In commemoration of the Battle Of Gettysburg, July 1-3

[scone]

In commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg, the U.S. Army has launched this website:www.army.mil/gettysburg.

Site uses flash and may take a while to load. But worth the wait
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In memory of my relatives that fought for the North and the South during the Gettysburg Campaign.. Through me your blood still flows and I shall never forget.

May God bless you all.

Steven


Derrell Cone: "3rd Grt. GrandUncle" Co. F 48th Alabama Vol. Infantry
Robert E. Craft: "4th Great - Grand Uncle" Co. B 5th Battalion Ala Vol
Reuben Craft: "3rd Grt GrandUncle" Co. B 5th Ala Battalion
Elijah Craft: "1st Cousin 5 times Back" Co. K 3rd Reg. Ga Va.
Theodore C. Cone: Co. K 10th Georgia Infantry

William Stevens: Co. G 15th NY Vol Engineers
David De Lancy: Cone: Co. G 15th NY Vol. Engineers
Joseph H Mason: Co. I 16th Vermont Vol. Inf.
Lyman H. Cone: Co. G 5th New Hampshire Infantry

[scone]

Here are a few more that i forgot to list
Arthur V Coan: Co.. G 146th NY Inf
Horace C. Cone: Co. H 67th NY Vol. Infantry
George B Stockwell: Co. I 9th NY Cav

[VS on the belt plate]

I am heading up for an all day visit Sunday.

Thanks for lettting us know about that great site Steven.


To those honered soldiers...I would like to add my G-G-Grandfather:

Enos Oliver Company I,The Flintville Grays, The 34th Georgia Infantry/The Army of Tennessee CSA.

Died May 1863 at Fort Delaware,Delaware

VS...etc



Remember many of those wearing grey,also gave 'the last full measure of devotion'

[gary]

Thank you Scone for that link!

[scone]

Most welcome VS and Gary..

The link link was to good not to share.. : )

[manofdreds]

Indeed, great link. Speaking of Gettysbug, VS, I'll also be there on Sunday to check out the reenacting. Cavalry Battle and Pickett's charge.

[maryingettysburg]

I'll be in Gettysburg all weekend.. Heading out to the first day's field for the Anniversary Battle walk in the morning, then later in the evening the East Cemetery Hill Battle Walk is a must see.... bout 6 hours of walking when all is said and done .... then it's off to bed for day 2 events.... Except for strong storms tomorrow afternoon/evening, the weather for the rest of the holiday weekend looks superb!! So, for those of you who may be visiting here, bring the sunscreen and tick spray IS A MUST!! They are ferocious this year.

[dawna]

GETTYSBURG: Profiles in Courage - Amos Humiston





Amos Humiston is the only enlisted man at Gettysburg who has his own monument on the battlefield.

It wasn't because of his heroism in the battle. A Union sergeant in New York's 154th "Hardtack" regiment, Humiston was killed on the first day of fighting in Gettysburg, after Confederate troops overwhelmed his company at a spot known as Kuhn's Brickyard.

What earned him a permanent marker was his love for Frank, Freddie and Alice.

Humiston was just one of more than 3,000 Union soldiers who died in the monumental three-day conflict. But when his body was found later that week, lying in a secluded spot at York and Stratton streets in Gettysburg, he was holding an ambrotype -- an early kind of photograph -- and on it were the serious, round faces of his three adored children: 8-year-old Frank, 6-year-old Alice and 4-year-old Freddie.

Somehow, historians believe, Amos Humiston had managed to drag himself to this patch of ground after he had been wounded, and was probably looking at his children's faces when he died.

Even then, Humiston might have faded into obscurity, because there was nothing on his body to identify him and the few soldiers from his unit who survived the battle had moved on before he was found.

Somehow, though, the image of his children ended up in the possession of Dr. John Francis Bourns, a 49-year-old Philadelphia physician who helped care for the wounded at Gettysburg. Months after wrapping up his volunteer work there, he decided to try to find out the identity of the children's father.

His efforts produced a wave of publicity that swept the North and became the People magazine cover story of its day.

It began quietly enough, on Oct. 19, 1863, when the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story under the provocative headline: "Whose Father Was He?"

"After the battle of Gettysburg," the article read, "a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot on the battlefield, where, wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands, tightly clasped, was an ambrotype containing the portraits of three small children ... and as he silently gazed upon them his soul passed away. How touching! How solemn! ..."

"It is earnestly desired that all papers in the country will draw attention to the discovery of this picture and its attendant circumstances, so that, if possible, the family of the dead hero may come into possession of it. Of what inestimable value will it be to these children, proving, as it does, that the last thought of their dying father was for them, and them only."

When the article appeared 140 years ago, newspapers were not able to publish photographs, and so the story, subsequently reprinted in dozens of newspapers and magazines throughout the North, had to rely on a detailed description of the children. The eldest boy, it said, was wearing a shirt made of the same fabric as his sister's dress. The younger boy in the middle was sitting on a chair, wearing a dark suit. It estimated their ages at 9, 7, and 5, only a year off the mark.

One of the reprints appeared in the American Presbyterian, a church magazine. That is where Philinda Humiston, living in Portville, N.Y., first saw word of the ambrotype and the dead soldier. She hadn't heard from Amos since weeks before Gettysburg, and when she saw the description of the children, she feared the worst.

But she couldn't be sure. So she contacted Bourns through a letter written by the town postmaster.

Bourns had printed copy upon copy of the children's picture to respond to inquiries, but so far, none of the people who had contacted him had turned out to be the right family. He replied to Philinda's inquiry as he had to the others.

And so it was that one mid-November day, four months after the battle, she opened the envelope from Philadelphia and knew for sure that she had been widowed for a second time, and that her children were fatherless.

The story might have ended there if it weren't for another idea Bourns had. He believed he could capitalize on the outpouring of sympathy toward the Humistons to raise funds for an orphanage in Gettysburg, to house the children of fallen Union soldiers.

And so a second publicity campaign began, appealing for donations.

Gifts came from the wealthy and the humble. Among the contributors was financier Jay Gould, one of the richest men in America. But Sunday school classes also pitched in to raise money, and, if they donated a sufficient amount, they could receive copies of a popular song called "Children of the Battlefield" by balladeer James Gowdy Clark, whose first stanza concluded with the lines, "and blame him not, if in the strife, he breathed a soldier's prayer: Father, shield the soldier's wife, and for his children care."

The orphanage became a reality in October 1866 and began with 22 soldiers' children ranging in age from 5 to 12. At its peak, the Homestead, as it was known, had just under 100 children.

Bourns even asked Philinda Humiston to move there with her children and help supervise the home, which gave her a means of support.

She agreed to the arrangement but loathed living in Gettysburg, according to Humiston biographer Mark H. Dunkelman. Possibly in order to escape, she accepted a marriage proposal from a retired preacher she had met only briefly as he passed through the town. She wed Asa Barnes in 1869 and moved to Massachusetts. Her children finished their schooling in Gettysburg and then joined her.

The orphanage itself would have a short, unhappy history. It closed just 12 years after it opened, crippled by two scandals.

The matron of Homestead, Rosa Carmichael, was accused of abusing the children and even shackling some of them in a dungeon she had created in the basement. And Bourns, the man who had made the Humistons famous and founded the orphanage, was accused of embezzling large sums of money from orphanage accounts.

Of the Humiston children, Frank was the only one to receive a higher education, attending Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania medical school. He became the honored town doctor of Jaffrey, N.H., had six children, and died at the age of 57 from complications of gallstone surgery.

Philinda, brokenhearted, died a few months later.

Fred Humiston became a traveling salesman and was the most carefree and peripatetic of the children. His home was in the Boston area, where he married and had two daughters, but his sales work took him from Canada to Florida. In his 50s, he began to suffer from heart disease, and he died in 1918, at age 59.

Alice lived with her mother for several years, ran a chicken farm for a short while, then began to move almost constantly. Finally she settled in Southern California, living near a namesake niece. In 1933, at the age of 76, Alice was sweeping her rooms in a Glendale home and talking with a neighbor when her skirt caught fire from an open heater. She was badly burned from ankles to waist and died two days later.

For whatever reason, the Humiston children almost never mentioned their childhood celebrity, and most of those who knew them had no idea they were once the "Children of the Battlefield."

Dunkelman thinks their moment in history may have been too tragic for them to want to relive it with anyone. "They put this celebrity under a blanket when they reached their adult years," he said.

Yet their story continues to be told because of a father's love that has survived the centuries.

In his last letter to Philinda, two months before his death, Amos expressed those feelings with his own sense of spelling and punctuation.

"... I got the likeness of the children and it pleased me more than eney thing that you could have sent me how I want to se them and their mother is more than I can tell I hope that we may all live to see each other again if this war dose not last to long."

This story was based on research by historian Mark H. Dunkelman, author of "Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier: the life, death and celebrity of Amos Humiston." Information specialist Steve Karlinchak also contributed. (by Mark Roth, Post-Gazette Assistant Managing Editor)

[manofdreds]

I envy you Mary, I've been to Gettysburg quite a few times but have never taken in the whole 3 days reenacting. (sigh) Maybe next year. I'll be with a friend who plays the violin and I'll have my geeeeeeetar. LOL. He's trying to get me to wear my uniform besides I'd rather be at Gettysburg than anywhere in Philly with the Live 8 concert, the whole city is shutting down. LOL. Wow Dawna, with this great info you should take the LBG test. I took it in 2004. I did pretty good for my first time.

[scone]

I dont know all the history of the units of the realtives I had there but do know that the 5th Alabama Battalion started and ended the big show. the 16th Vermont help plug the gapat the stone wall. the 5th new hampshire was in the weat field along with the 10th Georgia the 146th New youk was on little roundtop..

Relatives all over the field and all three days.
For those visiting Gettysburg this week Pay my respects for me.. I thank you you greatly.

Another great site is http://www.virtualgettysburg.com
Steven

Ps 1st sgt Dawna thank you for the post.

[VS on the belt plate]

Yes,early on Wednesday July 1,1863 the 4 company (most CS Infantry had ten companies) 5th Alabama Battalion was the skirmish line for Archer's Brigade. Archer's were in the vanguard and the first CS deployed in a brigade front.

Since the 5th was out in front of the brigade front they undoubtedly have to had fired some of the first shots. On the 3rd day they were amongst the last engaged on the Cemetary Ridge,where they lost their colors.

I'll have to re-read some of Fulton's Book for more details.

I recommend the book: "The ****ed Red Flags of the Rebellion" It details the stories of many of the CS flags lost in the Pennsylvania Campaign.

It was such an accomplishment to capture CS flags,the Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded to those Federals that did so.

Scone...I will pay your respects at Archer's Tablet(s) and the Alabama Monument.


P.S. Maybe I'll see some of ya'll there!



VS...etc

[scone]

I was talkting to a friend today as we toured Fort Negley in Nashville today and we may make our way to Gettysburg later on in the year will just have to see.. But will keep you posted.

We also visited the Old City Cemetery where Gen. Ewell is Buried today.

Regards, Steven