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Amos Humiston: Union Soldier Who Died at the Battle of Gettysburg
Mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, Union soldier
Amos Humiston died clutching the only clue to his identity:
an ambrotype of his three small children. By Mark H. Dunkelman Of all the fallen heroes of the epic, three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, this Union soldier was unique. He had not led a charge, nor captured an enemy flag, nor rescued a comrade under fire. Instead, his fame rested on his dying act of devotion and love; his death pose made his story special.
Found after the battle, in a secluded spot in the town near the intersection of Stratton and York Streets, the soldier bore nothing on his person to identify him. But clutched in his hand was an ambrotype photograph of three young children. In his final moments, he had fixed his gaze on the image of his beloved little ones, and carried the sight with him into death. The picture was freed from his frozen grip, and he was buried in an unknown's grave.
The girl who found the dead soldier--the daughter of a local tavern keeper named Benjamin Schriver--gave the small glass-plate photograph to her father. Before long, the touching picture became a conversation piece at his tavern in Graeffenburg, a village about a dozen miles west of Gettysburg. There the ambrotype likely would have passed into obscurity, a forgotten barroom curiosity, had it not been for a fortuitous accident.
Four men on their way to Gettysburg to care for the wounded in the aftermath of the battle were forced to stop at Graeffenburg when their wagon broke down. On a visit to Schriver's tavern, they heard the tale of the fallen soldier and saw the ambrotype of the children. One of the men, a Philadelphia physician named John Francis Bourns, immediately realized that the photograph was the single, sad clue to the soldier's identity. Intrigued, Bourns convinced Schriver to give him the photograph so that he might attempt to locate the dead man's family.
After seeing to it during his stay in Gettysburg that the soldier's grave was well marked, Dr. Bourns returned to his Philadelphia home, where he put his plan into action. First, he had the ambrotype copied by several photographers, producing hundreds of inexpensive duplicates in the carte de visite format. (Such paper photographic prints, mounted on Bristol board about the size of a calling card, had become popular during the early 1860s, and albums filled with the small pictures were a common sight in American parlors.) Having a ready supply of copies of the image was an important part of the doctor's plan because photographs could not be reproduced in newspapers of the day, and it was through newspapers that he planned to spread the story of the dead soldier and his ambrotype.
The Philadelphia Inquirer carried such an account on October 19, 1863, under the headline, "Whose Father Was He?" The article began by describing the final act of the unknown soldier. "How touching! how solemn!" the anonymous writer declared. "What pen can describe the emotions of this patriot-father as he gazed upon these children, so soon to be made orphans!" The column continued with a detailed description of the children's appearance, Dr. Bourns's address, and a request for newspapers throughout the country to spread the story.
Many papers across the North reprinted the Inquirer article verbatim; others published their own versions. A Philadelphia religious journal, the American Presbyterian, ran the story on October 29. Several days later, a single copy of that paper made its way to a subscriber in Portville, New York, a small town on the Allegheny River in the western part of the state. The issue's owner passed the paper on for others in the community to read, and eventually it reached Mrs. Philinda Humiston, the mother of eight-year-old Franklin, six-year-old Alice, and four-year-old Frederick.
In early November, Dr. Bourns received a letter from Portville's postmaster, written on behalf of Mrs. Humiston. Several months earlier, the letter said, she had sent her husband a photograph of their three children, just like the one described in the American Presbyterian, and she had heard nothing from him since the Battle of Gettysburg.
In response, the doctor rushed a carte de visite to Philinda Humiston in Portville. When the picture arrived, she stared at the three familiar faces and realized that she was now a widow, and that little Frank, Alice, and Fred were fatherless. And so Gettysburg's mysterious, unknown soldier could now be identified as Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The American Presbyterian broke the news on November 19, 1863--the same day that President Abraham Lincoln delivered his immortal address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg.
Soon after news of Sergeant Humiston's identification passed from newspaper to newspaper across the North, it was announced that Dr. Bourns would travel to Portville to return the ambrotype to the Humiston family and to present them with the proceeds from the sale of hundreds of copies of the carte de visite.
On January 2, 1864, Bourns, accompanied by the Reverend Isaac G. Ogden of the Portville Presbyterian Church and a small group from the town, visited the Humiston home. When the doctor handed the bloodstained ambrotype to Philinda, Ogden noted, "her hands shook like an aspen leaf, but by a strong effort she retained her composure." After giving the children some presents and visiting with their mother for a while, the visitors knelt with the family in prayer, little Fred next to his new friend, the doctor. Before leaving, Bourns presented Philinda with the profits from the sale of copies of the picture.
The following day, at a meeting held at the Portville Presbyterian Church, Reverend Ogden and Dr. Bourns were among those who addressed a packed house. The doctor read a poem titled, "The Unknown Soldier! Who Is He?" by William H. Hayward, the first of many versions of the story that would be told in verse. Before the meeting closed, Dr. Bourns sold additional copies of the famous photograph and presented the resulting purse to Mrs. Humiston.
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