Photo provided to the Times ObserverA photo taken in downtown Warren when members of the Bucktails came to Warren for an annual reunion. Several of the men in the photo are known, including T. Elliot Kratzer and William Brown, second and third from left on the front row.
About 25 members of the famed Bucktail regiment came to Warren for the organization’s annual reunion in 1918.
Those attending included men from all across Pennsylvania.
They included men who were raised here but had migrated to New York and as far as Texas and Oregon.
They included the brother of a Pennsylvania governor and a member of Congress.
And the days in Warren included much reflection on the life of one of their commanders, Hugh McNeil, killed in the fighting at Antietam.
Before we get into who they are, I have to thank Daniel Wetmore for sharing this photo with me. It shows a group of Bucktails in downtown Warren in front of a monument many of us will recognize.
He shared what he knew about the men in the photo and I supplemented that wherever I could as well as adding the names of people that showed up in local newspaper accounts as having participated in the reunion.
We’ll start with the most accomplished member of the group – William W. Brown.
He was born in 1836 in New York State and recruited to the Bucktails from Emporium in Cameron Co. where he would serve as hospital steward.
According to his Congressional biography, Brown moved with his parents to Elk Co. in 1838 and attended public schools and the Smethport Academy and would go on to graduate from Alfred University.
His first political office was as recorder of deeds in McKean County in 1864 and then school superintendent in 1866, the year he was also admitted to the bar and elected DA in McKean Co.
He moved, that bio states, to Corry where he worked as city solicitor and then two years on council which launched two terms in the state House from 1872-1876. He moved to Bradford in 1878 from where he was elected to Congress, where he served from 1883-1887.
He returned to Bradford to practice law but was plucked from the region to be the auditor for the War Department and then Navy Department.
From there, he was appointed Assistant Attorney General by President Theodore Roosevelt where he handled Spanish treaty claims for three years.
He returned to Bradford in 1910 and would die there in 1926.
Albert Simmons
Simmons was recruited from Wellsboro and served in the Bucktails for three years before he was transferred to the 190th Pennsylvania. He was captured in Aug. 1864 and was a prisoner to March 1, 1965.
He returned to the area, living in McKean County and is buried in Eldred where he died in 1922.
John Elliot Kratzer
He was recruited from Curwensville in Clearfield Co. and rose to the rank of captain. He was also transferred to the 190th and captured. He appears to have lived the rest of his life at home in Curwensville.
Kratzer appears several times in the regiment’s official history, especially for his conduct at Gettysburg.
First, Kratzer appears to have been involved in the death of the regiment’s commander, Charles Taylor.
“His men, fearful for his (Taylor’s) safety, called to him to take cover. But the warning came too late, for as he spoke a rebel took aim at him. Brookins threw his gun to his shoulder, but the weapon missed fire,” the regimental history states. “Without a word, the Colonel dropped into Kratzer’s arms, a bullet hole in his breast.”
The next day, he led an attempt to clear the infamous Devil Den.
“Deploying his men as skirmishers, he charged forward at a run. When but a few feet separated them from their antagonists, the Confederates, springing from their cover, greeted them with a murderous fire, while an officer called on Kratzer to surrender. The answer was a revolver shot. The Confederate returned the shot, and Kratzer, firing again, though wounded in the elbow, killed him.”
Lewis Hoover
Also from Curwensville, he was captured in 1862 at Mechanicsville. He lived in Lock Haven for a time but is buried in Curwensville after he died in 1920. The Warren Mail reported he was living in Harrisburg at the time of the reunion. A regimental history states that he was one of the first to sign up in his community.
A first sergeant in Co. F, he was recruited from Carbon County and wrote the formal history of the Bucktails. He was living in Philadelphia after the war and is buried in Montgomery Co. He died in 1919, the year after the reunion here.
“While at Harrisburg a few recruits joined the company, among them being William H. Rauch, afterwards known both in the regiment and Regimental Association as the ‘Little Orderly,'” the history states. “This soubriquet was given to him by Captain Dennis McGee.
“Sergeant Ranch’s stature was less than that demanded by the military authorities, but desirous of enlisting he persuaded John Meyers, a man over six feet tall, who had already passed the physical examination, to do so once again in his name.”
Charles P. Rice
Originally from McKean County he was wounded twice – first at Catlett’s Station in Aug. 1862 and then the following month at Antietam.
He appears to have spent much of his life living in Little Valley, NY.
Joe L. Moore
Moore was from east central Pennsylvania and died in Oregon in 1923 but is buried in Montana.
Lewis Flatt
Flatt, a private, was discharged for wounds received at Mechanicsville on June 26, 1862. He would go on to live into his 90s, dying in Kinzua in 1935.
Peter D. Walbridge
He was recruited from Wellsboro. He was also twice-wounded, first in the right leg at Antietam and then in the head, leg and right arm by a shell explosion at the 1864 Battle of Old Church, part of Grant’s Overland Campaign
He was taken prisoner at Spotsylvania and transferred to Richmond, then the infamous Andersonville Prison before he went to Florence Prison.
He also died the year of the reunion and is buried in Wellsboro.
Eugene Howard Stone
The half brother of Pa. Governor William A. Stone, Eugene was captured and taken to Libby Prison and Belle Island in Richmond.
He lived to see World War II, dying in 1943 at the age of 101.
The Wellsboro Agitator (what a great name for a newspaper, by the way) reported that Stone’s death resulted in their now being only one living Civil War veteran in Tioga Co.
According to that article, he lived on the family farm which he expanded before moving to Kansas for three years.
Returning to Tioga County, he served on the school board, with the Masons as well as the Grange.
“Mr. Stone participated in many of the principal battles of the war,” the article said. “He had three brothers in the Union forces. One was a member of his own company. All returned to their homes at the close of the war.”
T.J. Stephenson
A corporal wounded at Antietam, Stephenson was the last surviving soldier of Co. G. He died in Beaver Falls in 1924 but is buried in Ridgway.
Local papers identified several additional veterans that attended the gathering.
Sidney Crocker
According to the Warren Mail, he was one of the Bucktails originally from Warren.
He died in 1927 at the age of 81 and he’s buried at Oakland Cemetery. His gravestone states that he enlisted in 1861 was a “PRISONER OF WAR 11 MOS” and “FOUGHT IN OVER 100 BATTLES.”
Ribero DeSan Hall
According to a state historical magazine written decades ago by local historian Ernest Miller, we get a biography of Hall: Mustered out with the Bucktails, June 11, 1864. Ribero Hall, 21, was a raftsman of Warren, son of Orris Hall, one of the town’s leading citizens. He enrolled as a private. Was promoted to 2nd Lt. after demonstrating his military aptitude at Drainesville, December 1861. Promoted to 1st Lt. on March 1, 1863. Hall was captured at Gaines’ Mill June 27, 1862, imprisoned at Libby Prison for 64 days before being exchanged.
“Was released,” he wrote after the war, “in time to take part in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, and was an active participant in all the battles in which our famous Regt. took part during three years, except those fought while I was in prison.”
In the postwar years he migrated to the Utah Territory, then to Texas, where he died in 1924. There is a family tradition that while fighting in the Wheat Field at Gettysburg he saw his cousin shot down, recovered his cousin’s pistol, and with it killed the enemy soldier responsible.
There’s more to be written about this Hall family but that’s for a future story.
There was also a reference to a “Patrick Hall” as a surviving Bucktail born in Warren at the time of the reunion but I can’t find more information about this individual.
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