Author: Vincent Page

  • Lewis P. Whitaker – Private, Troop L, 14th Pennsylvania Cavalry

    The story of Lewis P. Whitaker, a private in Troop L, 14th Pennsylvania Cavalry, is that of an everyday Pennsylvanian who stepped forward during the final – yet still fiercely contested – year of the Civil War. Though not a veteran of the early battles, his service placed him squarely in the intense, mobile, and…

  • Brothers of the South Hills: Joseph & James Couch – 62nd Pennsylvania Infantry

    The Couch brothers were born in Allegheny County – Joseph around 1831 and James around 1839 – and grew up in what is now the Upper St. Clair / Scott Township region. Their family had occupied this land for generations. Local history notes that the Couch and Kennedy families owned adjoining properties in the South…

  • The Hands That Stacked the Stones

    On the southern edge of the Gettysburg battlefield, beyond the crowds that gather on Little Round Top, there rises a quieter hill – Big Round Top, a steep, wooded mass of ancient diabase boulders. Its slopes saw little of the dramatic combat that immortalized its smaller neighbor, yet the ground here holds something equally remarkable:…

  • Daniel W. Morton – Company C, 20th Maine Infantry

    Daniel W. Morton was born around 1836, a native of Windsor in Kennebec County, Maine, a small farming community set among the rolling hills of central Maine. Little is known of his early life, but by the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, he was in his mid-twenties, a typical age for the…

  • James Clarke – Private, Company G, 11th Pennsylvania Infantry

    James Clarke mustered into Company G of the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry on July 3, 1862, joining the Union Army during one of the most turbulent phases of the Civil War. Battle of Antietam Clarke’s regiment, part of Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Hartsuff’s Brigade in the 1st Division of the I Corps, was heavily engaged in…