General George C. Meade Post No. 19
The early settlement of Sutton happened just six years after the end of the Civil War. As soldiers went back home in 1865 they often found stiff competition for farm land or businesses. The lure of the open west was attractive and west they came, many to south central Nebraska.
One of our first settlers in 1871 was the family of Hosea
Gray, Captain of Company A of the Iowa 6th Infantry. The Clark
brothers were in Sutton shortly, Dr. Martin Clark of the Ohio 7th
Infantry and Isaac Clark, quartermaster of the Ohio 25th.
A high percentage of early Sutton settlers were these Civil
War vets. The Sutton Museum is fortunate to have a large display poster from
Sutton’s chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the General George
C. Meade Post No. 19. Forty members of the post are pictured and best of all, a
key identifies each.
This display of the Sutton GAR chapter pictures 40 of its members and ribbons from several events. |
The G.A.R. was founded right after the end of the Civil War
in 1866. The founders envisioned the organization to be an arm of the young
Republican Party. G.A.R. members were credited, perhaps justifiably for the
successes of the party in the elections of 1868. But as beneficial as their
work was for the Republican Party, it was disastrous for the G.A.R. as loyal
Democrats and many members with other notions of the purpose of a veterans
organization left, perhaps 40% of the membership.
The turmoil destroyed the early G.A.R. In many parts of the
country, no post survived longer than two years until a reorganization and
re-direction happened.
Sutton’s G.A.R. Post #19 was organized on May 27, 1879 with
Philip Schwab as commander, Martin (or Markus) Wittenberg, vice commander and
Isaac Clark as quartermaster. Meetings were held the 2nd and 4th
Tuesdays of each month.
Post numbers were assigned sequentially by state. That is,
the Sutton post was the 19th in Nebraska. Each post selected a name.
Back east, posts were generally named after some local veteran, often a
casualty of the war. Other chapters took on the name of a famous person. There
were Abe Lincoln posts in most states. The Sutton chapter chose General George
C. Meade, the commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. General Meade had an
illustrious career even before his appointment to head the Army of the Potomac
only three days before it met Lee’s army at Gettysburg.
G.A.R.
members met in “encampments” for departments (state), districts or county. The
host for a department encampment in Nebraska was expected to provide 240 acres
of ground and food and water for 3,000 horses and 30,000 people. Encampments
lasted from three to six days. Our display has ribbons from several encampments.
The
encampment was a big deal. When my great grandfather moved his family from a
rented farm near Edgar to a Hoxie, Kansas wheat farm, he timed the trip to stop
in Grand Island on the way for a department encampment, likely August 31 –
September 5, 1886. He would have had his wife and eight kids with him including
a 2-month old baby – camping 19th century style.
We
have not dated the photos in our display but that should be doable. There was
likely only a few months when all 40 of these fellows were residing in Sutton.
Someone
in the distant past performed that noble task of identifying the individuals in
the photo. That didn’t always happen. We’ve received several boxes of photos,
real nice photos from people in the community but with no names associated with
the folks in the pictures and no one left around to tell us who those people
were.
Rarely
are we able to make an identification of these anonymous people – it is very
satisfying when that happens but we’ve generally spent a huge amount of time
getting there. Take a lesson. Collect your old photos and write on the back –
who is it, when was the picture taken, where, etc. That will be a great gift to
someone, someday.
Our
helpmate on these photos did a great job, with one exception. There are numbers
written lightly on the men’s chests in the photos and an accompanying key with
names of the fellows. Unfortunately, not all of the numbers are clear and the
sequence is almost always sequential, almost. One fellow, B. Isley seems to be
associated with two guys in different pictures who don’t look alike. We’ll take
“close” in this case.
So
who are these 40 guys?
Several
of them are well known to us today. H. W. Gray was Sutton’s first attorney and
with his son John started a lumber yard on the site of our museum.
J.
C. Merriill was an early merchant with his brother. I. N. Clark had a hardware
store, the first business on Saunders Avenue and with his brother Dr. Martin
Clark (Sutton’s first physician) developed the Clark Addition in the northwest
part of town.
John
Dinsmore was the first banker. A.A. Corey was an early homesteader northwest of
town and later a merchant. P. T. Walton ran hotels. Markus Wittenberg was from
Hungary and became an early merchant in Sutton with a confectionary business –
candies, cigars, etc. For a time, he had two stores, dry goods and a grocery.
William
Keller was a blacksmith by trade but in Sutton was in the grain business, ran
stores with general merchandise, then a drug store, then a jewelry store and
real estate. He organized a local military unit called the Governor’s Guards
and was the commander of the First Regiment of the Nebraska National Guard with
a Lieutenant Colonel’s commission.
Jacob
Steinmetz and C. W. Walther, both in this crowd, ran a McCormick & Co. implement
dealership in Sutton. Jacob’s wife Elizabeth and infant daughter were the first
burials in Sutton Cemetery. Mr. Steinmetz later moved to McCook.
We
have an ongoing project at the Sutton Museum to research and write biographies
for these folks whose names pop up in various places. Several of the fellows in
these photos did not leave deep tracks and have slipped by our attention
before.
John
W. Shirley was from Iowa and went to California in 1849 at the age of sixteen.
We’d guess his goal was gold. He stayed there 22 years mining and later growing
hops. His Civil War service was with a California unit in Apache Country mainly
at a post northeast of Phoenix. It counted for G.A.R. qualifications.
Which brings us to the criteria for admission to the G.A.R. and similar organizations. The modern organization is the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War which was created by the G.A.R. They set their own rules.
The
Daughters of the American Revolution and the men’s equivalent organization for
instance, admit not only the descendants of active duty, uniform-wearing
soldiers in the Revolutionary War but descendants of anyone who contributed to the
cause. If one of your ancestors sold a couple of hogs or sacks of grain to
revolutionary war soldiers, and you can prove it, you just may be in.
Other
fellows were learned a bit about with this project include Joel Longstreth who
ran a restaurant in town and was the constable. He moved to Ogden, Utah and
died there in 1923. He’s buried in the Sutton Cemetery.
I.
D. Evans founded The Sutton Register newspaper in February, 1880 later buying
and merging the Clay County Globe into his paper. He sold the paper in 1886 to
F. M. Brown who operated it into the 1940’s.
Longstreth,
Evans, Lucore and thousands of others have lived in Sutton, contributed to the
community and many moved on leaving only a few shallow tracks, if that. Every
now and then we turn out attention to some resource that has been sitting
nearby in plain sight. Such was this G.A.R. display. Close to half of them were
familiar to those of us who have spent some time on the topic of Sutton history
but 15 or 20 of them, not so much. Think of it as a puzzle.
We’d
like to…
How
does one finish that sentence? We’d like to recognize these 40 Civil War vets
who posed for these three pictures one day. We’d like to recognize the other
Civil War vets with Sutton connections who weren’t here that day. We’d like to
recognize the Sutton-connected vets from World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam,
Gulf Wars and vets who served at times and in places that didn’t involve
conflicts that generated big books – even the Cold War – my era.
And
why just vets? Sutton Historical Society members have worked on several
projects, even completing one or two, to tell the story of the people who
founded, developed and contributed to the Sutton community. It’s a bit of work,
but it’s good work. Entertaining work. Work that soon can become play. A few
years ago, this was hard. With the overwhelming wealth of online resources,
it’s doable with just a bit of cleverness you pick up quickly.
Care
to try it? Give us a call. This posting is not complete, there is always more
to learn.
This article first appeared in the November, 2015 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess at mustangmediasales@gmail.com for more information about this publication.
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