Monday, February 15, 2016

Where we were in the U.S. Civil War

Our Frederick ancestors had been in the country only a few years when the U.S. Civil War broke out. Franklin Pierce was the U.S. president when Joachim and Elizabeth Holtz stepped off the boat in New York in May of 1854. He was still president in August, when Karl and Caroline Grohndorff disembarked. The newly-elected president, James Buchanan, hadn't yet fanned the flames of Southern secession when Jacob and Dorothea Moll arrived in April 1857. But when Johann Friedrich and Dorothea Hensler arrived in December of 1858, the country was falling apart. Their first years in America were under presidents that historians have consistently ranked among the worst. I'm sure they wouldn't have believed so at the time, but our ancestors were also privileged to have lived during the administration of a president whom all historians agree was among the best.

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March of 1861, less than seven years after the first of our great grandparents left The Grand Duchy of Mecklenberg for the United States of America. It's unlikely they would have voted in the 1860 election, but in Wisconsin, as in most of the mid-west states, there was almost unanimous support for Lincoln. The Germans that now constituted the majority in most of these states' counties had only recently emigrated from a homeland they would have known as a loose confederation of aristocracies. Many had even grown up in bondage. They would have understood better than most Americans the advantages of holding the Union together, and would have equated the Southern secessionists with the manor lords and barons they'd once served.

A fair number of our ancestors were in their 20's and 30's between 1861 and 1865, and one would expect to find at least a few of them on the Union Army's muster rolls. Our great grand uncle, Charles William Friedrich, was 16 in 1861 and just young enough to evade the draft. His father, our great x3 grandfather, Johann, was 41, and just old enough to be safe from the recruiters. Among those eligible was Fred Holtz, who would have been 34 when war broke out. Fred, however, was "a cripple", and deemed unqualified for combat. His brother John Holtz, our great-great grandfather, was 32, and though I've found several union soldiers with the name "Johann Holtz" or similar, none can be unambiguously linked to him. The same is true for his younger brother, Friedrich. If either of them were soldiers, they enlisted late and didn't see action. The men their sisters married also seem to have avoided combat. In fact all the men in the Holtz line spent most of the war years making love, not war. Our great grandmother, Arthur's mother, Lena, was among the first of the war babies, born August 22nd, 1861.

Lena's mother, Anna (Moll) Holtz, had brothers, and brothers-in-law, who did register for the draft. But only one, the youngest, seems to have served.  Christian Joachim Moll volunteered with the Union on February 28th, 1865. He was mustered into Company C of the 51st Wisconsin Infantry and was assigned duty in St Louis, Warrensburg, and along the Pacific Railroad. The regiment lost 16 men – all from disease. Christian himself was a casualty, and suffered an abdominal hernia from causes lost to history. He is mustered out 6 months later, on 19 Aug 1865. After his death in 1906, his wife continued to collect a war pension of $8 per month until her own death in 1919.

U.S. Civil War Roster of the 51st Regiment Infantry of Wisconsin Volunteers, with Christian Moll mustered in February 28th and mustered out August 19th, 1865.




No comments:

Post a Comment