From John Hennessy:
[What follows is due entirely to the generosity of John Hoptak, historian at Antietam National Battlefield, who has devoted much of his life to documenting and chronicling the wartime experiences of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry. Recruited from the coal regions of central Pennsylvania, the 48th was one of the Union army’s most interesting units–gaining fame as the excavators of the famous mine at Petersburg in July 1864. The regiment, part of the Union Ninth Corps, also saw heavy service elsewhere, including at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. John maintains a blog where he shares both his work and his insights. The value of his work goes beyond documenting the service of a single regiment; by doing that, he offers up one of the more compelling testaments to the human experience of war, as experienced by these men of Pennsylvania. Check out his site here–it’s worth a regular visit. John has shared with us–explicitly for Mysteries and Conundrums–some powerful material he has gathered about a member of that regiment who was killed on May 12, 1864. We are grateful.]
War takes its most powerful human form when it narrows from the panoramic to the personal, from broad vistas to individual faces.
Henry Ege of Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania was too young to fight when the war began. But, the war waited for him, grinding along for three years until he turned 18. In February 1864, he enlisted in Company I of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry. Too young to have built anything like a profession, his occupation was simply listed as a “laborer.” Blue-eyed, 5’5″ tall, the youthful boy soon found himself in the 48th’s camp near Annapolis, Maryland.
April 13, 1864
Dear Parents
I take my pen in hand to let you know that we are all well at present time and hoping that these few lines may find you enjoying the same state of happiness. I have not much news to tell you this time. I am out of money and would like if you would send me about five dollars as soon as you receive this letter. I would not have written for some money but we don’t know when we will get paid, a person feels lost if he has no money out here. General Burnside and Gen. U.S. Grant were here today, they are very fine looking Generals. The rest of the Orwigsburg boys are all well. I have no more news for this time. I had a letter from my school master C.H. Meredith. No more at present. Excuse bad writing for I had a bad pen.
Answer Soon
From Your Son
Henry J. Ege
[I am always struck by sons who in letters home to their parents signed their full name, plus initial, as if their parents wouldn’t know them otherwise.]
Weeks later, the 48th Pennsylvania and the rest of Burnside’s Ninth Corps took to the field. On May 12, 1864, amidst a grinding campaign whose intensity stunned even the hardest veterans, the 48th went into battle at Spotsylvania Court House. In the dank pre-dawn gloom, Henry J. Ege and the rest of his regiment and brigade advanced against the Confederate lines just east of the Muleshoe Salient. It was probably then that Henry fell with a gunshot wound to the head.
We do not know if he died instantly, or if he lingered. But when he did die, he was likely among friends, for his grave was marked. Word soon traveled to Schuylkill County–to Henry’s namesake father, a carpet-weaver, his mother Hannah, and five siblings–that Henry J. Ege Jr. had died.
Regarding the signature on the letter, it was of course a more formal age and he was addressing his elders in that letter.
Robert A. Mosher
Here is a little additional information on Ege’s battlefield burial –
On June 27, 1865, Colonel Charles P. Bird of the 1st United States Veteran Volunteers sent a list to his superiors, identifying Union graves he and his men found on the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battlefields. Bird and his men were responsible for the identification and marking of these graves.
According to Bird’s handwritten list, the grave of “H.J. Ege”, along with the graves of five other members of the 48th Penn., was found by Sergeant James J. Burrows of Company C, 1st USVV. The location given for the graves of Ege and his comrades was “Buried about 3/4 of a mile South East of McCoul’s House.”
Eric Mink
What a fantastic examination of this man’s story, with artifacts and specifics as to where he was buried. Wow!
If Col. Bird’s “south east” is taken as a true south east of 135 degrees from the front door of McCoull, then that places their burial right between the two entrenched lines near a creek above Heth’s Salient, exactly where he probably fell. In Frank O’Reilly’s map set, number 11 of 24, places the entrenched lines on either side of a wooded section with the creek bisecting it. Again, wow! Great post.
It strikes me as emblematic of that long-ago era that people would sign their full names in letters to their parents and stare grimly in portraits intended for their families, but also readily sleep next to a perfect stranger if beds were short. Just as throughout history, the people of the 1860s lived according to a standard of behavior that seemed natural to them but peculiar to their descendents.
Excellent, John.