and Greene counties survived 73 years after their units’ demobilization. Washington photographer Dan Harbaugh, who had a studio at 69 N. Main St., documented their portraits on film for the 1938 Washington gathering of the Pennsylvania Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization, and, for posterity. They were recently catalogued in the Observer-Reporter’s archives.

For today’s reader, here is a summary of information Forrest gathered to pair with Harbaugh’s photographs, plus a photograph of a Civil War nurse that was part of Harbaugh’s collection, though not shot by him.

Mary Pollock was mentioned in a contemporary news story about photos displayed during the GAR gathering. Handwritten information on the photograph identifies her as being from West Alexander.

Clay Kilgore, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society, found a reference to a Miss Mary Pollock in Julia Cutler’s “Civil War Journal” on Monday, Nov. 28, 1864. Cutler lived in Constitution, Ohio, six miles from Marietta.

“This afternoon by special invitation Mr. and Mrs. McLean, Lucy and I took tea at Mr. Ely’s. Had a very nice supper and a very pleasant time. Miss Mary Pollock, sister of Mrs. Ely, is now at home on a visit. She is one of Miss Dix’s hospital nurses, she is at Judiciary Square, Washington, D.C. Miss Pollock is an interesting lady, well educated, a good talker, and told many things about hospital life.”

Dorothea Dix, a crusader for humane care of the mentally ill, was superintendent of female nurses at Judiciary Square Hospital. The website, Civil War Women, estimates that more than 3,000 women served as paid nurses in both the North and the South. At the website Whitman’s Drum Taps and Washington’s Civil War Hospitals, Angel Price wrote that “Judiciary Square hospital became known for its brutality as corpses were left naked on a vacant lot to await burial.”

West Alexander Cemetery and the “Find A Grave” website list Maria Pollock among their records. She was born in 1822 and died in 1869. A cemetery stone says she was the wife of J.N. Pollock, and a note on the website added four years ago says, “A nurse in the Civil War.” It is impossible to determine if the woman buried in West Alexander Cemetery is the same woman in the photograph.

James T. Herron Jr.’s article on Memorial Day, 1939, written from Canonsburg, noted that no Civil War veterans remained in that community. William A. Lockhart of Houston, a veteran of William Tecumseh Sherman’s campaign through the South, had died Oct. 6, 1938. An online card index from the Pennsylvania State Archives shows he enrolled Feb. 23, 1864, at New Brighton, Beaver County, as a 19-year-old private. and took part in Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea” which, according to Forrest, “cut the Confederacy in two and did more to end the war than other (single) campaign.” He was mustered out July 15, 1865, near Alexandria, Va.

William D. Welch of Dunlevy enlisted in Company L, 140th Volunteer Infantry, in Industry, Beaver County. He was wounded at Antietam but returned to fight at Chancellorsville, Fair Oaks, Seven Pines, Gettysburg and other battles. He was in the charge of the 140th across the wheat field at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, in which Capt. David Acheson of Washington, commander of Company C, 140th, was killed. He was also present at Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender and was “mustered out at Washington, D.C., May 31, 1865. Capt. Welch spent many years “in the adventurous life of a riverman,” according to the Daily Reporter.

When the GAR met in Washington, “by merest chance,” two veterans were placed in the same automobile for the parade. Mr. Welch heard the other man tell someone he had been a member of the 140th Infantry. Welch talked to him for a few minutes and then the man asked for his name.

“Welch,” was the reply.”You’re not Bill Welch?” almost gasped the other man.

“Yes I am; and you?” asked Welch.

“I’m George Hamilton, remember?”

And Welch remembered Hamilton well. They had fought side by side in the same Company I, from the day they were mustered in on Aug. 25, 1862, from Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, from Mine Run to Bristoe Station and the Wilderness, and finally to the desperate battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, where on May 12, 1864, Hamilton was shot through the right hand and was sent to the hospital. They never met or heard of each other until the parade.

“They parted, each going his way, probably never to meet again,” according to The Reporter.

Welch died Dec. 15, 1945, in Cincinnati, Ohio, so he was the last Civil War veteran from Washington County. A story about him appeared a few weeks before his death in the Saturday Evening Post in which he claimed to be 113 years old.

Clinton V. Lewis enlisted in Company E, 18th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry (163rd Pennsylvania Regiment) on March 29, 1865. He was sent immediately to his regiment near Winchester, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley, where he scouted and skirmished until the fall of Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital, and the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee. In the month after the war’s end, he was moved to Cumberland, Md., where he remained with his regiment until he was mustered out on June 28, 1865, according to an obituary in The Observer.

Lewis, a carpenter, lived in Lone Pine. He died Nov. 28, 1939, at age 92 and was buried in Lone Pine Cemetery.

The Rev. Jacob Ruble, a native of Fayette County, served about a year in the Union Army. He enlisted Sept. 3, 1864, at age 18 in Company I, 50th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He was sent immediately to Baltimore and City Point, Va., and participated in the Battle of Hatcher’s Run. He boasted that from that time on, he was never out of hearing of gunfire. His regiment was assigned to relieve the Second Corps before the Battle of Petersburg, Va. On the night when Petersburg fell, he saw the fires set by Confederates among their stores in the city, and the following day his regiment was the first to march into the fallen city. Later, while still in Petersburg, he saw a train enter the city from Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital, bearing the Stars and Stripes at its front, and he knew the South had yielded. His regiment was one of the first that marched in triumph into Washington, D.C., where he was mustered out on June 2, 1865.

In 1879, he graduated from both Waynesburg College and Western Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh. He was pastor of many Presbyterian churches, including Graysville, Greene County, for 15 years. He resigned in 1909 to do evangelistic work in West Alexander, then served for 11 years as stated supply at East Buffalo Church.

He became seriously ill on July 4, 1940, and died six days later. He was buried in West Alexander Cemetery.

A 1942 story in the Washington Daily Reporter noted that since the Civil War, William H. Mahaney of California idolized Abraham Lincoln. On Mahaney’s 97th birthday July 8, 1941, Mahaney paid tribute to the first president to suffer assassination:

“Nobody lost faith in Lincoln. That is the great need of the world today – leaders who can hold the faith and confidence of the people.”

Born in Virginia, Mahaney fought against blood relatives who were part of the Confederate army. At the age of 17, he enlisted in Company C, 85th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Brownsville on Oct. 31, 1861. His enlistment expired in November 1864, and in the meantime he was with his regiment in the battles of Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Seven Pines and Yorktown in the Peninsular Campaign. Mahaney was sent to North Carolina where he fought at Kingston, White Hall, Goldsboro, Fort Gregg and Fort Wagner, and, at Fort Sumter, S.C. From there he went to Georgia and Florida in the 10th Corps under Gen. Butler before the Battle of Petersburg, Va., and fighting around Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

Mahaney died April 11, 1944.

His obituary, published in The Reporter on Oct. 17, 1940, said the 95-year-old Washington resident “was one of that race of fighting American youths who marched out during the stirring years of the early 1860s in defense of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation against the chains that held the Negro race in slavery and for the preservation of the Union in a terrible war.”

Harshman enlisted in a company that was being organized in the waning days of the Civil War. Immediately, his unit was sent to the 49th Regiment, then on the firing line with the Third Brigade of the Sixth Army Corps in Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army before the battles of Petersburg, Va., and Richmond.

“His regiment … marched into Petersburg when that great stronghold of the Confederacy was evacuated by (Robert E.) Lee’s troops early in April 1865, and he took part in the pursuit of the retreating enemy. He was at the battle of Sailor Creek in which 7,000 Confederate prisoners were taken, and he was present when Gen. Lee, in the McLean House at Appomattox Courthouse, surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Grant’s superior forces.”

Harshman’s regiment went to Danville, Va., to intercept Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, reported to be on his way with the last Confederate army in the field. Johnston, it turned out, had surrendered to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Harshman was mustered out with his regiment in Washington, D.C., on July 15, 1865. After his return home, he farmed in both Washington and Fayette counties. He is buried in Washington Cemetery.

Alexander T. Anderson was the last surviving Civil War veteran who lived in Washington County.

Anderson, a resident of Washington, was commander-in-chief of a national Civil War veterans’ fraternal organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, in 1940. He was also a Pennsylvania state commander. The organization was founded in 1866, and its last commander served until 1949. Anderson died Sept. 15, 1944, at age 98.

According to a Sept. 2, 1938, letter from the adjutant general of the War Department in Washington, D.C., Morris Smith served in Company A, 22nd Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Civil War.

“The records show that Morris Smith was enrolled and mustered into service March 8, 1864, at New Brighton (Beaver County) as a private of Company A, 22nd Pennsylvania Cavalry, to serve for three years. He was transferred to Company A, 3rd Pennsylvania Provisional Cavalry, and was honorably discharged as a private (on) July 28, 1865.”

Smith of Walkertown, West Pike Run Township, died at the VA Hospital, Aspinwall, on May 11, 1941.

A story that appeared in the Observer-Reporter earlier this year featured a photograph of Edward S. France of Monongahela where his comrades were buried in the local cemetery.

“Edward S. France called to order a Grand Army of the Republic meeting in Monongahela in 1935, asked for the roll call, and the only voice that he heard in response was his own,” wrote Scott Beveridge.

“He saluted the flag and the roster and later added, ‘Now and forever adjourned,'” according to a 1967 Observer-Reporter article on the chapter’s 100th anniversary.

France was wounded twice in the war, including once during the Battle of the Wilderness in Spotsylvania, Va., while he served in the 6th Ohio Regiment.

Donora Historical Society archivist Brian Charlton said France served in the honor guard at slain President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral.

He lived the last 50 years of his life in Monongahela, dying June 28, 1939.

Jeremiah Ferree Anderson of Charleroi died Dec. 3, 1939.

According to the Ferree Reunion website, quoting the Charleroi Mail newspaper, J. Ferree Anderson was “a Civil War veteran who had lived in hope of reaching his 100th birthday,” but “died just eight days short of it.”

Nancy Ferree Johnson noted that her ancestor was born Dec. 11, 1840, near Elizabeth, Allegheny County, into a prominent pioneering family. His grandfathers, William Sharp and George Anderson, both fought in the Revolutionary War. His maternal grandfather, Jeremiah Ferree, for whom he was named, fought in the War of 1812 and his father, John Sharp Anderson, fought in the Mexican War.

He was living in Kentucky when the Civil War began. Family tradition has him walking to Davenport, Iowa, where a new Union army division was being formed. He enlisted under the alias Orlando Bouer and was wounded twice. “He mustered out at Little Rock, Ark., in February 1866 and went home to Pennsylvania, a great surprise to his mother, who believed he was dead,” Johnson wrote.

Anderson worked as a carpenter, was superintendent of various coal mines and also worked for Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.

Bazel Lemley of Mt. Morris, whose first name was also spelled Basil, was the last surviving Civil War veteran in Greene County. According to the obituary that appeared in the Washington Observer on Feb. 19, 1943, Lemley went to the front with the first troops leaving Greene County. He was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Va.

Lemley saw action in 19 battles. During a military review, he shook hands with President Abraham Lincoln, and at a review of Union veterans convened at the battlefield at Antietam, Md., shook hands with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although a staunch Republican, Lemley promised to vote for Roosevelt, which he did when the Democrat sought an unprecedented third term in 1940. Roosevelt also sent Lemley birthday greetings when he turned 100. “He was consistently Greene County’s best-dressed senior,” the story said. He regularly attended annual national encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic and, at the time of his death, was chaplain for the Pennsylvania GAR. He was twice married.

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