Whatever the cause, he allowed more than a hint of frustration to seep into this letter. Reportedly, Basil used the barn at the McPherson Farm, which he rented, to hide runaway slaves. Ancestors. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. To CorRESPONDENTS. The women appealed to a man named Samuel Weaver, who had been responsible in 1863 for transferring the remains of fallen Union soldiers into the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg. His name was Basil Biggs,and his life and toil in Gettysburg wereand always will beheroically bound to the battle that turned the tide in the war that transformed America from a slave nation into the land of the free. Weaver looks at the camera while a crew of black workers appears to have just exhumed a body. The stakes then couldnt have been higherslavery vs. freedomnor the ground the soldiers fell on more hallowed. Basil Biggs was born in 1820 in Carroll County, Md., in New Windsor. What most of us werent taught about Gettysburg, though, is that the job of burying those bodies fell to African Americans who, having suffered personally as a result of the battle, formed burial details in aid of its commemoration. Weaver was asked to travel to Richmond to meet with the board, which included such influential members as Robert Bryan, attorney, financier, and newspaper editor; W.E. New York: Alfred A. Kopf, 2008. In 1849 be enter- ed Dickinson seminary, and three years ater entered the janior class of Dickin- son college, graduating in 1855, In 1858 he was admitted to the bar opening an office in Gettysburg. can say with the greatest satisfaction to myself and to the friends of the soldiers that I saw every body taken out of its temporary resting place, and all the pockets carefully searched.. estimated that approximately 7,800 men were killed during the three days of that battle, Think Youre a Gettysburg Fan? The Union army had no regular burial details and no grave registration units, Harvard historian Drew Gilpin Faust wrote in her 2008 book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. Basil Biggs, James Warfield, and Abraham Brian (also spelled Bryan and Brien) were farmers on what would become the Gettysburg battlefield. in History and a Certificate in Revolutionary Era Studies. He was the second of seven children born to the couple. Newspaper Page Text RIEL CRS A SPIT RARE LEAT, Dewoeutc alee fp S Bellefonte, Pa., February 6, i821. It engaged my time from April 19th to Sep 10th 1872, & from April 9th to Oct 3rd 1873 with the exception of seven weeks which I spent in Washington, D.C. obtaining data and copying over 14,000 names etc from the original records of the Confederate dead. Research genealogy for Samuel Weaver of Gettysburg, Adams, Pennsylvania, USA, as well as other members of the Weaver family, on Ancestry. In the months and years after the titanic Civil War battle here in July 1863, Weaver was part of a vast and grisly enterprise in which the bodies of thousands of soldiers, first Union and then Confederate, were exhumed and moved. Biesecker, won the government contract to exhume the bodies of Union soldiers and rebury them in the Gettysburg (or Soldiers) National Cemetery. Samuel supervised the operation in which the remains of over 3,500 Union soldiers were exhumed and then reburied in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Weaver, in a report to cemetery authorities, never mentioned the odor that must have attended his work. Hanover photographer Peter S. Weaver, who operated a studio on Baltimore Street, recorded this view dated February 6, 1864. Gettysburg National Cemetery is a United States national cemetery created for Union/Federal casualties of the July 1 to 3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War (1861-1865). As Creighton reveals, By November 19, 1863, when Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln spoke to the throngs at Gettysburg, Basil Biggs and company had reburied close to a thousand men. The difference between that and the amount expected to be recovered from the Maury bankruptcy amounted to about $3,000. He said that he was present for each exhumation, in which workers used long metal hooks to pull decomposed bodies from graves. Detailed casualty statistics are given in tables for each company, battalion and . The Gettysburg Soldiers' Cemetery and Lincoln's Address: Aspects and Angles. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of William Samuel Weaver to pay them a last . . The bodies of Confederate soldiers were left where they lay. Of the 137 sets of remains sent to Raleigh and honored with a dedication ceremony on October 1 were 45 soldiers buried at Camp Letterman and 27 buried at the Jacob Hanky Farm on the Mummasburg Road, which served as a field hospital for Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes Division. Follow him onTwitterandFacebook. Basil Biggss greatest living monument is his great-great granddaughter Anna Deavere Smith. He explained that I suggested to him that if he cut them, then he was only getting for them their value as rails, whereas, if he allowed them to stand to mark the spot he would eventually get ten times as much for them. Biggs was a shrewd businessman as well as a successful farmer and this line of argument worked. Later that summer, 100 sets of remains were sent to Savannah, where they were reinterred with ceremonies in August and September. led by local merchant Samuel Weaver. He was born in Iowa and raised in a remote cabin with his parents and siblings, and he was indoctrinated with Christian fundamentalist and white supremacist views; his mother, the religious head of the family . And another unknown soldier was found with a handkerchief spread over his face. The Battle of Gettysburg marked the turning point of the Civil War. WEAVER Samuel B. Weaver, 81 years old, Columbus, Ohio, died August 19, born January 31, 1926 in Gettysburg, PA. He found a black man to execute the job! Realizing that he was their best hope, Rufus Weaver agreed to help, according to Mitchell. He had been awarded $1,356, on paper, but Congress never released the funds to repay him.) A dozen more were removed from the cemetery at Camp Letterman, the large general hospital managed by the Army of the Potomacs medical corps, located on the York Road east of Gettysburg. The first African-American Civil War soldier to be buried there was Henry Gooden, 127th USCT, in 1884 (this was a re-burial, since Gooden had originally been buried at the Adams County Almshouse burying-ground).But, Guelzo was quick to add, no others were buried there until 1936. What this meant, Guelzo suspected, was that a de facto segregation policy was the rule until then. Accordingly, some [t]wenty-nine black Civil War veterans were buried before 1920 in the colored cemeterythe Lincoln Cemetery [or Good-will Cemetery, since it was originally created by a black mutual-aid society, the Sons of Good-will]on Long Lane.. @1861), Emma Maria (b. . Gettysburg, however, remained a concern because distance kept former Confederates from easily claiming the bodies. To this point, apparently Weaver had been charged only with recovering identified remains (although the North Carolina shipment included 14 sets that were unidentified). . . National Park Service History Electronic Library & Archive He was the son of the late Roy S. and Hilda M. (Wolfe) Weaver. The perseverance of the president of the association, however, aided by [an unnamed] farmers wife, finally secured his permission without compensation. Samuel married Catharine. The men picked up coffins at the railway station, brought them to the original burial site, and, under the supervision of a man named Samuel Weaver, took their time to inspect and remove the remains. Like the dead soldiers her great-great grandfather tended to in the cemeteries there, family stories first had to be unearthed and brought back to the light before they could be properly honored. Semi - Wiley Kahler (Lycoming College) 4-2 won by decision over Mark Samuel (Roanoke College) 11-4 (Dec 17-12) 3rd Place Match . Some individual families were able to make the trek, but operations on a mass scale would have to wait until the South recovered financially. Dr. Moses D. Hoge thanked God that our sons and brothers had been returned from their graves among strangers.. In a letter written to Mrs. K.L. Cutshaw, who succeeded Charles Dimmock as Richmond city engineer; and Robert Stiles. Upon graduating, Rufus went to Philadelphia to study anatomy, with the goal of becoming a doctor. The ladies of the HMA certainly attempted to collect what was due them from Maury & Co. A thousand former Confederate soldiers followed, preceded by former Southern generals, including George E. Pickett, whose grand assault at Gettysburg had been smashed in the battles climax. He had been unable to identify 469 remains in the shipment but surmised that, because of where they were buried, 325 of them had fallen in Picketts Charge. He placed them in 27 boxes he labeled with the letter P. The rest of the unidentified bodies were found in other parts of the battlefield and were placed in 13 boxes. By the spring of 1871, he was a lecturer in anatomy at Hahnemann Medical College. They suggested that the ladies sign over to Dr. Weaver their claim against R.H. Maury & Co., amounting to about $3,800 at that time, acknowledging that that amount fell far short of the approximately $12,000 owed. Several years later, his son would pick up his father's work to send Confederate burials south. They were buried in corn fields, in orchards, under apple trees, along roadsides, in woods and beside creeks. Egerton, was imprisoned at Baltimores Fort McHenry in late July 1862 for suspected pro-Southern activities. Weaver noted that he also examined more than 3,000 rebel graves. The wagons were draped in black bunting, and were accompanied by more than a thousand former Confederate soldiers, among them Generals George Pickett, John Imboden, and James Lane, as well as bands playing mournful dirges. Basil Biggs. A Material Culture Analysis of the Report of Samuel Weaver, Gettysburg, 1864 Some years back, Civil War historian and sculptor Michael Kraus introduced me to a small gem of a document, the report of Samuel Weaver, contained within Report of the Select Committee Relative to the Soldier's National Cemetery (Harrisburg, Singerly & Myers, State Printers, 1864; you can read it online here ). It was an enormous task, and most of the bodies ended up in shallow mass graves. Accordion . I then saw the body, with all the hair and all the particles of bone, carefully placed in the coffin.. One week later, the boxes containing the remains were unloaded from steamers at the wharves in Richmond and solemnly escorted through the streets. Weaver reported that 979 of the bodies he exhumed were nameless.. In his final report, David Wills, the Gettysburg lawyer who led the effort to create the national cemetery, spoke for families North and South. FOR SALE! It would turn out that Biggs had moved his family into the epicenter of the conflict! After two years spent soliciting former members for informationand, it must be assumed, simply ditheringthe ladies finally wrote to Weaver to tell him they had turned the matter over to their all-male advisory board to determine the legitimacy of his claim. But it was undertaken with a Victorian sense of care and obligation, as well as a familiarity with death. These 7 Foreigners Helped Win the American Revolution. During the spring and summer of 1871, Dr. Weaver labored for the ladies of the Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., and Wake County (Raleigh, N.C.) Memorial Associations to exhume soldiers from those states and ship them home. The same census tracked Biggs move up (in more ways than one). Basil Biggs wife was Mary Jackson, born in Maryland between 1825 and 1827. At Gettysburg, Weaver found as many as 70 Union soldiers in one trench and 150 rebels in another. This page lists soldiers named August Sungrist through Isaac Sweeney who served in Pennsylvania infantry units during the Civil War. Biggs himself couldnt read or write, but he must have realized that moving north would afford his children opportunities out of reach in his home state. Basil Biggs was nothing if not industrious. When notified of the legislatures action, Weaver wrote a heartfelt letter of thanks to Robert Stiles in which he reveals the level of care and compassion he devoted to the task for which they had engaged his services. Kathleen Logothetis Thompson graduated from Siena College in May 2010 with a B.A. Warfield also ran a highly regarded blacksmith shop, and Biggs was well known for his veterinary skills. and white children. At the end of the war, tens of thousands of soldiers graves dotted battlefields from Pennsylvania to Louisiana. Unfortunately for the ladies of the South, Samuel Weaver was killed in a railroad accident in February 1871. During the three days of combat, the invading Confederate troops turned Basils farm into a field hospital. [47] and occupied 200 acres (0.81 km 2) by December. That dissection contributed greatly to medical education and is still on display at Drexel University College of Medicine. Samuel Weaver was born in month 1823, at birth place, Kentucky. The women appealed to a man named Samuel Weaver, who had been responsible in 1863 for transferring the remains of fallen Union soldiers into the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg. As the battles of the Civil War faded, Creighton writes, Gettysburgs black community continued to witness the public segregation of memory. They celebrated Emancipation Day on their own ground and decorated the graves of black and white soldiers, but few outside the race returned the favor. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Of course, given the absolute secrecy the Underground Railroad had to maintain, we couldnt find documents listing his participation in this or that slave escape. In 1863, in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, efforts quickly got underway to bury the thousands of dead men scattered around the town. According to an article written in 1929, Rose refused to let the bodies be removed unless the ladies were willing to pay for them. Meet the Man Whos Made It His Lifes Work, A Clash of Confederate Personalities at Gettysburg, An Infantryman Returned to the Jungle to Look for His Friends Remains, https://www.historynet.com/hundreds-of-confederates-were-buried-in-gettysburgs-fields-this-mans-task-was-to-send-them-home/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot. This rankled many Southerners, so the ladies of the South took it upon themselves to care for the fallen as they had cared for the wounded soldiers who had fought for the Cause.. But historians have recorded that the smell of the battlefield could be detected from afar. By then, the family had $1,000 worth of property and enough room for a farm hand. William Samuel Weaver Obituary. These men earned his respect and the respect of the nation. Reporter covering local news, Washington institutions and historical topics. We are sad to announce that on November 21, 2022, at the age of 90, William Samuel Weaver of Carlisle, Pennsylvania passed away. The confluence of ten major roads of the period caused it to be attractive to travelers and settlers alike. . However, the graves of men who had fallen in far-off places like Antietam and Gettysburg were beyond the ladies reach, both physically and financially. @1857), Anna Mary (b. Well never know the internal story of Basil Biggs and his black burial detail, for even the most disturbing photographs, Creighton writes, fail to capture what these men did with their emotions as they sorted through peoplewhether they grew inured to the dead and learned to work mechanically, or whether the smell and sight of humans turned from flesh to dust exacted a lasting psychological toll., What we do know is, thanks to Biggs and his men, Lincoln was able to deliver his Gettysburg Address in front of orderly rows of graves in the new national cemetery. Weaver was receptive to Southern pleas but was killed himself, ending his reign of compassion here on earth. Faust, Drew Gilpin. Cons. According to a study of the aftermath of the battle by historian Gregory A. Coco, a Gettysburg teenager named Leander Warren, who ferried bodies and pine coffins in a freight wagon, had vivid memories of the work: Many friends of the dead soldiers came here to witness the disinterment of their loved ones and the new burial in the national plot. Obviously if there is a wrestler that is injured, they probably won't attend. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Once again, the ladies of the HMA reacted angrily, demanding the UDC cease its efforts in that regard because the matter is entirely between the HMA and Dr. Weaver. Their reaction might have stemmed from the growing rivalry between the ladies of the HMA and the newer, larger organization. Mrs. Egerton would act as intermediary between Dr. Weaver and the HMA for the next 30 years. Nov. 18, 2022. 94: How did the war dead from the Battle of Gettysburg get buried, and by whom? There the graves of soldiers who fought to preserve the Union were protected, cared for, and decorated on the new holiday known as Memorial Day. Southern mothers still had no sons to bury. An appeal published in newspapers across the South raised enough money to allow the ladies to buy land and gather the remains of 2,489 Confederate soldiers who had been buried in scattered places across the lower Shenandoah Valley. Southern armies were in a similar predicament. Horiuchi said he was aiming . They found soldiers everywhere, in every condition. As the fighting dragged on, desperate soldiers from both sides ransacked the countryside for food and shelter. It was a bloodbath. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Learn more about merges. It appears that Egerton might have taken a different tack this time, for in 1902 a member of the Richmond chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy reported to the HMA that an appeal had been made to UDC chapters across the South for the funds needed to pay the remaining debt owed to Weaver. How could an obligation of this size have been created? Ada was active in efforts to provide aid to Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout in Southern Maryland during the war, and after the war was very involved with the Southern Relief Society. What set them apart from neighbors such as Joseph Sherfy and William Bliss was that they were Black. In a moral respect, he wrote to Egerton in April 1889, the debt is one of honor, so sacred that any individual or organization should blush for shame one would think to permit it to go unpaid. The man holding the notebook is Samuel Weaver, Peter's father. In 1889, Weaver wrote to his friend, Ada Egerton: Over 16 years have now passed away and today over twelve thousand dollars (including interest) is due me without a line from any of those interested in the debtdebt which you have often truly said is one of Sacred honor. Weaver certainly had a right to be aggrieved, for $12,000 in 1889 is the equivalent of more than $350,000 today. Most were the simple items that the average Billy Yank might carry a comb, a pipe, a toothbrush, a knife, a fork and a spoon. It took dock workers 21 / 2 hours to unload them, Mitchell wrote. He went on to say that I have sent South all the State lists and none but you, North Carolina and South Carolina have done anything.It seems very strange to me that Virginia, who is so near and whose known list is not so great as yours does not recall her dead. He went on to say that if all could see what I have seen and know what I know, I am sure that there would be no rest until every Southern father, brother and son would be removed from the North.. If Weaver ever received another copper from the Maury estate or the HMA, there is no record of it. A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle. in History from West Virginia University in May 2012. Why didnt Weaver sue the HMA for the money he was owed? The result was that many fallen soldiers went unidentified. In today's post, Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Deb Novotny describes some highlights of the life of Samuel Weaver, one of . A (Macabre) Family Affair: The Weavers and the Gettysburg Dead, construct the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Civil Discourse: A Blog of the Civil War Era. Invalid memorial. Who could possibly owe him a sum of that size? People Projects Discussions Surnames He spared the trees and in 1881 sold seven acres to the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA) for $125 an acre, plus an additional $475.12 for damages to his property caused by the opening of what would be called Hancock Avenue. A white Gettysburg resident, F.W. Samuel lived in 1900, at address, Missouri. Round 1 - Dylan Weaver (Shenandoah University) 22-8 won by decision over Eli Crum (Lycoming College) 1-2 (Dec 7-3) (He was mistaken in his belief that no Confederates had been moved to the new cemetery. He did not give up, however. In some cases, that was merely a matter of decorating the graves in existing cemeteries, but in places like Winchester, Va., where a great deal of fighting had occurred in surrounding areas, there was more work to do but precious few resources with which to do it. Did he wonder whether any of the men he came across had owned (or kidnapped) slaves? Janet S. 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