A Mystery Solved? Part 3

Who are they?  These dead men.  To Alexander Gardner and most of us who have viewed this image over the years they are tragic and grotesque props on a terrible stage.  We view them with revulsion but also curiosity.  Yet we are emotionally detached.   For nearly 150 they have remained anonymous Union soldiers killed in the Battle of Gettysburg.  With no unit designation or names there is no personal connection.  But every man in this image had a name and probably a family somewhere in Pennsylvania or New York that on the day Alexander Gardner took these images waited anxiously for word about their loved one they knew had probably been in the great battle.    

    I have searched to find someone who might have described this area, or might have been a member of the burial detail that is visible in two of the series of images.   My search discovered one man who passed through this ground or very close to it.  He was Edwin M. Gearhart, a soldier in the 142^nd Pennsylvania, which occupied the right flank of Colonel Chapman Biddle’s brigade’s position on eastern McPherson’s Ridge [although the 151^st Pennsylvania fought to the 142^nd’s right they were detached and fought independent of the brigade line].  Gearhart was wounded west of the Seminary and captured on July 1 after the action near the Seminary ended.  His captor led him to the Confederate rear with some other prisoners.  Their path took them near the area which Gardner photographed four days later.  Gearhart recalled; “I was surprised to see so few dead and wounded rebels as I passed back over the ground but there was plenty of ours scattered around.  As we passed over the ridge where our men had first stood in line it could easily be traced by the blue line of fallen men of whom were lying right on their backs or upon their bellies, in fact they lay in all kinds of positions.”  [In the Years of ’62 to ’65: Personal Recollections of Edwin R. Gearhart A Veteran, Vertical File V6-PA142, GNMP] The line that Gearhart describes can be discerned in the photograph above, extending from the soldiers in the foreground down toward the burial detail in the distance.

    The burial detail that appears in some of Gardner’s images from this series might be from Gearhart’s regiment.  I could find no evidence that the 20^th NYSM or 121^st Pennsylvania were able to send out burial details to the July 1 battlefield, but the 142^nd Pennsylvania definitely did.   In a history of the regiment, Horatio N. Warren, a captain at Gettysburg, related that the officers and men of each company of the regiment “devise all means in their power to render some assistance to our wounded and to bury our dead comrades with as much respect and love as it is possible for us to show them under the existing circumstances.  Visiting Seminary Ridge [actually eastern McPherson’s Ridge], where we were first engaged on the morning [afternoon] of the first, we find our dead lying where they fell, and their upturned faces black from the burning rays of the scorching sun, so that it was with much difficulty we were enabled to distinguish one from the other.” [Horatio N. Warren, The Declaration of Independence and War History (Buffalo: The Courier Co., 1894, 32] In Gardner’s photograph we can see the upturned faces, black and swollen from the burning rays of the sun.  That identification was difficult is borne out by the list of killed in the 20^th NYSM and 121^st Pennsylvania.  Only 2 of the 39 men killed in action in these two regiments on July 1 lay as identified burials in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery today.      

    In my first post on this series of photographs I mentioned that I had encountered circumstantial evidence long ago that Confederate soldiers had removed useable clothing from Union dead, including pants and uniform coats.  But when I examined this more closely in the research for these posts I found no evidence to support this so far as the first day’s battlefield was concerned.  Captain Warren made no mention of the dead being stripped of uniforms, and neither did 1^st Corps Artillery Chief, Colonel Charles Wainwright, who observed the burials on July 5.  [Allan Nevins, ed., A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright (Gettysburg, PA: Stan Clark Military Books, 1962), 254]  

    Knowing what units the men in these images belonged allows us to make an informed guess as to whom some of them are.  One might be Private Amos Treat, of Company D, 20^th New York State Militia.  Treat served with his brother Daniel.  He last words were reportedly “stick to the colors, boys,” before he was shot in the head and chest and killed.  Not far from Treat, Private Reuben C. Van Luven, also of Company D, was killed next to his best friend, Hugh Donihue.  His last words were “just break the news to mother.”  Treat was 22 while Van Luven was only 20 [Travis W. Busey & John W. Busy, Union Casualties at Gettysburg (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011).   

    Sergeant Samuel C. Miller, not yet 19 years old, likely lies among the men in the distance of Gardner’s view looking south.  Miller was in Company E.  He was probably a bright

Sgt. Samuel C. Miller, History of the 121st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers

young man because he was mustered into the army as a sergeant on August 15, 1862, four days after his 18^th birthday.  He was working in his father’s store in Philadelphia when he decided to volunteer for service in the summer of 1862.  How he died on July 1 is not recorded, but the history of his regiment recalled that he was “beloved and respected by all who knew him.” 

    1^st Sergeant William McCoy, age 23, also enlisted from Philadelphia, a week before Sam Miller.   He too must have possessed leadership potential for he was mustered in as the 1^st Sergeant of Company C.  As 1^st Sergeant, McCoy’s position in the line of battle was on the right of his company in the second rank.  If Company C were near the right flank of the part of the regiment that attempted to change front and meet the flank attack

1st Sergeant William McCoy, History of the 121st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers

of the 52^nd North Carolina, McCoy would have been in a greatly exposed part of his company’s line.  His company commander, Captain J. Frank Sterling, wrote on July 2, that the fire upon the regiment was so severe, that “at one time it appeared to me the majority of our regiment was on the ground.”  Wherever McCoy was on the line he drew the attention of those around him by his courage.  In his after action report for the regiment, Major Alexander Biddle, cited McCoy as one of the enlisted men of “whom the men speak of as deserving of high commendation.”  McCoy too, probably lies among the dead in the image above, his body now unrecognizable after four days under the July sun.  Soon after the photographer captured this image the sergeant would be interred with the others as another unidentified Union soldier.   

Scott Hartwig, Supervisory Historian