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Walter Seal is convinced of ‘Invincible Grays’ authenticity, place in history

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Walter Seal holds an 1850s slate chalkboard and slate pencil. A Monongahela history buff, he is working to win recognition for the 'Invincible Grays' as the first all-black Pennsylvania National Guard unit.

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Walter Seal holds a shackle that was found on a plantation in Richmond, Va.

History buff Walter Seal calls T. Morgan Jones a first-hand witness to the rending of the United States as civil war became inevitable.

Jones, who escaped slavery as a Virginia teen and made his way through Adams, Somerset, Fayette and Westmoreland counties, arrived in Monongahela in about 1855 and went to work on steamboats. Through his river travel, he learned of unrest and the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., regarded as a the first shots of the Civil War.

Seal, a resident of Monongahela, gleaned the information from the personal diary of First Lt. William H. Jones, of Company F, 10th Regiment, 8th Division, Pennsylvania National Guard.

He doesn’t know if the two men with the surname Jones are related, but Seal is tireless in his quest to win recognition for the recruitment in the Mon Valley of the first all-black Pennsylvania National Guard unit, which T. Morgan Jones named “the Invincible Grays.”

Jones offered the services of his company to Gov. Andrew Curtin, who said they were not needed, nor would they be accepted.

Seal said he thinks the unit “is still being discriminated against” more than a century later because the Pennsylvania Militia, redesignated on April 7, 1870, as the National Guard of Pennsylvania, doesn’t note its existence.

In 1871, the Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania names black regiments from Philadelphia and includes black companies such as the Douglass Zouaves of Allegheny County, Blue Mountain Sharpshooters of Dauphin County, Lincoln Guard of Franklin County, Taylor Guard of Lycoming County and Hartranft Guards of Montgomery County, but not the Invincible Grays.

After President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and the Battle of Gettysburg the following year, Seal said T. Morgan Jones and his men again volunteered and fought in Virginia and South Carolina.

T. Morgan Jones was wounded, and returned home after defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., on April 9, 1865.

Jones died Nov. 15, 1866, in Monongahela. Seal said he does not know where Jones was buried, but that he plans to seek information on this topic.

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