Private Henry K. Atchison of Company G

     

Canning Jar by Henry K. Atchison
Circa 1860
Courtesy of  crockerfarm.com

From the 1890 Veterans Schedule
Special Census of Civil War Veterans

           About 20 or so members of the 85th Pennsylvania regiment suffered the amputation of an arm or leg during the war. One who did and survived was Henry K. Atchison of Company G, who suffered the loss of his right arm in 1864. Atchison did not suffer from a gunshot wound; his arm was not cut off by a doctor. His arm was instantly detached by an artillery shell while Atchison was sitting calmly in camp.
        Atchison was born in 1820 and was 41 years of age when he enlisted into the 85th Pennsylvania in 1861. Like his colonel, Joshus B. Howell, Atchison was born in New Jersey. His parents were Robert and Jane Parshall Atchison. While growing up Henry learned the pottery trade from his father. [Samuel Bates, History of Greene County, 762-3]
        At age 35, he moved to New Geneva, PA in Fayette County and continued his trade for the next six years. He lived in Butler County, PA before moving to Greene County just before the outbreak of the Civil War. He enlisted in Company G, a unit from Greene County, that eventually became part of Howell's 85th regiment.
        Atchison was nearing the end of his three-year enlistment when he was wounded. The regiment spent the summer stationed in the Bermuda Hundred peninsula of Virginia between the James and Appomattox Rivers south of Richmond.
       In August of 1864, they had just returned to their camp near Ware Bottom Church from a grueling week-long campaign north of the James River that culminated in the Second Battle of Deep Bottom that resulted in scores of casualties in the regiment.
      Just three days after their return, they were ordered to march to the Petersburg,VA front upon the orders of General Benjamin Butler of the Army of the James. When the regiment got there in late August, they prepared to attack the Petersburg defenses but the attack was called off. They instead were sent to Fort Morton, perhaps a mile from the famous Battle of the Crater where one month earlier, Union forces ignited a massive explosion beneath a Confederate position but failed in the follow-up assault to pierce the enemy position.

Fort Morton   LOC

        Fort Morton was perhaps less than a mile from the Crater across a valley, In the valley was a stream where soldiers from both sides would meet and exchange items during lulls in the shelling.
     Colonel Howell described the position in a letter to his family. "...here we are in front of the celebrated city of Petersburgh. My command is a mile and a quarter from the city. The steeples of the churches and the clock are plainly in sight of my forts. The celebrated Burnside mine and crater are directly in front of us. About 300 yards from us are two of my forts. We are under heavy fire of artillery and musketry the entire day and night --shell and ball (rifle and artillery) fly about headquarters with a 'perfect looseness.' An orderly's horse was shot this morning just in front of my quarters. A shell exploded over my quarters about 30 paces beyond it in front whilst I was asleep yesterday morning." [Book of John Howell and His Descendants, Volume II, 452]
     Indeed their position seemed to be perilous. Two privates, John Cairney and Joseph Banks, were struck with the same bullet from a Confederate sharpshooter as they were delivering food to the soldiers on the picket line.
   

LOC

      There are several versions of Atchison's wounding which occurred on September 1, 1864 that all basically tell the same story. The first comes from Sergeant M.L. Gordon who was a member of Atchison's company
         "We were right in front of the mine that had exploded a few weeks before. Here firing was going on almost all the time, day and night. Our camp was in easy range of the enemy's guns. One day I was standing in camp, talking to a friend named Myers Titus, when a cannon-ball came over, struck in a tent near us, where 'Skeety' Atkinson [sic] was writing, cut his arm off near the shoulder, and passed on between my friends and me as we were talking."  [M.L. Gordon, Experiences in the Civil War, 20]
        Regimental historian Luther S. Dickey recorded that, "...on September 1, Private Henry K. Atchison of Company G, while sitting in camp making our muster rolls, had an arm shot off by a solid shot or unexploded shell from the enemy's artillery." [Dickey, History of the Eighty-Fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 374]
        A soldier from another regiment in their brigade, Homer Plimpton of the 39th Illinois, mentioned Atchison's wounding in his journal. "...an old man of the 85th Pa. was struck in the shoulder by a fragment of a shell while making out company payroll in the captain's tent. The arm was so shattered that it hung merely by the nerve and artery and a small bridge of integument. It was removed at the shoulder joint and although he was sixty years of age [actually 44] he bids fair to make a good recovery." [The Civil War Journals of Col. Homer A. Plimpton, John L. Dodson, ed. 2012, p . 354]
      Atchison survived the wound. He was a prominent potter prior to the war. Several of his pre-war creations have recently been sold at online auctions for thousands of dollars.They can be seen here,  here and here.
       Atchison began receiving a government pension for the loss of his arm in 1874. By 1883, he was receiving a payment of $24 per month.
        After the war, he is still listed as a potter in the 1870 census. More likely is that he was either running the family business or training two of his sons in the trade. Sons James and Henry are listed as potters still living with their parents.

   

        Ten years later, Atchison is listed in the census as a "U.S. Storekeeper," [below] a government position that often went to soldiers who had suffered from amputations in the war. A third son, Charles,was now listed as a potter.

     

        Atchison died in 1893 at the age of 73 and is buried in the Monongahela Hill Cemetery in Greensboro, PA in Greene County.
 

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