By Mark Hubbs, Camp #53 Huntsville
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
SERVICE IN THE CIVIL WAR
Samuel Sweinhart was just two months past his seventeenth birthday when he answered his country’s call. Seventeen is young, but Sam had already been on his own for a over a year after his mother died and his father abandoned his family. He made his way from his home town in Ohio to Elkhart Indiana where he found work as a carpenter.
Just a few weeks after the disastrous Union defeat at Bull Run in July 1861, Samuel signed his name on his enlistment papers making him a new private in Company C of the 9th Indiana Infantry. He could not know that his new unit would become one of the most traveled and combat hardened regiments in the western theater of the Civil War.
Samuel’s service records show that he was 5 ft 10in tall with brown hair and black eyes. He appears as “present” in every muster roll of his company with no time away on detail or in the hospital. He avoided the camp sicknesses that debilitated or killed so many other soldiers during the Civil War.
He would have participated with the regiment at each of its battles, including the blood lettings at Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Kennesaw Mountain and the Atlanta Campaign.
The 9th Indiana Infantry reenlisted in mass at Whiteside Tennessee in December 1863 becoming a “Veteran Volunteer” regiment. Samuel was promoted to corporal soon after “for his bravery and efficiency as a good soldier.” The 9th Indiana was stationed in Huntsville from December 1864 until March of 1865. This is when Sam first became acquainted with Huntsville and North Alabama. Many occupying soldiers during the War commented on the beauty and fertility of the land and tidiness of the city. Samuel Sweinhart would have been no different.
Brady's photo of Co C, 9th Indiana taken at Whiteside Tennessee
The 9th’s service did not end with surrender of the Confederate armies in April 1865. That regiment, along with scores of others, were sent to New Orleans and then to Texas as a show of force. French forces, then occupying Mexico, threatened invasion over the Rio Grande River. The invasion never came. The 9th Indiana and most of the other War time volunteer regiments in Texas were mustered out in September 1865.
Sam had survived eight major battles and countless skirmishes and had never fallen ill enough to take him from his duties. He states in his pension application “Have never been in a hospital during 4 years and 2 months of my service and but once excused from duty on account of sickness when wounded.” Wounded? Along the Guadalupe River, near Victoria Texas, a Yankee bullet almost did what Rebel bullets could not.
“…While I was going for water for coffee, a comrade who was crossing the river, who was about being drowned, called me to assist him, the bank being steep where he was, I caught the muzzle of his gun and on his taking a step the hammer of his gun must have struck a rock or the bank so as to discharge his gun, the bullet entering my left hand between the thumb and fore finger and passing out at the wrist.”
The projectile could have just as easily passed through his chest or head. His wound festered off and on before healing, “small pieces of bone came out near where the ball had made its exit.”
Sam would never regain full use of his left hand. As he aged, the hand became increasingly stiff and non functional. A one handed carpenter cannot prosper.
RETURN TO HUNTSVILLE
Samuel returned to Indiana with his regiment in September 1865 and remained in the same community as his comrades. He married Alida Pratt in 1867. But opportunities must not have been rosy in post-War La Porte Indiana. Sweinhart and two of his fellow veterans moved to Huntsville, where they had been stationed in the closing months of the War.
James Speakman in his affidavit for Samuel’s pension application wrote: “. . . we all moved to Huntsville, Ala. (Spearman in Oct 1869, Swinehart in March 1870, and Martin in May 1870) where we have been neighbors ever since.” Andrew Martin, had been Sweinhart’s Company Commander during the War. All three settled in and began to raise families, putting deep roots in the Huntsville community.
Although his friend James Speakman was a carpenter, it seems that Sweinhart never returned to that trade. He first tried his hand at the grocery business, but eventually secured a job as a letter carrier with the US Postal Service. He was able to purchase a home on Walker Street, near Five Points, to make room for a growing family - Durwood, born in 1870 and Mae in 1873.
Sam’s job as a letter carried undoubtedly brought him in contact with many folks in the community, both native Huntsvillians and others who moved into the city after the War. He and his other Union veterans joined Camp #53 of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) a large veteran’s organization that had chapters in every state of the Union.
FORMER ENEMIES BECOME COMRADES
Samuel seems to have been well respected in the community. Some of his friends were the most unlikely. The GAR camp in Huntsville was never a very large one, but another veteran’s organization, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), obviously enjoyed excellent membership in Alabama and all the other former Confederate States. The Egbert C. Jones Camp of the UCV in Huntsville was no exception.
Despite being bitter enemies decades before, the common experiences of hardships and dangers of a soldier often brought these organizations together for both ceremonial and social gatherings.
In 1892 Sam traveled to Indiana for a reunion of his old regiment. His remarks during the reunion were recorded in a souvenir booklet.
“For over 30 years I have lived among the “Johnnies;” the captive of a woman of the Southland. The people of my section have always treated me well and among my very best friends are men who carried a musket in the Confederate army. Many of you no doubt remember Huntsville and Northern Alabama very well. We have a beautiful country in the Tennessee Valley and some of you boys used to think we had some beautiful women. And you were right, we have!
. . . the boys in gray are now my best friends and they told me to tell you, old Yanks, to come and see them and you would be received with open arms, as comrades. I can assure you that the old fighting men of the South have solid respect for the fighting men of the North.”
As the years passed, there were fewer and fewer old soldiers remaining. James Speakman died in 1895 and is buried in Ohio. Andrew Martin passed in 1903 and is resting in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville.
Eventually Sam Sweinhart was the last Billy Yank in Huntsville, and the Grand Army of the Republic ceased to exist in Madison county.
But Sam was not alone among Civil War veterans. His “Johnny” friends soon adopted him. He was invited to become an honorary member of the Egbert C Jones camp of the United Confederate Veterans in Huntsville. He attended all of their meetings. That organization too, continued to shrink as its aging members passed on.
His obituary in the Huntsville Times explained:
“Sweinhart was the only man in this section of the country who had the distinction of belonging to the United Confederate Veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic at the same time. He is one of the few veterans of the Civil War who have achieved close comradeship with soldiers of both sides without ever being censored by the other.”
In February 1928, Samuel Sweinhart posed as part of the last known group photo of the Jones UCV camp. (Seated, second from Left)
The association with the UCV continued until 1929, even as Sam’s and Alida’s health continued to decline. The flu was always a danger, especially for older folks. Sam and Alida both contracted “flu-pneumonia” in early January 1929. At the age of 84 Sam died and his spirit ‘Passed over the river to rest in the shade of the trees.” His beloved “woman of the Southland” Alida, died less than 48 hours later.
January 13, 1929 saw a rare double funeral at Maple Hill cemetery. Sam and Alida were laid to rest on that day. But unless you knew the people there, you would not have known the most remarkable aspect of this ceremony.
The surviving members of the Huntsville UCV served as pallbearers for this old “Billy Yank” and his wife. Sam’s “Johnny” friends paid one last tribute to their old soldier friend.
The Huntsville Times reported:
“In his passing Madison County has lost its last surviving veteran of the Federal Army and one of its oldest and highly respected citizens. - a man who fought the South in those historic days of ’64 but who had come to love and revere this section during the past 58 years so that he had often wished he had been born beneath the Dixie skies.”
Author’s Note - The Huntsville times was incorrect in naming Sweinhart the last Union Veteran of Madison county. At least one other man holds that distinction. He was, however, that last Grand Army of the Republic member in Madison County.
The legacy of GAR and Billy Yank and the UCV and Johnny Reb are still carried on to this day in Huntsville by Camp #53 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and by the Egbert C Jones Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Sources:
Civil War Pension Applications of Samuel Sweinhart. National Archives, Washington DC. 1867, 1912.
Comments by Samuel Sweinhart, Reunion Book of the Ninth Annual Reunion of the 9th Indiana Infantry, Rensselaer, Indiana. Aug 30-31 1895. Pages 13 and 22.
Another Old Ex-Soldier Passes On To Join His Comrades Across the River. Huntsville Times, Huntsville AL, January 11, 1929.
Confederate Veterans to Carry Union Hero and His Wife To Grave. Huntsville Times, Huntsville AL, January 12, 1929.
Soldiers’ Home Notes (Announcement of death of James Speakman). Dayton Herald, Dayton OH. September 28, 1895
