From Unknown to Known Soldier at Gettysburg: Amos Humiston Clutched Image of His 3 Kids as He Died

Youth and apprenticeship: 

Amos Humiston was born on Monday, April 26, 1830, in Owego (Unami: Ahwaga, "where the valley widens"), a village at the confluence of Oswego Creek and the Susquehanna River in south central New York's Tioga County. He was the second son and last of four children born to Mary Bronson (April 2, 1804 - November 26, 1851) and her husband, Ambrose Humiston (c. 1804 - 1837).

Sometime after Ambrose's death in 1837, Mary married his first cousin, Philander Boice, and relocated the family to Candor, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Owego, where Philander worked in one of the area's mills.

In his teens, Amos apprenticed with a harness maker, thereby learning the same trade as his brother, Morris.

• At age 20, Morris completed his apprenticeship and opened a harness and saddle shop in Candor.
• Upon completing his apprenticeship, Amos decided to seek an adventurous life instead.

Landlubber adventures:

Journeying hundreds of miles eastward to New Bedford, a port city on Buzzards Bay in southeastern Massachusetts, Amos signed a shipping paper on Thursday, November 28, 1850, to crew aboard the whaleship Harrison, mastered by Captain John Keen Hatheway (c. 1815 - c. 1879).

• Namesake of William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841), 9th U.S. President (March 4, 1841 – April 4, 1841), the Harrison was built as a 371-ton whaler in 1841 in Rochester, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northeast of New Bedford.
• This voyage was the fourth whaling venture as shipmaster for Captain Hatheway, whose three previous hunts -- via Fenelon, 1840 to 1842 and again 1842 to 1844, and via Cowper, 1845 to 1848 -- were successful.

At the U.S. Custom House on Thursday, December 5, 1850, Amos obtained his protection paper, which certified his citizenry and entitlement to government-paid passage home if stranded abroad.

• His paper gave his height as 5 feet 6 3/4 inches and described him as dark-haired with black eyes.

On Thursday, December 12, 1850, the Harrison weighed anchor and set sail for whaling grounds in the South Atlantic and in the Pacific Ocean as far north as the Bering Sea.

• The voyage, which occupied three years, four months, and four days of Amos' young life, ended with the Harrison's return to New Bedford on Thursday, April 20, 1854.

Payment was determined at voyage's end according to lays, or shares, of the net profit, with green hands, i.e., inexperienced crewmen, receiving 1/185, as compared to 1/175 for ordinary seamen, 1/24 for first mates, and 1/14 for Captain Hatheway.

• From the crew's lay, additional amounts, such as cash advances and outfit expenses, were subtracted.
• Before deductions, Amos' share amounted to about $350 ($10,600.00 in 2014), or daily compensation of about $0.29.
• After deductions, Amos' share probably averaged to monthly wages of about $5.00 ($150 in 2014), or 17¢ per day, which was average for green hands during the Great Age of Yankee Whaling, from 1815 through the 1850s.

If Amos had made harnesses instead of hunting whales, he would have made five or six times that amount.

• Rather than signing up for another tour on the high seas, Amos bought a train ticket and returned to Candor to resume life as a harness maker in Tioga County.

Nevertheless, Amos never forgot his years on the high seas. Over the next decade, he reminisced and often expressed a desire to return to his favorite spot, the Hawaiian islands, known then as the Sandwich Islands.

Marriage and family life: 

On Tuesday, July 4, 1854, about ten weeks after Amos debarked from the Harrison, Methodist Episcopal minister Asa Brooks (October 1, 1819 - May 20, 1897) married Amos to Philinda Betsy Ensworth Smith (February 1, 1831 - November 18, 1913) in a ceremony conducted at the home of Amos' brother Morris and his wife Sarah.

• Philinda, who was Sarah's first cousin, was a young widow.
• Wed on April 15, 1850 to Justin H. Smith, Philinda's first marriage lasted less than 9 months, ending with her husband's young death, at age 18 or 19, from unknown causes on January 10, 1851. 

Within four and a half years, Amos and Philinda were happy parents of three children:

• Franklin, born on April 10, 1855, in Candor;
• Alice Eliza, born on March 30, 1857, about 60 miles west of Candor in Adrian, a hamlet in Steuben County;
• Frederick, born on January 17, 1859, in Portville, about 55 southwest of Adrian, in southwestern New York's Cattaraugus County.

By the time of last-born child Frederick's birth in 1859, Amos had opened his own harness shop in Portville, a village strategically sited at the confluence of Dodge Creek and the Allegheny River. The village's name -- and that of the same-named town in which it is located -- reflects the community's early role in riverine transport of lumber.

Enlistment:

The War Between the States, known popularly as the American Civil War, began on Friday, April 12, 1861, with the firing of shots by Confederates upon Fort Sumter, a nearly completed sea fort in the Atlantic Ocean's inlet in South Carolina at Charleston Harbor.

• Almost 14 months later, on Tuesday, July 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865), as 16th President of the United States (March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865), called for 300,000 volunteers to sign up as Union soldiers for three years.
• The War Department set a quota of 28 regiments for New York State, which, in turn, on Monday, July 7, 1862, issued an order for the raising of one of the requisite regiments in two southwestern counties, Chautauqua (Seneca: "bag tied in the middle") and Cattaraugus (Seneca: "foul-smelling river bank"), Amos' adopted homeland.

Although Amos' patriotic spirit surged, he held off volunteering out of concern as main provider for his family's well-being.

On Monday, July 14, 1862, Congress eased Amos' worries by setting monthly pension rates at $8 ($186 in 2014) for widows and totally disabled soldiers.

Twelve days later, on Saturday, July 26, 1862, Amos enlisted.

On the way to Gettysburg:

Within a month of enlistment, Amos was parted from his family by his assignment to Camp James M. Brown in Jamestown, in southern Chautauqua County, for regimental rendezvous. 

On Wednesday, September 24, 1862, Amos was mustered as a corporal of Company C in the 154th New York Infantry Regiment.

• The descriptive entry for Amos in Company C's book at Camp Brown matched that recorded 21 months earlier on his seamen's protection paper, with the exception of his height, which was now listed as a quarter-inch taller at 5 feet 7 inches.

Five days later, on Monday, September 29th, Company C boarded a train heading for Washington, D.C.

• On Thursday, October 2nd, the 154th New York marched across the Potomac River's Long Bridge and into Arlington Heights, Virginia, where they set up a camp which they named Camp Seward in honor of William H. Seward (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872), who was appointed by President Lincoln to serve as 24th U.S. Secretary of State (March 5, 1861 – March 4, 1869) after serving as U.S. Senator (March 4, 1849 – March 3, 1861) and as New York's 12th Governor (January 1, 1839 – December 31, 1842).

On Sunday, October 12, 1862, the 154th's encampment was switched westward to Fairfax Courthouse, which served as a Union lookout and military outpost for the remaining years of the war.

The Regiment's winter headquarters were established, after a week's march, from Wednesday, December 10 to Wednesday, December 17, 1862, from Fairfax southward to the banks of the Rappahannock River near Falmouth.

On Sunday, January 25, 1863, Amos was promoted to sergeant, a rank which raised his monthly pay by $4.00 ($121.00 in 2014), from $13.00 ($394.00 in 2014) to $17.00 ($515.00 in 2014).

• Nevertheless, his military service continued to be plagued by poor health, by long delays in payment of his monthly wages by the Army's paymaster, and by disappearance of payments which he sent to Philinda.

Company C finally experienced the war's horrors on Saturday, May 2, 1863, as the ill-placed left flank of Union troops, under the command of Major General Joseph Hooker (November 13, 1814 – October 31, 1879), during the Battle of Chancellorsville (April 30 – May 6, 1863) in northern Virginia's Spotsylvania County.

• Afterward, in a letter dated Saturday, May 9th, to Philinda, Amos confided his close call of a bullet glancing off his ribs during the Regiment's forlorn retreat seven days earlier and expressed great pleasure in the receipt of an ambrotype (Greek: ἀμβροτός, ambrotos, “immortal”) of his three children, framed in a gilt matte.

Last months of Amos' life: May and June 1863

Through the rest of May, the 154th Regiment rested near Stafford Courthouse in their bivouac, named Camp John Manley in March 1863 in honor of Cattaraugus County resident John Manley (born May 26, 1824), a Maine transplant, who was known as "the Soldier's Friend" through his efforts to ameliorate soldiers' conditions and concerns and his organization of the New York Soldiers' Relief Association in Washington, D.C.

After pitching camp at a new site nearby, on Thursday, May 28th, the Regiment departed from their summer residence to begin a series of seemingly aimless marches which led them into northwestern Maryland. On Friday, June 26, 1863, Company C learned, by way of a Union scout, that General Lee's army was amassing in southeastern Pennsylvania.

On Monday, June 29th, 1863, Company C bivouacked, along with thousands of other Union troops, near the village of Emmitsburg, Maryland, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of the unassuming college town of Gettysburg, across the Mason-Dixon line in southeastern Pennsylvania.

• The exhausted soldiers, weary from a wet day's march of 20 miles (32 kilometers) under rain-drenched skies, dined appreciatively on soft bread and sweet milk kindly bestowed upon them by nuns at the Sisters of Charity, a convent founded on Monday, July 31, 1809, by Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (August 28, 1774 – January 4, 1821), who, 112 years 2+ months after Company C's blessed meal, on Sunday, September 14, 1975, became the first native-born U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Sisters of Charity and the soldiers whom they impressed with their kind generosity would meet again, across the Mason-Dixon line, when the nuns journeyed to Gettysburg in the aftermath of the Civil War's bloodiest battle to care for Confederate and Union wounded in the town's makeshift hospitals.

• And, in the battle's aftermath, the convent also nourished General Lee's troops as they poured through Emmitsburg in their flight from their disastrous defeat.

At 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 1, 1863, the 154th Regiment began their march, leaving behind halcyon memories of Emmitsburg, Maryland, and heading for Gettysburg. The small town in Pennsylvania, rayed with ten roads in ten different directions, was besieged by converging Confederate and Union troops.

At about 3:00 p.m., Amos' regiment reached the borough's southern outskirts and clustered at the Union base at Cemetery Hill.

• Half an hour later, at 3:30 p.m., Amos proceeded with the 154th north down Baltimore Street and then eastward along Stratton Street to Gettysburg's northeastern outskirts.
• Crossing Stevens Run, the meandering stream tilting along a southwesterly to northeasterly axis across the town, the 154th formed a battle line, with visibility problems, amidst kilns and other equipment in brickmaker John Kuhn's brickyard.

Scarcely positioned in their line, the 154th were thrust suddenly into battle with the cadenced, determined advance of two Confederate brigades, totaling about 3,000 and therefore outnumbering, by three-to-one, the brickyard's combined Union forces comprised of about 275 in the 27th Pennsylvania, 440 in the 134th New York, and 265 in Amos' 154th.

• The 134th, with their numbers sliced by more than half, with almost 200 killed or wounded and 60 or more captured, hastily scrambled to retreat, which made the 154th vulnerable to capture by the never-ending swarm of advancing Confederates.
• The 27th had already abandoned their positions.

The 154th's commander, Major Daniel B. Allen, formerly a Cattaraugus County lawyer, ordered a retreat.

• Major Allen's order, however, was disregarded by Second Lieutenant John "Jack" Mitchell, who had been given temporary command of Amos' Company C about seven to ten hours earlier that day by Major Allen to fill a breach left by that morning's 5:00 a.m. departure of the company's regular commander, Captain Lewis D. Warner (June 26, 1822 - November 18, 1898), on a reconnaissance southward to Sabillasville, Maryland.

Lieutenant Mitchell, however, quickly rescinded his order to stay.

• In the melee of retreat, Company C was devastated by a rash of captures, including Lieutenant Mitchell, two sergeants, three corporals, and 16 privates.

Managing to escape from the brickyard, Amos fled southward, heading back to Cemetery Hill.

That was the last view anyone in his company had of Amos.

Over time the details of the discovery of Amos' body, including the date and the location, have become muddled. In August 1865, David Wills (February 3, 1831 – October 25, 1894), who had hosted President Lincoln in his home prior to the 16th U.S. President's delivery of the Gettysburg Address on Thursday, November 19, 1863, identified the place of Amos' demise as the fenced lot adjoining the clapboard house of Judge Samuel Riddle Russell (June 21, 1801 - August 15, 1894), at the northeastern corner of York and Stratton streets.

• Situated less than a quarter of mile south of the brickyard, the lot was across York Street from St. James Lutheran Church, one of whose congregants, Mary Virginia "Jennie" Wade (May 21, 1843 – July 3, 1863), killed two days after Amos, was the only civilian fatality directly caused by the Battle of Gettysburg.
• David Wills also identified Peter Beitler (born ca. 1834), a granite cutter whose home was proximitous to both the brickyard and Judge Russell's property, as the discoverer of Amos' body and the retriever of the ambrotype clutched in Amos' hands.

However the discovery was made, Amos' body was buried in Judge Russell's lot, and the ambrotype ended up on display as a curio in a tavern owned by Peter Beitler's father-in-law, Benjamin Schriver (c. 1806 - January 1864), in Graefenburg, about 13 miles (20 kilometers) west of Gettysburg.

Sometime in the summer after the Battle of Gettysburg, Philadelphia-based physician John Francis Bourns (May 17, 1814 - December 20, 1899) ventured into Ben Schriver's tavern while awaiting repairs to the vehicle in which he and three companions were traveling.

• Summering at his family's homestead in the Franklin County borough of Waynesboro, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Gettysburg, Dr. Bourns -- whose actual surname was Burns -- was headed to the brutalized town, by way of Chambersburg, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Waynesboro, to join other civilian physicians in tending the wounded, who numbered over 27,000 at battle's end. 
• Dr. Bourns' approach from the northwest, occasioned by his trek to Chambersburg, instead of from Waynesboro to the southwest, routed him through Graefenburg on the way to his destination.
• The serendipitous breakdown of his vehicle near Ben Schriver's tavern impelled Dr. Bourns' acquaintance with the poignant tale of the ambrotype told by the tavern keeper.

Indicating his interest in identifying the unknown soldier after completing his doctoring stint in Gettysburg, Dr. Bourns extracted the ambrotype from Ben Schriver.

On Monday, October 19, 1863, Dr. Bourns launched his search for the unknown soldier's family with the appearance of articles in two of Philadelphia's three dozen English-language, secular newspapers:

• "A Gettysburg Relic" in the Philadelphia Press and
• "Whose Father Was He?" in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Whose Father Was He?" resonated across the North as newspapers in blue states reprinted the article's dramatic emotional pitch.

Dr. Bourns also sought publicity via Philadelphia's religious presses. Among the dozen or so Presbyterian periodicals, he selected the weekly American Presbyterian, which ran a terse article, "The Dead Soldier and the Daguerreotype," in its issue for Thursday, October 29, 1863.

• Because the technology of the day precluded photographic reproductions in print sources such as magazines and newspapers, popular publications generally resorted to woodcuts for illustrations. In the articles motivated by Dr. Bourns, however, the ambrotype was described, not depicted.

In the first days of November a copy of the American Presbyterian's October 29th issue circulated throughout Portville, captivating the town's citizenry with its article about the unknown soldier and finally ending up in Philinda's hands. Recognizing the description and the identification of Holmes, Booth & Haydens as the photographic supply manufacturer, Philinda -- who apparently had made self-conscious statements about her writing shortfalls in her letters to Amos -- did not make direct contact with Dr. Bourns. Instead, Thomas S. Jackson, Portville's postmaster, wrote on Philinda's behalf.

In addition to his publicity campaign via newspapers, Dr. Bourns had arranged for a steady supply of multiple copies of the ambrotype in the carte-de-visite format, a fairly new photographic process.

• He arranged for the carte-de-visite copies to be made available for public sale, with proceeds to be given to the soldier's family upon identification or, if unsuccessful, to be gifted to a soldiers' benevolent institution.
• The carte-de-visite which Dr. Bourn sent to Philinda confirmed her worse fears as she beheld the images of her children.

On Thursday, November 19, 1863, the same day that President Lincoln dedicated the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg with his stirring address, the American Presbyterian shared Philinda's confirmation of her children's images in an emotional article headlined as "The Dead Soldier Identified."

• At the time of the dedication, about 1,200 out of a total of 3,600 Union casualties had been reburied. The process of disinterment of the remaining two-thirds, including Amos' body, from their shallow, widespread graves and re-interment in the national cemetery was completed in March 1864.

In summer 1865 granite markers were installed in continuous, semicircular rows on the graves. 

Grave Number 14 in Section B of New York's sector of Soldiers' National Cemetery bears the inscription:

• Sergt A. Humiston.
• Co. C. Regt. 154

He is flanked on one side by an "Unknown. Regt. 157th" and on the other by "Chamburg. Regt. 134."

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the scene of the bloodiest battle in the history of the War Between the States (April 12, 1861 – May 10, 1865), is one of the most visited places in the United States. Gettysburg is a place like no other:

• A sense of history inheres in the quaint borough's atmosphere.
• The vast battlefields which carpet the area bear silent, yet palpable, witness to the "brave men, living and dead, who struggled here," who consecrated the ground with their blood as they courageously made the ultimate sacrifice with the giving up of their lives. 

Of the 1,320 monuments which grace Gettysburg's landscape, only one commemorates an individual enlisted man.

Spearheaded by Gettysburg author Cindy Stouffer after her introduction to Amos' story via a walking tour in June 1991, the Amos Humiston Memorial was dedicated on Saturday, July 3, 1993.

• The granite boulder, decorated with likenesses of Amos and his three children on an inscribed bronze plaque, was installed on the grounds of the Gettysburg Fire Department at 35 North Stratton Street, in proximity to the spot where Amos lay down to die.
• No longer an undeveloped lot, Judge Russell's property was developed into a garage owned by Baseball Hall of Fame's left-handed pitcher Edward Stewart "Gettysburg Eddie" Plank (August 31, 1875 – February 24, 1926) after his retirement from the Major Leagues.
• Half a dozen Humiston descendants participated in the ceremony's grandest moments as unveilers of the monument and presenters of floral tributes.

Perhaps the key to Amos' endearing, enduring place in Gettysburg's Civil War lore is found in a poem which the devoted husband and father -- known in his community and in his regiment as diligent, helpful, and kind-hearted -- included in his letter of Wednesday, March 25, 1863:

To my wife

You have put the little ones to bed dear wife

And coverd them ore with care

My Frankey Alley and Fred

And they have said their evening prair

Perhaps they breathed the name of one

Who is far in southern land

And wished he to were thare

To join their little band

I am very sad to night dear wife

My thoughts are dwelling on home and thee

As I keep the lone night watch

Beneath the holley tree

The winds are sighing through the trees

And as they onward roam

They whisper hopes of happiness

Within our cottage home

And as they onward pased

Ore hill and vale and bubling stream

They wake up thoughts within my soul

Like music in a dream

Oh when will this rebellion cease

This cursed war be ore

And we our dear ones meat

To part from them no more?

Exemplifying the extraordinary courage of ordinary people, Amos Humiston also epitomizes the enduring appeal of a battlefield-laced town where, even 150 years after the valiant tragedy, multitudes of visitors feel motivated to pay their respects, to stand vigil, and to carry away with them nuances of an inexpressible grandeur.

Gettysburg is one of those must-visit sacred places where eternity dwells, where visitors have the transformative opportunity

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour. (William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence")

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

"An Incident of Gettysburg - Last Thought of a Dying Father." Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Vol. XVII, No. 431 (January 2, 1864).

• Available via Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/stream/franklesliesilluv1718lesl#page/235/mode/1up

Dunkelman, Mark H. "A Brief History of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry." The Hardtack Regiment. October 2012. Mark H. Dunkelman. Web. www.hardtackregiment.com

• Available at: http://www.hardtackregiment.com/154thNewYorkHistory.html

Dunkelman, Mark H. Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston. Westport CT ~ London: Praeger Pubishers, 1999.

Ellis, Franklin. History of Cattaraugus County, New York: Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Philadelphia PA: L.H. Everts, 1879

Feliz, Elyce. "Amos Humiston, Died at Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863." Birthday of Eternity, July 2, 2013. Elyce Feliz. Blog. birthdayofeternity.blogspot.com

• Available at: http://birthdayofeternity.blogspot.com/2013/07/amos-humiston-died-at-battle-of.html

Morris, Errol. "Whose Father Was He? (Part One)." The Opinion Pages / New York Times Blog. March 29, 2009. The New York Times Company. Blog. morris.bogs.nytimes.com

• Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/whose-father-was-he-part-one/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Morris, Errol. "Whose Father Was He? (Part Two)." The Opinion Pages / New York Times Blog. March 30, 2009. The New York Times Company. Blog. morris.bogs.nytimes.com

• Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/whose-father-was-he-part-two/

Morris, Errol. "Whose Father Was He? (Part Three)." The Opinion Pages / New York Times Blog. March 31, 2009. The New York Times Company. Blog. morris.bogs.nytimes.com

• Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/whose-father-was-he-part-three/

Morris, Errol. "Whose Father Was He? (Part Four)." The Opinion Pages / New York Times Blog. April 1, 2009. The New York Times Company. Blog. morris.bogs.nytimes.com

• Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/whose-father-was-he-part-four/

Morris, Errol. "Whose Father Was He? (Part Five)." The Opinion Pages / New York Times Blog. April 2, 2009. The New York Times Company. Blog. morris.bogs.nytimes.com

• Available at: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/whose-father-was-he-part-five/

New York Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga. Final Report on the Battlefield at Gettysburg. Vol. III. Albany NY: J.B. Lyon Company, 1902.

• Available at: https://archive.org/details/cu31924071238673

Rada, James, Jr. Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses. Gettysburg PA: Legacy Publishing, 2011.

"Soldiers' National Cemetery Burials at Gettysburg." Civil War Wiki.net. Last modified on 1 May 2010. Mike Kendra/CivilWarWiki. Web. www.civilwarwiki.net

• Available at: http://www.civilwarwiki.net/wiki/Soldiers'_National_Cemetery_Burials_at_Gettysburg

Stoneback, Diane W. "Saving soldiers' lives: Tour, exhibit and festival honor Gettysburg work of Daughters of Charity." The Morning Call > Entertainment, March 18, 2013. The Morning Call. Web. articles.mcall.com

• Available at: http://articles.mcall.com/2013-05-18/entertainment/mc-gettysburg-emmitsburg-nurses-charity-20130518_1_national-shrine-heritage-days-daughters