85th PA Virtual Cemetery

Fayette County Soldiers Memorial Oak Grove Cemetery Uniontown, PA Dedicated 1867. 
(Photo from The American Legion)

Using information from findagrave.com, I have created a virtual cemetery for the men who served in the 85th Pennsylvania. It presently includes 768 of the approximate 1100 men who served from 1861 to 1865. They are listed in alphabetical order regardless of their company or their rank.

Thanks to all the findagrave contributors from all over the country whose hard work cataloging cemeteries and burial records have made this virtual cemetery possible. For some regimental members, I have taken my own headstone photos in southwestern Pennsylvania which I have not yet uploaded to findagrave.

I only signed up a few weeks ago and will add this information in the near future. Some of the virtual cemetery entries include burial information but no headstone photos. Also, some headstones have become illegible and were not included at all in the cemetery compilations.

If the headstone clearly includes "85th PA," it was easy to find and include. For some of the men, ensuring they were members of the 85th PA was more challenging. Some headstones include a different regiment.

Keep in mind some soldiers went home on medical leave, recovered, and then rejoined into a different regiment. Some of the men have "188th PA" on their headstone. This is the regiment that the men who were still in the 85th PA in 1865 were rolled over into for their last few months of service.

I used various research tools to verify that the person was actually in the 85th PA.
These included:

1. military pension records

2. Pennsylvania veteran burial cards

3. the name of the wife or other family members

4. biographical information provided online by descendants

5. biographical information provided in 18th century books

6. obituaries

7. census records

8. period newspaper articles

9. the place of burial Volume 3 of my work will include two lists.

One is a chronological list of all 250 or so men who died during the war, including the date of death and whether or not the death was due to a battle wound or a disease. A second chronological list will be for nearly all of the rest of the men who died after the war, from 1865 to 1944, including the date of death and the county or state.

I hope you enjoy the virtual cemetery and provide feedback.

Information about "Such Hard and Severe Service"

     My book will be published in three volumes through Monongahela Books of Morgantown, WV.
One can visit the publisher's blog for updated titles.  Volume 1 is now on sale. It covers the years 1861 to 1863.  This volume actually begins before the Civil War with a chapter on the Whiskey Rebellion. I wanted to contrast that uprising, which took place in the home area of men of the 85th Pennsylvania in the 1790's, with  the secession of southern states two generations later.

Photo from Pamplin Park, VA

     Civil War events covered in Volume 1 include the organization of the regiment in Uniontown, PA; building fortifications around Washington, DC in 1861-2; the Peninsula Campaign including the battles at Williamsburg and Seven Pines; guarding Union territory at Suffolk, VA; the Goldsboro Expedition in North Carolina in late 1862, and the siege of Charleston, South Carolina in 1863. Also in this volume is a chapter on the family letters of Corporal Davis Himmeger of Company E.
     Volume 2, which will be available later in 2019, will cover the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, including the battles of Ware Bottom Church and Second Deep Bottom; Fort Gregg near Petersburg; Lee's Retreat and eventual surrender at Appomattox Court House; a chapter on regimental reunions between 1871 and 1928. Included in this volume is a chapter on the diary of Captain Richard W. Dawson of Company I.
   
Volume 3, which will be available in 2020, will include alphabetized biographies of the men in regiment. including their war service and postwar lives.

"Till then the war had seemed a grand play"

    The accompanying article is from the front page of the Lincoln Republican newspaper in Lincoln, KS on May 27, 1886. This was within a few days of the 24th anniversary of the Battle of Seven Pines.
   The article does not include the author's name. If it were written by a member of the 85th PA living in Kansas, my guess would be Pvt. Jacob Deffenbaugh. He is the only confirmed member of Company I who moved to Kansas after the war. Deffenbaugh was a cabinet maker and cooper who moved his family to Kansas sometime between 1870 and 1887. Of course, we do not know if the article were first published in another newspaper and picked up by the Republican, so there is a possibility the author was not a Kansan.
   What is most striking about the article is the writer's description of seeing a dead comrade on the battlefield for the first time. The "Syndey H" that he refers to was 21-year old Corporal James Sydney Hackney.
    The regiment had experienced death prior to Seven Pines. Some had died from diseases. Meanwhile, Sergeant Daniel Miller had been grievously wounded three weeks earlier at Williamsburg, VA. He lingered in a hospital and did not die until after the Battle of Seven Pines.
     Another member of the regiment had written that the unit had to step over the bodies of dead Union soldiers on their way to getting into position at Williamsburg.
     Still, the writer conveys the startling realization upon viewing Hackney's lifeless body that a personal friend had now perished. He was shocked and sobered by the experience.
    The writer writes wistfully that Hackney will have no one to place flowers on his grave. At the time of the Battle of Seven Pines, early in the war, the Union did not have a system to bury their dead in military cemeteries near the battlefield in a timely fashion under a marked headstone. Hackney was probably buried on the battlefield a few days later in either an unmarked or poorly marked grave which became lost to family and friends.
    Deffenbaugh, meanwhile, the potential writer, played a key role at Seven Pines. Historian James Hadden, in his brief history of the 85th PA, wrote that the flag bearer "was removed [after suffering a hand wound] and Jacob Deffenbaugh seized the flag and bravely bore it aloft throughout the engagement."

Original History of the 85th PA (1915)

Burying the dead at Seven Pines with the Twin Houses in the background

The official history of the 85th PA regiment was published in 1915 and was written by Luther Samuel Dickey. It can be found online here.

Dickey (1846-1926) had served in the Union army, enlisting at age 16 into Company C of the 103rd PA regiment from the Pittsburgh area. He later wrote the official history of his own 103rd PA and also co-wrote the history of the 101st PA with veteran John Reed.

All three of these regiments were brigaded together in 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign and the Goldsboro Expedition. Not surprisingly, all three of Dickey's histories include a substantial section that defends their actions at the Battle of Seven Pines (VA) on May 31, 1862 when these regiments served in Henry Wessells' Brigade in Silas Casey's Division of the Union Fourth Corps.

The effort to write a history of the regiment came about at a veterans’ reunion in 1912 at Smithfield, Fayette County, PA. One member of the 85th PA, wealthy industrialist Norman Bruce Ream, hired Dickey and financed the work. When the history was published in 1915, it was dedicated to Ream, who had died earlier that year.

A 1914 news story from a Washington County (PA) newspaper noted that, "a committee of the survivors of that command is engaged in collecting data for a history which will be published soon....The members of this committee are now being entertained by First Lieutenant N.B. Ream at his residence near Thompson, Conn...During its stay in Connecticut the members of the committee are being royally entertained by Mr. Ream. He has a fine residence on a 400-acre farm, kept as a park." [Daily Notes, Canonsburg, PA, July 22, 1914, p.1]

The best quality of Dickey's effort is its thoroughness. He used the Official Records of the war extensively, along with letters and diaries to record the activities of the men. Dickey used wartime diaries of men like John B. Bell, William Chick and James A. Swearer to include almost a day-by-day description of the regiment's activities. He also included newspaper records, including letters written home to publications in western Pennsylvania. Rosters are included at the end of the book as well

On the negative side, Dickey's effort bogs down in his numerous, almost mind-numbing citations from the Official Records. Although the battle reports provide extensive primary source material, it can be irritating to read ten different accounts of the same battle by ten different officers.

Dickey circa 1910

Dickey also goes into too much detail in his defense of Casey's Division at Seven Pines. There is no doubt that his own regiment, as well as the 85th PA and others, fought well that day and was unfairly disparaged in the national press by General George B. McClellan as cowards and shirkers. Dickey's attitude in 1915 appears to be that a great wrong must be corrected after 50 years.

But counter-arguments and corrective revisions of McClellan's initial, erroneous assessment began to appear in the press within a week of the battle. Casey was personally scapegoated for the near Union disaster on the first day of the battle, and suffered public humiliation. But most of the regiments that he commanded went on to achieve noble fighting records, including the 85th PA. By 1915, the dubiousness of McClellan's report that Casey's Division had given way "unaccountably and discreditably" had been fairly well debunked. Dickey goes overboard in devoting a quarter of his book to the one day's event at Seven Pines.

Dickey's narrative, for the most part, stops in late 1864 when the original members of the regiment who had not enlisted went home. However, the 125 or so "veteran volunteers" who had re-enlisted, or those who joined the regiment in 1862 or later, went on to participate in two enormously significant fights at Fort Gregg and Appomattox. Dickey ignored these events almost completely.

In summary, Dickey's History of the 85th PA is a great reference book. It is still a go-to source for individual names and dates. But if you are going to read the work from cover to cover, be prepared for sleep-inducing repetitive accounts of almost every engagement in which the regiment participated.

About the 85th Pennsylvania, subject of my new book

Grave of my great-grandfather, 
 John Clendaniel  of the  85th Pennsylvania,
 in  Jefferson Baptist Cemetery, 
Jefferson, Greene County, PA

The 85th Pennsylvania was organized in the fall of 1861 at Uniontown, Fayette County, PA. The thousand or so men who served were from the following counties of southwestern Pennsylvania: Washington, Fayette, Greene and Somerset. During the war, about 100 men died in battle and about 150 died from diseases.

Such Hard and Severe Service, volume I of my book on the regiment covering the first two years of the war, is available for purchase.  Volume 2 of my book will cover the years 1863-1865.Volume 3 of my book will include a chronological list of deaths during the war, including date and cause, as well as a chronological list of postwar veteran deaths.