The 47th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, officially known as the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and frequently referred to as the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War and the early months of the Reconstruction era. It was formed by adults and teenagers from small towns and larger metropolitan areas in central, northeastern, and southeastern regions of Pennsylvania.Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5; prepared in compliance with acts of the legislature, Vol. I, pp. 1150-1190. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers: the wrong place at the wrong time. Allentown, Pennsylvania: L. G. Schmidt, 1986 (oclc = 15166408).
With respect to demographics, a large percentage of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were men who had emigrated from Germany during the early to mid-1800s or were Pennsylvania-born men of German heritage whose family and friends still spoke German or its Pennsylvania Dutch variant more than a century after their ancestors emigrated from Germany in search of religious or political freedom.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
In addition, a significant number of its members were immigrants from Ireland and two were natives of Cuba. Nine or more were formerly enslaved Black men who had escaped or been liberated from plantations in South Carolina and Louisiana.Snyder, Laurie. "About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers", in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story, 2014.
Roughly seventy percent of those who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry were residents of the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, Catasauqua, Easton, and surrounding communities in Lehigh and Northampton counties in the present-day Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. Company C, also known as the Sunbury Guards, was formed primarily with men from Northumberland County. Companies D and H were staffed by men from Perry County. The non-Lehigh Valley membership remains significant, historically, in the present day because a lieutenant governor of the state, the creator of a prosperous hat factory, inventors, and others who lived in areas other than the Lehigh Valley before and after the war became prominent civic and business leaders, post-war.Civil War Muster Rolls: 47th Regiment, in Records of the Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs (Record Group 19, Series 19.11). Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.Schmidt. A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.Bates, pp. 1157–1190.Snyder, "About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers," in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story, 2014.
Recruited at community gathering places in their respective hometowns, most of the men who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry enrolled for military service at county seats or other large population centers.Civil War Muster Rolls: 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.Civil War Veterans' Card File, Pennsylvania Digital Archives. The oldest member of the regiment, sixty-five-year-old Benjamin Walls, was an affluent farmer who would attempt to reenlist three years later at the age of sixty-eight after being seriously wounded while preventing his regiment's American flag from falling into enemy hands during the Battle of Pleasant Hill.Bates, pp.1150-1151. The youngest was John Boulton Young, a thirteen-year-old drummer boy from Sunbury. Dubbed "Boltie" (or "Boulty") and described in letters home by regimental officers as the regiment's "pet," he became the 47th Pennsylvania's first casualty, succumbing to smallpox at the Kalorama eruptive fever hospital in Georgetown on October 17, 1861. According to The Daily Item in Sunbury, the uniform that Young had worn during his brief service was a dark blue wool Zouave-style jacket with red trim and red wool pants [with] leather gaiters to protect his legs while marching," a style dramatically different from the more traditional Union blues worn by other members of the regiment. Due to his small stature, Young was also given "an undersized, nonregulation drum complete with small drumsticks," which measured just "13 1/2 inches across and...13 inches deep."Snyder, Laurie. "The Honorable John Peter Shindel Gobin", in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story, 2015.Day 1: John Boulton Young. Sunbury: The Daily Item, January 11, 2017.
Many of the men who initially served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers did so after first completing their three months' service with other regiments from Pennsylvania in response to President Abraham Lincoln's April 15, 1861, call for volunteers to defend the nation's capital following Fort Sumter's fall to Confederate forces in mid-April 1861. Reenlisting in hometowns following their respective honorable discharges from that service, they mustered in as part of the newly formed 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg during August and September 1861.Civil War Muster Rolls: 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.Civil War Veterans' Card File, Pennsylvania Digital Archives.
Ultimately, this regiment also came to be known as the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers due to the number of its members who chose to re-enlist for second terms of service between 1863 and 1864.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
History Founding and first months of operation (1861)
The 47th Pennsylvania Infantry was founded by Colonel Tilghman H. Good,Bates, pp. 1150–1151.Snyder, Laurie. "Colonel Tilghman H. Good," in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story, 2015. who previously served as captain, from 1850 to 1857, of the Allentown-based local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, leader of the 4th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment and commanding officer of the 1st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment's Company I. Following his honorable discharge on July 23, 1861, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin authorized Good to form a new regiment on August 5, 1861. Good immediately began recruiting men, including William H. Gausler, who had served with him in the 1st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment and was the former captain of a local militia unit, the Jordan Artillerists.Bates, pp. 1150–1151.Snyder, Laurie. "Major William H. Gausler," in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story, 2015.
Following a brief training period in light infantry tactics at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were deployed south by rail to Washington, D.C. on September 20, 1861.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Marched to a soldiers' rest station upon arrival, they were fed and rested before being marched to Camp Kalorama, which was located in Kalorama Heights near Georgetown, roughly two miles from the White House. On September 24, 1861, the 47th Pennsylvania Regiment assimilated into the U.S. Army when its men were officially mustered into federal service.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
Three days later, on September 27, 1861, the 47th Pennsylvania was assigned to Brigadier General Isaac Stevens' 3rd Brigade, which also included the 33rd, 49th and 79th New York regiments. By that afternoon, the Mississippi rifle-armed infantrymen were on the march to Camp Lyon, Maryland on the Potomac River's eastern shore. At 5 p.m., they moved double-quick (one hundred and sixty-five steps per minute using thirty-three-inch steps) with the 46th Pennsylvania across the Chain Bridge marked on federal maps and then on toward Falls Church, Virginia. Arriving at Camp Advance around dusk, after completing an eight-mile trek, they made camp in a deep ravine near Fort Ethan Allen and General William Farrar Smith's headquarters and about two miles from the Chain Bridge. Under Smith's leadership, their regiment and brigade were now part of the larger Army of the Potomac, and would help to defend the nation's capital through late January when the men of the 47th Pennsylvania would be shipped south.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
During this time, the weather was reported in letters home from the men to be cold and damp; as a result, several men from the regiment fell ill. Eleven days after the smallpox death of drummer boy John Boulton Young in October 1861, Sergeant Frank M. Holt also died at the Kalorama eruptive fever hospital. Sometime that same month, according to Schmidt, Private Reuben Wetzel from G Company, was seriously injured when the wagon he was on overturned while the regiment was relocating to Camp Griffin in Virginia. Suffering from a fractured tibia, he succumbed to complications at the Union Hotel General Hospital on November 17, 1861, and was interred at the Military Asylum Cemetery, now known as the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery.Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, in Records of the U.S. Adjutant General's Office. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1861-1865.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
On October 11, 1861, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in the Grand Review at Bailey's Cross Roads at Camp Griffin. In a letter written around this time, Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, the commanding officer of C Company, reported that companies D, A, C, F and I (the 47th Pennsylvania's right wing) were ordered to picket duty after the regiment's left wing (companies B, G, K, E, and H) had been forced to return to camp by Confederate troops. Eleven days later, the 47th engaged in a Divisional Review, described by historian Lewis Schmidt as massing "about 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and twenty pieces of artillery all in one big open field." During mid-November, the 47th Pennsylvanians were issued new Springfield rifles as reward for the regiment's successful performance.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
1862 Ordered to leave their Virginia encampment in early 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers moved by march, rail and steamer to Maryland, where they briefly quartered at the U.S. Naval Academy before boarding the steamship Oriental on January 27, 1862. Following Brigadier-General Brannan's directive, they sailed for Florida, a state which, despite its secession, remained important to the Union Army due to the presence of Forts Taylor and Jefferson.Schmidt, A Civil War history of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers.
Steaming south from January 27 to early February 1862, the men of the 47th traveled from Annapolis to Key West, Florida, where they were assigned to garrison duty at Fort Taylor. In addition to strengthening the fortifications of the federal installation, they felled trees, built new roads and drilled daily in heavy artillery or other military tactics. On February 14, they marched in a parade through the streets of Key West.