Harrisburg Civil War Round Table Board member Steve Williamson will discuss "The Fighting 4th Texas at Gettysburg and Beyond" during the club's Friday, February 26 meeting. This Confederate unit was part of John B. Hood's brigade and fought in all thirty-eight of its engagements including Gaines Mill, 2nd Manassas, Chickamauga and the Wilderness. At Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, they were part of the Confederate assault on Little Round Top. Mr. Williamson will present an amateur historian's view of the regiment's journey from Corsicana, Texas, to Appomattox Court House.

A Lone Star state native who had ancestors in the 4th Texas, Mr. Williamson has lived in fourteen U.S. cities during a thirty-year career in commercial real estate development. He has lived overseas in Hong Kong, China, where he was educated in British Crown colony schools when his father was a commercial pilot for Pan American Airways.

The Harrisburg Civil War Round Table meets at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel & Convention Center, Camp Hill, PA, Camp Hill Bypass @ Routes 11&15. An informal reception starts at 6:00 PM, followed by dinner at 6:30. The cost of dinner is $20.00 and reservations must be made by no later than Tuesday, February 23, by calling 717-938-3706. The program begins at 8:00 PM and is free to the public.

Contact Douglas Gibboney, Publicity Chairperson, for further information @ 717-243-1738.

Early in the Civil War, several prominent political leaders and social reformers in both the North and South envisioned filling the ranks of the armies with fresh troops comprised of free black men. The Union army experimented with mustering into its ranks hundreds of recently liberated slaves from areas then under its control.

Early efforts in South Carolina and Louisiana indicated that the controversial concept had merit, and in March 1863 Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts authorized the formation of the state's first black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. A second regiment, the 55th, was also recruited. While formed and named in the Bay State, the ranks of the 54th and 55th included men from many other states, most notably New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (a staggering 22 percent of the regiment's roster came from the Keystone State).

Among the Pennsylvanians were nearly three dozen local men, including four from York County.

Long-time Cannonball reader and contributor Bob Resig recently made me aware of the fascinating story of Caroline Hammond, an escaped slave from Baltimore, Maryland, who furtively passed through Hanover, Pennsylvania, on her way to safety via the Underground Railroad. A representative of the Federal government's Works Projects Administration interviewed her in 1938 and preserved her story. At the time, she was 94 years old, and still of sharp mind and good health.

Caroline's story is the first in a series of posts throughout February for Black History Month that will focus on black civilians and soldiers from York County, Pennsylvania.

Throughout 2010, I will present a series of entries on the York Daily Record's Cannonball blog that feature Civil War-related oral traditions and stories passed down from eyewitnesses to their direct descendants. I want to capture these anecdotes for future generations to enjoy (who knows - maybe someday there is another human interest story book in the works from this fresh material).

Here is today's installment... and I thank all of you who have shared your family lore with me recently. Keep the stories coming!

I have been fortunate this past year to speak at more than a dozen historical societies, Civil War interest groups, Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, etc. here in York County, Pennsylvania, as part of my book tour to promote sales of Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 (Columbus, Ohio: Ironclad Publishing, 2009). These engagements have all been fantastic experiences as I have had a chance to share some of what I have learned about my adopted county's Civil War history, meet and fellowship with some great people, and visit some places and locations I had not previous seen. Besides all of my new friends, my other pleasure from these events has been the willingness of audience members to bring or mail copies of old documents and photographs pertaining to the Civil War and to share their oral traditions and anecdotes handed down by their ancestors.

We are slowly losing the generation who physically knew and had contact with the eyewitnesses to the Civil War (my late father, for example, told me many wonderful Civil War stories passed down by his neighbors and relatives who fought in the war. He was born in 1914 and his life overlapped scores of elderly veterans that he knew as a youth). The same is true here in York County, which is why I treasure all those accounts people tell me of what their ancestors experienced when the Confederate army invaded this region in the summer of 1863.

I have captured many of these stories over the past year and will be sharing some of them throughout 2010 here on the Cannonball blog.

Here is the first batch, in no particular order:

The Lafayette Club is an institution in downtown York. The private club boasts some of the best food in the region for special events. The clubhouse is across the street from the Yorktowne Hotel on East Market Street.

Background post: Fellow blogger Jim McClure's entry on his interesting York Town Square blog.

During the Civil War, the impressive brick building was the home of wealthy businessman Philip Albright Small, whose food distribution firm P.A. & S. Small lasted well into the 20th century. He and his family were scions of York's high society, and his 34-year-old daughter Cassandra Morris Small wrote three very revealing letters to her cousin that nicely chronicle the divisive emotions in York as the Confederate army occupied the town.

A portion of York's citizens were strong Southern sympathizers, a widespread group (mostly Democratic in politics) often termed "Copperheads" in the national and local press. No so with P. A. Small and his clan - they were decidedly pro-Union in their sentiments, although they were more moderate than some of their hardcore neighbors in their disdain for the Confederates.

On Sunday morning, June 28, 1863, as a brigade of Georgia infantry was marching eastward through York's three principal parallel streets toward Wrightsville, Small's wife and daughters, along with some other women, were standing on the porch of their house (the porch was removed years ago) watching the procession.

As Brigadier General John Brown Gordon rode by, he paused to address the ladies.

In past blog entries, I have briefly presented a couple of mysterious Civil War murders here in York County, Pennsylvania, including that of Charles Brown, a young Confederate soldier of the Louisiana Tigers who was gunned down near Big Mount while raiding a farm in that vicinity, as well as the story of a Confederate-aligned black man named "Jim" who was murdered by six Warrington Township men in retaliation for his role in the blatant horse thievery when the Rebels rode through the region.

Back in 2007, fellow blogger Jim McClure posted an entry regarding a third unsolved murder mystery in York, one that has the least documentation of the trio. I was wandering around Prospect Hill Cemetery in York earlier this week on lunch break and for the first time found the gravestone of the unknown soldier mentioned by Jim.

Here is the story...

Colonel Richard L. T. Beale commanded the 9th Virginia Cavalry during the Gettysburg Campaign. The veteran regiment was a part of Chambliss's Brigade in J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry division.

In his memoirs, he wrote an interesting account of the regiment's time in York County, Pennsylvania, beginning with the march to Hanover northward from Union Mills in Carroll County, Maryland.

"The march was resumed at dawn next morning. An order detailing a squad of men and an officer from each regiment to collect horses for our dismounted men satisfied us that we had passed from Maryland, and had entered the State of William Penn, whose armed sons we had so often seen upon the soil of our native Virginia. The time had come to pay back in some measure the misdeeds of men who, with sword and fire, had made our homesteads heaps of ruin, and, in many instances, left our wives and children not a horse, nor cow, nor sheep, nor hog, nor living fowl of any kind.

Soon a country store was reached and trooper after trooper escaping from the ranks quickly filled it with Confederates, who, without asking the price, were proceeding to help themselves to any and every article they needed or fancied. The first field officer, however, who discovered what was going on, rode quietly up and cleared the store, compelling the men to put back what they had taken, and posted a guard to remain until the command had passed."

The identification of the shopkeeper is unknown, but he was likely in business somewhere along the Westminster Pike.

Colonel Beale then described the Battle of Hanover from his perspective.

Modern view of Conewago Creek just west of the old Detter's Mill (Emig's Mill during the Civil War). Just out of view is the creek's confluence with Bermudian Creek. A Rebel raiding party operated in this region during the Gettysburg Campaign stealing horses. A black man operating with them was murdered by a sextet of irate York County farmers.

As the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia invaded south-central Pennsylvania, there were numerous accounts of bushwhacking where armed civilians fired potshots at the passing columns of infantry and cavalry, or at individual stragglers who had dropped out or lagged behind the main bodies. Colonel Clement A. Evans of the 31st Georgia wrote to his wife that the bushwhackers had a useful side effect - the fear of them kept his men from straggling.

In a few cases, the snipers were successful, as there are a few documented cases of Confederate fatalities caused by these ambushes. In some other instances, the killings were not as planned out, and were reactionary, more of a provoked manslaughter charge in legal terms than a deliberate ambush planned in advance. For example, angry residents in McConnellsburg, acting on the spur of the moment, seized two Rebel stragglers and shot them in revenge for thefts in that region.

Here in York County, there are two known killings of Confederates - one of a Louisiana Tiger near Big Mount and the other of a black man associated with the Southern cavalry who was gunned down in southern Warrington Township near Detter's Mill.

The York Civil War Round Table will feature author Bruce R. Liddic at its monthly meeting on January 20, 2010. The topic of the evening will be " George Armstrong Custer : From Ohio to Pennsylvania, Boyhood to Generalship."

Most of the general public has heard of George Custer; however their familiarity with his name and deeds are usually connected to his adventures in the West, that is ....the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Many are surprised to learn Custer was an important player in our Civil War. But there is more then just a single day in Montana which defines this controversial figure from our nation's storied past. The York Civil War Round Table will be exploring from the beginning his early life and family in Ohio to his appointment and graduation from West Point. In addition, the CWRT will also learn of the events which led to his promotion to brigadier general at age 23 and Custer's decisive role in the Battle of Gettysburg.

The "Boy General" was active here in York County in the days before Gettysburg, leading his Michigan Wolverines into action at the Battle of Hanover on June 30, 1863. The site of the "Custer Maple" is commemorated in the sidewalk on Hanover's town square, and a wall plaque remembers the controversial Custer.

Bruce Liddic holds a bachelor's degree in American history from the State University of New York at Cortland and a master's degree in business management from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. He is the author of four books and several dozen magazine articles on Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His most recent book, Vanishing Victory : Custer's Final March won two awards.

The meeting will be held at 7:00PM on Wednesday evening in the auditorium of the York County Heritage Trust at 250 E. Market St. in downtown York, Pennsylvania.

There is no charge for admission and the public is welcome!

Parking is also free! The author will be available to autograph his various books. Bring a friend!