Letter Home from Camp On Rapidan, September 22 1863

Camp   on the Rapidan Sept. 22nd 1863

Dear Mother,

Your very long looked for letter at length arrived and was received with great pleasure and satisfaction I am very pleased to hear that you are all well and that things are going so well. We are encamped in sight of the govnt Rebels. We are laying on one side of the Rapidan River and they are on the other. Our Pickets are within shooting distance of each other but since the first day they do not fire on each other. I was down to the river yesterday and there had a very good sight of the rebel soldier big as life on the other side of the stream which is not near as wide as Penns Creek and our pickets are on this side of it. They are very strongly fortified and will make a pretty good show of a fight but I have no doubt but that we will be able to drive them from the mountains upon which they are fortified: There is no telling when the fight will take place as we have had orders to be ready to fall in at a moments notice for the last week, but I think that a fight will very shortly take place. Well, I think that we are ready and will be more than a good match for them. You told me to obey Capt. Davis. There is no danger that I will disobey him I like the Captain very much. He is a brave and good officer and all the boys are very proud of him. He is ­­­­­­­­_________________ and is very kind to me. I am sixth corporal and soon will be fifth. Theodore Parks Is 2nd Lieut. I also like Nel Byers. He has been very kind to me and used me as well as could be expected by ones own brother, but I like the Captain best. I get letters most every week from Mrs. Henry Bright In Sunbury and: you can __________________ and 20 miles around. she has sent me paper and postage stamps. Several times I wrote a long letter to Lock Haven but did not get an answer. I do not know whether she got it or not. I would very much like to hear from her often and if she would answer my letters I would write regular to her. Tell her this in your next letter, give her my address and then she can send: them right on to me. Tell her to address J. .A Lumbard Co. G, 147th PV ft Brig. 2nd Div. 12th Army Corps, Washington, D.C..

I got the postage stamps and all the things you have even sent. Shirts, tea, chocolate, paper, envelopes, handkerchief and so forth. Leut. Byers has not arrived here yet, consequently I did not get the things you sent by him, but will when he comes. ______ told me to keep ____________________________________________________________________                  ­as there is no telling. If I live you will never suffer but should be killed

It might go very hard with you but we will hope for the best. It is all in the hands of the Ruler of the Universe and: as he wills it so it goes and we must think all is for the best. Should I fall it will not be in a Disgraceful manner _____________________________ ______________________that is right and just.  Just think what would have become of the people if we had not whipped the Rebel Army at Gettysburg. I seen dozens of

people turned out of their homes and their grain destroyed and houses burnt and in some instances men, women and children killed but we sure drove them out of the old Keystone state and soon hope to see them conquered. Don’t alarm yourself about my writing to that girl I have written my last letter and am satisfied. I just wanted to find out something and; when that is done, I am done also. I did not think she was such a darn fool as to blow about it but would keep it a secret since it has turned out as it did  I have written my last to her.

I must bring my letter to a close. Give my best respects to Mrs. Davis. Tell Katy to write another big letter like the last one. Tell me what

Became of______________________________________________________________

you can send; me some this week. Write soon. I remain your affectionate son

J. A. Lumbard

Ms. Davis

Madam

Please hand this to .Mrs. Mary Duck. I direct this letter in your name so that mother gets it immediately for fear that she might not send to the office. Am obliged.

Your soldier friend.

                                                                                J. A. Lumbard

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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?