Hanover: August 2009 Archives

Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer, a native of New Rumley in my native Ohio, remains one of the most colorful (and controversial) figures in American military history. Vilified by many for his stunning defeat at Little Bighorn, a fight that became immortal as "Custer's Last Stand," Custer was a lightning rod for adoration as well as hatred. Perhaps more books have been written about him than any other Western Indian fighter, and many also cover his extensive Civil War history where he rose from an obscure lieutenant to a renown major general in just three short years.

Custer's first battle as a brigadier general was here in York County, Pennsylvania, where he led his Michigan Brigade at the Battle of Hanover, where his men first became acquainted with the "boy general" in action. That same day, some of Custer's men traveled through southwestern York County and up into downtown York.

Here is this little known account of some of Custer's Wolverines visiting "Little York." It is adapted from Pennsylvania-born author Eric J. Wittenberg's interesting book Under Custer's Command: The Civil War Journal of James Henry Avery.

Headstone of Private Ovid Stahl in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

Ovid Stahl, a native of York, Pennsylvania, was an eighteen-year-old private in Company I of the 26th Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia, a company that was recruited in southern York County and included volunteers from several townships, as well as from Carroll County, Maryland. After being organized in Hanover and trained briefly near Harrisburg, the emergency regiment served in the Gettysburg Campaign. It was the largest military unit trying to defend Gettysburg the last week of June 1863 against the invading Confederates - the division of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early.

The schoolboys and sales clerks of the 26th PVM had only been in uniform for three days when they met the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia on the hills west of Gettysburg along Marsh Creek and then along Goldenville Road near the Henry Witmer farm. The site of the skirmish of Witmer Farm (and the red brick Witmer farmhouse) is still in pristine condition just east of the intersection of Goldenville and Table Rock roads about 3.5 miles northeast of Gettysburg. Many of the boys would be captured on Witmer's rolling farmland, rounded up by the pursuing 17th Virginia Cavalry. In all, 175 militiamen would become prisoners of war out of the 743 men in the new regiment.

A couple of the men and boys from southern York County were with the 26th PVM's commissary guard in downtown Gettysburg while their comrades were routed at Witmer Farm. They ended up back in Hanover before heading to York late on Friday night hours after the debacle at Witmer Farm. They wound up in Wrightsville and helped defend the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge on Sunday, June 28.

Among those men fortunate enough to have escaped being swept up by the Rebel cavalry at Witmer Farm was 18-year-old Ovid Stahl.

This impressive headstone in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hanover, Pennsylvania, commemorates the brief life of one of York County's many Civil War veterans, Major William Slyder Diller of the 76th Pennsylvania Volunteers, also known as the "Keystone Zouaves". During his three years in the Union Army, Diller saw action in several significant engagements in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina, including participating in the unsuccessful attacks on Fort Wagner (made famous in modern times through the Denzel Washington / Morgan Freeman movie Glory).

So, who was William Diller?

During the June 30, 1863, Battle of Hanover, Pennsylvania, Confederate horse artillery deployed on a low hill just off the Littlestown-Frederick Road southwest of Hanover. The guns were unlimbered, loaded, and aimed at a distant target - mounted Union cavalry along Frederick Street at the outskirts of the town. The lanyard was pulled and the gun discharged, hurling its iron shell toward the horsemen.

It missed its intended target.

Instead of striking the enemy troopers, the shell found a much different target - a house occupied by terrified civilians.

Downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania, has several Civil War markers and memorials along its main streets and in the traffic square, including a series of battle-related wayside markers erected a few years ago. Perhaps the most impressive (and most well known historically) is this well crafted bronze statue entitled "The Picket." It depicts one of Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick's Union troopers who fought at the June 30, 1863, Battle of Hanover in southwestern York County.

For many years, this large equestrian statue was the focal point of the town square, as well as a large fountain (similar to what still graces downtown Chambersburg's very nice traffic circle). At some point, the town fathers decided to abandon the circle and go with a more traditional crossroads intersection, and The Picket and his later companion "Mike" the bronze dog were relegated to a corner where it is out of the way (and out of the mind and vision) of most passersby.

In my research for another unrelated Civil War topic, I stumbled onto a couple of old accounts of the installation of this memorial, as well as two nearby Army of the Potomac plaques.

Here are those snippets from a pair of old books:

This old photograph is courtesy of theunfinishedwork.com, a website for a recent fictional book on the Gettysburg Campaign by Hanover native Frank Meredith. His well crafted novel includes the Battle of Hanover on June 30, 1863, and other York and Adams county venues.

The picture from the Hanover Historical Society shows an old, deteriorating rail car of the long defunct Hanover Branch Railroad, which was operational through the latter half of the 19th century into the early part of the 20th. Tradition suggests this is the exact car that Hanover Branch Railroad president A. W. Eichelberger deployed as the private car for President Abraham Lincoln and his traveling party during their trip to and from Baltimore to Gettysburg for the dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery in mid-November 1863. The director's car was eventually scrapped, according to some local sources.

Lincoln's party included his friend from his Illinois days, Ward Hill Lamon, who was serving as his personal bodyguard and advisor. Also in the party were members of his staff, including his private secretary John G. Nicolay, adviser John Hay, and a bevy of reporters and politicians, including Secretary of War Edwin McM. Stanton and Secretary of State William H. Seward.