After the Battle of Gettysburg Samuel was appointed by Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtain to oversee the exhumation of Union soldiers for . The land was part of the Gettysburg Battlefield, and the cemetery is within Gettysburg National Military Park . Michael E. Ruane is a general assignment reporter who also covers Washington institutions and historical topics. This week's article is by Gettysburg Connection contributor Jenine Weaver. BEATY - TWINAM, Married on the 27th ult by the Rev. And another unknown soldier was found with a handkerchief spread over his face. Of the 137 sets of remains sent to Raleigh and honored with a dedication ceremony on October 1 were 45 soldiers buried at Camp Letterman and 27 buried at the Jacob Hanky Farm on the Mummasburg Road, which served as a field hospital for Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes Division. There were 287 such packages, he reported. Weaver agreed to forgo the interest if the original principal of $6,356 could be paid. His efforts to get paid for his hard work proved to be nearly as difficult. Basil Biggs was nothing if not industrious. . Samuel Weaver reported 3,512 total Union bodies "taken up and removed to the Soldiers' National Cemetery" October 27-March 18.: . Soon enough, though, the challenge of proper burial . HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. While the Union dead were quickly moved to their new resting place in the cemetery, the Confederate dead were left in their battlefield graves. Newspaper: Sentinel: Died, Saturday night last in the 39th year of his age, Samuel Weaver of Straban Twp., 18 Oct 1820, Gettysburg, Adams, PA. 1. G.D. Smith, of the 4th Maine, was found with his false tooth. RPI Calculations NOTE: These are only projected participants. Acting under the authority of an 1862 act of Congress, the War Department began torebury the Union dead into what became known as national cemeteries. payments Pennsylvania Philadelphia position present President Railroad received reported represent resignation resolved Robert salary Samuel schools Secretary secure September served shares 10 shares shares 20 signed specie . in History and a Certificate in Revolutionary Era Studies. Gettysburg Compiler August 18, 1896. He was eventually paid $5. There is absolutely no money to get and no legal steps by which you could secure it if there were is written in thick strokes. Follow him onTwitterandFacebook. He was married for 55 year When Samuel W. Weaver was born on 21 January 1862, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, Jacob Boger Weaver, was 29 and his mother, Catherine Carroll, was 24. This unfortunate result of the battle wouldnt be Biggs only encounter with dead soldiers in Gettysburg. In fact, she was downright dismissive. led by local merchant Samuel Weaver. As early as 1865, his father had started to get inquiries from Southern families seeking help finding the remains of loved ones killed at Gettysburg. Genealogy for Samuel Clay Weaver (1910 - 1916) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, with a casualty list more than 40,000 long. 02/28/66 - married a Flenner), Jacob Ross (b. In a letter written to Mrs. K.L. He was the second of seven children born to the couple. The visit must have proved satisfactory to all parties, for in February 1872 Weaver supplied Dimmock with a list of the remains he intended to collect and apparently suggested that the ladies apply to the state of Pennsylvania for financial assistance with the project. Thats exactly what our investigation bore out. Soldiers were generally buried where they fell, and any farmers field was likely to contain a grave. Download The Irish at Gettysburg (Civil War Series) PDF Complete book of The Irish at Gettysburg (Civil War Series) can be found at onlin. Why didnt Weaver sue the HMA for the money he was owed? Notations like east of Mr. E. Pitzers house in meadow under peach tree and under walnut tree at bend of the road on Mr. Crawfords farm 3 miles from Gettysburg on Marsh Creek are common. In some cases, skeletons wearing tattered Union uniforms lay in plain sight. Dr. Rufus Benjamin Weaver was a professor of human anatomy at Hahnemann Medical College and a pioneer in the field of anatomy. Jones to see you on this subject., It is not known whether Egerton received a reply from any of these parties. In the months and years after the titanic Civil War battle here in July 1863, Weaver was part of a vast and grisly enterprise in which the bodies of thousands of soldiers, first Union and then Confederate, were exhumed and moved. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. He was living in Adams County, PA when he died. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. But it wasnt until the early 1870s, after Weavers death, that his son, Rufus B. Weaver, a Philadelphia physician, began the formal removal of Gettysburgs Confederate dead. During this long interval, I have been waiting and hoping most patiently, as I did for twenty years prior to the present Associations assumption of the responsibility for the debt. He had been suffering for some time from heart disease, but was able to go around, and to do some little jobs of work on his lot. Having returned to find his farm ransacked, he realized there was a job to do that nobody else wantedexhuming bodies hastily buried during and immediately after the battle and ensuring that they were returned home or reburied in a more dignified way. For three hot summers, Rufus Weaver toiled to retrieve Confederate soldiers remains from crude Gettysburg battlefield graves. The obituary says nothing, however, about his selfless efforts to return the Confederate dead at Gettysburg to their native soil, efforts that went largely unrewarded. The ladies of the South sprang into action, and before the end of the year the Ladies Memorial Associations of Charleston, Raleigh, Richmond, and Savannah were raising funds to pay for the exhumation, transfer, and reburial in their native soil of the fallen soldiers from their states. This letter was written in pencil, and the thickness with which some words were written conveys the extent of her irritation. Weaver reported that 979 of the bodies he exhumed were nameless.. Creighton quotes a Gettysburg resident who witnessed their effort: Words would fail to describe the grateful relief that this work has brought to many a sorrowing household! . 14 Gettysburg College 36.0 15 Thiel College 19.5 16 Waynesburg University 18.5 . Basil Biggs toiled that soil as his own and, when opportunity presented itself, proved, once again, that he could do right by the nation and his family. In a December 25, 1878, letter written apparently to Mrs. Brown, Egerton complained that she had written you from time to time for the past three years on this subject without one word of reply and informed her that she had asked Stiles and Judge J.H.C. The first states to raise money to reinter their Gettysburg dead were Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and in the spring and summer of 1871 Weaver exhumed and shipped 137 Confederates to Raleigh, 74 to Charleston, 101 to Savannah, and a few to Maryland, along with a few individual officers who were claimed by family. In a moral respect, he wrote to Egerton in April 1889, the debt is one of honor, so sacred that any individual or organization should blush for shame one would think to permit it to go unpaid. In 1863, Samuel Weaver carefully exhumed thousands of Union bodies from Gettysburg battlefield for burial in the new National Cemetery. 03/20/60 - married Andrew Fritz), Samuel David (b. Others, when solicited, claimed to have no memory of any such obligations. One of the more mysterious characters in the # daystodedication story is Samuel Weaver. Originally, the Hollywood Memorial Association intended only to claim the Virginia dead, but during the winter of 1871-1872 they decided to expand their project to claiming all the remaining Confederate dead from Gettysburg and began raising funds to meet Weavers charge of $3.25 per body. As the battle approached, they werent taking any chances with Gen. Robert E. Lees rebels, some of whom had seen the invasion as a tempting opportunity to reverse the flow of the Underground Railroad and send runaways, refugees and free black peoplewhomever they foundback down South and straight into slavery. FOR SALE! #70 Mark Samuel #131 Taylor Weaver #46 Delaware Valley: W: FALL: 3:41: 141 #70 Mark Samuel #358 Michael Inks #110 Penn State Behrend: W: TF5: 16 - 0 2:12: 141 #70 Mark Samuel #3 Kyle Slendorn #8 Stevens Tech: L: MD: 16 - 5: 141 #70 Mark Samuel #53 Levi Englman #72 Ferrum: L: DEC: 9 - 6: 141 #70 Mark Samuel In today's post, Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Deb Novotny describes some highlights of the life of Samuel Weaver, one of . To that end, the Sons of Good Will put up the money to buy half an acre, which, to echo Lincolns Gettysburg Address, would provide for black soldiers a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live. They called it theSons of Good Will Cemetery, which, over time, came to be known as Lincoln Cemetery. Many news organizations assigned reporters to follow the battles and skirmishes, among them prominent New York Times correspondent Samuel Wilkeson, whose nineteen-year-old son was killed on the first day of battle at Gettysburg; Thomas Morris Chester (1834-1892) of the Philadelphia Press, the war's only African American reporter; and Uriah Hunt Painter (1837-1897), a writer for the . by Rodney Kennedy . Deavere Smith always knew she could claim all of American history as hers, but now she knows that her ancestor was a pivotal actor at the center of one of our most important chapters. According to a study of the aftermath of the battle by historian Gregory A. Coco, a Gettysburg teenager named Leander Warren, who ferried bodies and pine coffins in a freight wagon, had vivid memories of the work: Many friends of the dead soldiers came here to witness the disinterment of their loved ones and the new burial in the national plot. So in 1866, just a year after the end of the Civil War, Biggs and others formed the Sons of Good Will, a benevolent association rallying around the cry We must find a place to bury our dead, according to a June 27, 2013, report by Cara Anthony in the Frederick News-Post. If Weaver ever received another copper from the Maury estate or the HMA, there is no record of it. In June 1873, however, Colonel W. C. Carrington, a member of the Southern Cross Brotherhood in Richmond (a fraternal organization of former Confederate officers), informed Egerton that Mrs. Brown had told him that she had enough Gettysburg funds to finish removing all our dead from that point but they were in the hands of a banker who will finally pay out but [has] suspended and thus locked the money up for the present. Carrington told Egerton that Weaver could safely rely on eventual payment of all due on that score.. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! Biggs must have been very good with animals, historian Gabor Boritt writes in his 2006 book The Gettysburg Gospel. It was a bloodbath. As always, you can find more Amazing Facts About the Negro onThe Root, and check back each week as we count to 100. Years later, in an article in the Cleveland Gazette on June 18, 1892, a Mr. Scotland told of his encounter with Biggs while visiting Gettysburg: He is a veterinary surgeon and is reputed to be the wealthiest Afro-American in Gettysburg. Hanover photographer Peter S. Weaver, who operated a studio on Baltimore Street, recorded this view dated February 6, 1864. Pennsylvania, USA Death: Aug. 31, 1807 Adams County Pennsylvania, USA. Several years after the war, perhaps in 1868 or 1869 [John] Bachelder came upon Basil Biggs, a farmer whose property included the Copse of Trees, who was busy cutting the trees down. He sent another 256 in June and a final 73 in early October. Troops, Gettysburg, PA" in the field of Pickett's Charge. The Union army had no regular burial details and no grave registration units, Harvard historian Drew Gilpin Faust wrote in her 2008 book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.. Appalling post-battle scenes had prompted Pennsylvania Gov. William S. Hodgdon, of the 20th Maine, had a fish hook with him. Weaver and his men, led by a free black subcontractor named Basil Biggs, dug up 3,354 Northern soldiers and moved them to the new cemetery from Oct. 27, 1863, to March 18, 1864, according to Weavers official report. . Dr. Moses D. Hoge thanked God that our sons and brothers had been returned from their graves among strangers.. During that summer of 1871, the family of Lt. Col. David Winn of the 4th Georgia contracted with Weaver to collect and return his body, which had been buried on the David Blocher Farm. In 1889, Weaver wrote to his friend, Ada Egerton: Over 16 years have now passed away and today over twelve thousand dollars (including interest) is due me without a line from any of those interested in the debtdebt which you have often truly said is one of Sacred honor. Weaver certainly had a right to be aggrieved, for $12,000 in 1889 is the equivalent of more than $350,000 today. But by 1860, two years after he had settled there, the United States was on the brink of civil war. These 7 Foreigners Helped Win the American Revolution. Those were the last payments he would receive. The routes were treacherous and rife with slave catchers and informants. Weaver was receptive to Southern pleas but was killed himself, ending his reign of compassion here on earth. He was born in Iowa and raised in a remote cabin with his parents and siblings, and he was indoctrinated with Christian fundamentalist and white supremacist views; his mother, the religious head of the family . A dozen more were removed from the cemetery at Camp Letterman, the large general hospital managed by the Army of the Potomacs medical corps, located on the York Road east of Gettysburg. By 1873, he had exhumed and shipped from Gettysburg the remains of more than 3,000 Southern soldiers to Richmond, Raleigh, Savannah and Charleston. I expostulated with him, wrote Bachelder, about the trees historic value, but Biggs, who had lived west of Gettysburg during the battle and had helped re-bury Union dead to the Soldiers National Cemetery after the battle, was unmoved. Most were unrecognizable.. Leander Warren, who helped carry the bodies from Gettysburg when he was 13 years old, recalled this arrangement in a 1936 article in the Gettysburg Star and Sentinel: Basil Biggs, colored, of Gettysburg, was given the contract for disinterring the bodies on the field. D. McConaughy, Mr. Samuel Beaty to Miss Maryann Twinam. Among his greatest accomplishments was his complete dissection of the . Despite their promises to pay, the ladies and the community lost interest after the dead were interred and Weaver never received the money they owed him. It would become one of the busiest Confederate hospital stations during that devastating battle. In making the dead and their families whole, Biggs saw a way to make his family whole. Laboring under the shadow of the Soldiers National Cemetery, Creighton writes, the Sons of Good Will struggled to find and maintain a place to bury black veterans.. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Learn more about merges. The UDC was a product of the 1890s, and its membership and influence were beginning to eclipse that of the older memorial associations. By then Southern social organizations in several cities had started lobbying and raising funds to return to the South Confederate soldiers buried at Gettysburg. Every stone at Gettysburg contains a story of valiancy and suffering. The historic Battle of Gettysburg was the result. We encourage you to research and examine . Transcription: Well never know the internal story of Basil Biggs and his black burial detail, for even the most disturbing photographs, Creighton writes, fail to capture what these men did with their emotions as they sorted through peoplewhether they grew inured to the dead and learned to work mechanically, or whether the smell and sight of humans turned from flesh to dust exacted a lasting psychological toll., What we do know is, thanks to Biggs and his men, Lincoln was able to deliver his Gettysburg Address in front of orderly rows of graves in the new national cemetery. 2. It was an enormous task, and most of the bodies ended up in shallow mass graves. The Battle of Gettysburg, which we all remember from school, raged from July 1 to July 3, 1863. But what had spurred Biggs to leave Maryland? Weaver began work in April 1872, writing to Mrs. Egerton, The farmers are now getting their land ready for corn and I want to do all I can before the fields are planted. On June 13 a first shipment of 708 remains was sent to Richmond. He was contracted to be the superintendent for the exhuming of the bodies of union soldiers on the battlefield. By this time, Egerton was more than 70 years old and Weaver was 60. Once again, the ladies of the HMA reacted angrily, demanding the UDC cease its efforts in that regard because the matter is entirely between the HMA and Dr. Weaver. Their reaction might have stemmed from the growing rivalry between the ladies of the HMA and the newer, larger organization. I touched on those men briefly in a previous column in this series, but in investigating the family tree of the brilliantly talented professor, playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smithfor Episode 3 ofFinding Your Roots: Season 2 (airing tomorrow at 8 p.m. Husband of Ann Jackson married [date unknown] [location unknown] Husband of Elizabeth (Bygrave) Weaver married 1625 in Jamestown, James City, Virginia, United . A white Gettysburg resident, F.W. Did he wonder whether any of the men he came across had owned (or kidnapped) slaves? In the process of examining the bodies, he often found things the men had been carrying. This reference book provides information on 24,000 Confederate soldiers killed, wounded, captured or missing at the Battle of Gettysburg. Thats right: The actual work of digging up and transporting the cadavers was farmed out to Basil Biggs as subcontractor, and Biggs then hired several black men to tackle the monumental task. (Catharine was born on 13 Jul 1787 in , , PA, died on 5 Apr 1834 in Straban Twp., Adams, PA 4 and was buried in Gettysburg: St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Adams . From there, the escaped slaves would flee to Canadaand freedom. He had a crew of eight or ten negroes in his employ.. The agreed-upon price was $3.25 for each set of remains. Every now and then I read in the papers of work going on in raising money for the erection of monuments etc. I not only superintended the general work on the field, but personally did the most important part myself, viz picking up the bones for, in the absence of boxes, it required one with Anatomical Knowledge, to gather all the bones; (which workmen could not do) and, regarding each bone important and sacred as an integral part of the skeleton, Ive moved them so that none might be left or lost., Had I followed the 8 or 10 hour system for a days work, it would have taken twice as long to have completed the work.My custom was by, and very often before, daybreak to start out on the field with my men and would not reach home, with precious freight, until dark, & after supper I would arrange, in proper place and order, and Label every remain or lot of remains, and then by the time I had written out the record etc. She earned her M.A. In total Weaver sent 3,320 Confederate soldiers to the south for burial; 40 bodies were left in Sherfys peach orchard and hundreds more could not be located, having been washed away or obliterated in the years after the battle. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures. An old photograph shows Weaver standing by the grave with an open book in his hand. There the graves of soldiers who fought to preserve the Union were protected, cared for, and decorated on the new holiday known as Memorial Day. Its a rare and striking photograph that shows Weaver and his men exhuming some of the bodies for transfer to the National Cemetery, according to Gettysburg photo historian William A. Frassanito. As early as 1865, his father had started to get inquiries from Southern families seeking help finding the remains of loved ones killed at Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg marked the turning point of the Civil War. After the elder Weavers death, Southerners turned to his son. This unit was assigned to the Army of the Potomac in 1861 and fought the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in battles leading up to Gettysburg, including the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Southern mothers still had no sons to bury. The third result is Samuel A Weaver age 80+ in Pittsburgh, PA in the Upper Lawrenceville neighborhood. What most of us werent taught about Gettysburg, though, is that the job of burying those bodies fell to African Americans who, having suffered personally as a result of the battle, formed burial details in aid of its commemoration. The series focuses on the African American experience in and around Gettysburg, traveling back to the 1780s and expanding to the present time, each article providing descriptions of local African American people and events that shaped Gettysburg and Adams County. At Gettysburg, Weaver found as many as 70 Union soldiers in one trench and 150 rebels in another. All the lawyers in the land cannot wipe out the sacred obligation imposed on the Association for its liquidation.. He set them aside in special packages for relatives or friends to claim later. Gettysburg, however, remained a concern because distance kept former Confederates from easily claiming the bodies. Perhaps it was nothing more than the approach of another years end that made him want to resolve this matter at last. Family and friends can send flowers and condolences in memory of the loved one. Many of the photographs taken during the cemetery's consecration ceremonies have been attributed to the Weavers. A Ladies Memorial Association was established in almost every major city in the South, its purpose being to care for the graves of Confederate dead. With great ceremony, they were reburied in the new Stonewall Cemetery in Winchester, Va., dedicated in 1866. Did he grow numb by the process? Biggs June 13, 1906, obituary in he Gettysburg Compiler reveals his most impressive accomplishment of all. A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead, construct the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Civil Discourse: A Blog of the Civil War Era. The women appealed to a man named Samuel Weaver, who had been responsible in 1863 for transferring the remains of fallen Union soldiers into the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg. Horiuchi said he was aiming . Did he talk about it with his family or keep it shut up inside? Walking through the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Im always struck by how neat and orderly the rows of headstones appear, where a century and a half before, the soldiers now resting peacefully fought and died during one of the fiercest, and most fabled, military campaigns ever waged on American soil. He explained that I suggested to him that if he cut them, then he was only getting for them their value as rails, whereas, if he allowed them to stand to mark the spot he would eventually get ten times as much for them. Biggs was a shrewd businessman as well as a successful farmer and this line of argument worked. Research genealogy for Samuel Weaver of Gettysburg, Adams, Pennsylvania, USA, as well as other members of the Weaver family, on Ancestry. Ada was active in efforts to provide aid to Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout in Southern Maryland during the war, and after the war was very involved with the Southern Relief Society. In early 1889, however, Weaver urged Egerton to make another effort. He has been a general assignment reporter at the Philadelphia Bulletin, an urban affairs and state feature writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a Pentagon correspondent at Knight Ridder newspapers. Crews separated Union and Confederate soldiers into lines for trench burial on the field. JAMES H. LANE Gettysburg 1911 Civil War Portrait RRC Panel RARE! It took dock workers 21 / 2 hours to unload them, Mitchell wrote. Dimmock that you should be the go between them and me, feeling that her involvementone of their own, he called herwould make them more comfortable in their dealings with him, a stranger. Reports that Gettysburg farmers were plowing over the graves of Confederate soldiers heightened anxiety about the situation and by 1870 several LMAs and southern states had raised money to claim their Confederate dead from Gettysburg. They petitioned influential members of the legislature, and Board member Joseph Bryan presented their claim before the state Finance Committee. The confluence of ten major roads of the period caused it to be attractive to travelers and settlers alike. Bare trees and a schoolhouse are in the background, along with several children who are watching. Round 3 - Levi Englman (Ferrum) won by decision over Evan Lindner (Dec 7-2) . He went on to say that I have sent South all the State lists and none but you, North Carolina and South Carolina have done anything.It seems very strange to me that Virginia, who is so near and whose known list is not so great as yours does not recall her dead. He went on to say that if all could see what I have seen and know what I know, I am sure that there would be no rest until every Southern father, brother and son would be removed from the North.. Index cards for these men are not in NARA microfilm publication M554, Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations From the State of Pennsylvania (136 rolls) because the cards were never received by NARA. of Gettysburg as agent to purchase a site for "The Soldiers National Cemetery." His list, however, had passed into the hands of his son, Rufus. Weaver had completed the work promised, and had upheld his fathers legacy, but unfortunately the Hollywood Memorial Association never raised enough funds to pay him for the job. Meet the Man Whos Made It His Lifes Work, A Clash of Confederate Personalities at Gettysburg, An Infantryman Returned to the Jungle to Look for His Friends Remains, https://www.historynet.com/hundreds-of-confederates-were-buried-in-gettysburgs-fields-this-mans-task-was-to-send-them-home/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot. Samuel Weaver is the shorter person on the far right with the long beard and notebook in his hand. Reporter covering local news, Washington institutions and historical topics. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing? In her bookThe Colors of Courage: Gettysburgs Forgotten History, Margaret Creighton notes that Biggs began working for others at the age of four. Allen Guelzo, author of Gettysburg: The Last Invasion,identifies him as a free black teamster in Baltimore., Although much about Biggs early years remains unclear, it is certain that in 1858 he moved his family from the slave state of Maryland to the free state of Pennsylvaniato a little town called Gettysburg. The son of Samuel & Elizabeth Ann (Reinhard) Weaver, in 1860 he was an artist living in Gettysburg, Adams County, Pennsylvania, but the 1863 draft registration lists him as a visitor to Hanover, York County, where he apparently lived the bulk of his remaining life. The wagons were draped in black bunting, and were accompanied by more than a thousand former Confederate soldiers, among them Generals George Pickett, John Imboden, and James Lane, as well as bands playing mournful dirges. I then saw the body, with all the hair and all the particles of bone, carefully placed in the coffin.. Bieseckers bid, according to Creighton, was a little over a dollar and a half per body. Once he got the contract, what did Biesecker do? The majority of those remains were retrieved from the Rose Farm, across which Brig. Two weeks later, Weaver wrote Egerton again, asking her to inquire among her friends in Richmond if there was anything more to be had from the Maury estate. Union dead went to the new cemetery on Cemetery Hill or to homes in the North. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Some of them had been deposited in clay, or in wet soil, and still looked like men. china beach vietnam 1968,