Company G: Epilog

Company G: Epilog

Of the Original 88 men from Snyder County who left in the fall of 1862, 14 never returned to the life they left behind. Four others received wounds severe enough to alter the quality of their lives, or returned with health so broken as to shorten their lives. But all who returned wore determined to get on with their lives.

The two most notable trends in the civilian lives of the Co. G veterans wore that every one of them married (of those not already married), and a number of them moved away from Snyder County, even though their families had been in the same area for two or more generations. Just how much impact the experiences of war may have had to do with it Is difficult to say, but within twenty years of muster out, the boys of Co. G could be found in the following places:

            Wiliamsport      East Lake, Florida

            Hazieton           Carey, Ohio

            Philadelphia      Mt Vernon, Washington

            Muncy Alma, Kansas

            Gowen City      Claypool, Indiana

            Danville            Harlan, Iowa

            Milton              Akron, Ohio

            Easton              Paris, Michigan

            Mazeppa          Lincoln, Nebraska

            Pine Hall           Elkhart, Indiana

            Ligonler            Juniata, Nebraska

            Elizabethvllle     Three Rivers, Michigan

            Sunbury            Oberlin, Kansas

            Russell, Kansas                        The Dakota Territory

It would appear they saw nothing, on their march through the sunny South that appealed to them since none of them relocated to any state through which they had marched. Or did they know they wouldn’t be welcome in those unreconstructed Southern hearts just yet?

The war experience did have an obvious influence in one interesting area -children born to these men after the war wore named after former commanders or President Lincoln. Nelson Byers had no sons so he named his daughter Nellie Sherman. Samuel Jarrett had William Tecumseh (and a George Washington) and Isaac Napp and Elias Miller both had a William Shermans. (No wonder they didn’t move south!). Levi Romig had Siegel McClellan, and Lumbard always did think big he had George Meade. Fred Ulrich had a William Slocum (his great-grandson told me he always wondered where that name came from), and John Riegel didn’t have enough kids to go around so he named one William Abraham Lincoln Riegel (he became a doctor), B.T. Parks had a son named Theodore Byers and one named Sumner (no, I didn’t make a mistake; Parks’s first enlistment was in the 35th PVI and during his time in the Penninsular Campaign his commander was Gen. Sumner). The most prudent one was Michael Schroyer, who named his only son after his future father-in-law who took him in and gave him a job.

Speaking of family, we know that a large number of the Co. G boys were related to each other, but ft started to get more complicated when they began to marry each others’ relatives.

Francis Wallace married Henry Shrawders sister and Harris Bower married Sam Jarrett’s sister.

Fred and James Ulnchs’ younger brother Charles married Capt. Davis’ daughter Laura. Calvin

Parks married Agnes Ryan, daughter of Capt. George Ryan (who died at the Battle of Fredncksburg) and when Parks was killed in a construction accident, she married James Ulnch.

Her sister Annie was already married to James’ brother Fred. Michael Schroyer married his landlord/boss’s daughter, and upon her death, he married her sister. James Smith married Jerry Moyer’s sister, Emma. L wonder how many of them met at the bean soups.

  

For these men who walked (marched?) over 5,000 miles through 8 states, fought a war with muzzle loaders, and read newspapers by lantern light and candle flame, it must have been truly incredible to see life change as they watched it happen. They saw a nation divide, and then reunite (with their help). In their lifetime, three presidents were assassinated, and one spoke to the nation for the first time over radio waves. They witnessed the invention of automobiles, telephones, radios and phonographs, not to mention electric light bulbs. They lived to witness two more wars - ones in which men fought from airplanes and tanks, using machine guns and poison gas. They saw life change so quickly and completely. Yet they lived long enough to know that people wouldn’t forget, as they grew old and passed on, what they had done for them and their country. And we’re not going to let change, are we?