Sad Story Sunday …

Private John Disbrow, 111th New York Infantry had been in the Army about a month when he was killed on Bolivar Heights above Harpers Ferry on the night of 14 September 1862.

The saddest parts are three: he had turned 16 years old shortly before he enlisted, he was among the very first of his regiment killed in the war, and he may have been shot by his own men.

The picture here (from 2007, thanks Craig Swain!) is of a marker at the Park about that action. It might have indeed been “enemy cavalry”, or maybe just frightened rookies of the 111th NY firing at noises in the dark.

Colonel Jesse Segoine commanded the brand-new 111th New York Infantry in Maryland, seeing action for the first time in a skirmish at Harpers Ferry on 14 September 1862.

His photograph is in the Alberti/Lowe Collection and was published in Martin W. Husk’s The 111th New York Volunteer Infantry (2010).

Captain William Henderson Baird had been at First Bull Run with the 38th New York Infantry in July 1861 and was commissioned Major of the 126th New York when they were organized in August 1862. He commanded the regiment after Colonel Sherrill was wounded on 14 September at Harpers Ferry, and was surrendered with the rest of garrison there.

He was dismissed from the service on 8 November 1862 as a scapegoat for Harpers Ferry, but the “disability” was “removed” by Secretary of War on 26 June 1863 and he was mustered back into the regiment, soon after appointed Lieutenant Colonel. He was their Colonel when he was killed not quite a year later in action at Petersburg, VA on 16 June 1864.

In the background here is that 1863 letter from the War Department (online from New York Heritage). His picture is an engraving from a photograph, in the collection of the NY Sate Military Museum.

This impressive sculpted face belongs to Colonel Eliakim Sherrill, 126th New York Infantry. It’s from a bronze panel on his regiment’s monument at Gettysburg. It’s online from Steve A. Hawks on Stone Sentinels.

Colonel Sherrill was wounded in the jaw and captured at Harpers Ferry in September 1862 and was in command of his brigade at Gettysburg. He was mortally wounded there on 3 July 1863 and died the next day.

Major Henry A Cole led his battalion of the Potomac Home Brigade Cavalry in the breakout from Harpers Ferry on the night of 14-15 September 1862. His photograph is from C. Armour Newcomer’s Cole’s Cavalry: Three Years in the the Saddle in the Shenandoah Valley (1895), which is online from the Internet Archive.