Battle of Antietam

On the 155th Anniversary of the Bloodiest Single Day in American military history -- September 17, 1862 -- please take a few moments to view this interesting web site:

Click -- Antietam Battlefield--by Civil War Trust

Corporal William Moegling Awarded A Presidential Memorial Certificate

 

 

General Ulysses S. Grant was then President of the United States when American Civil War Veteran Corporal William Moegling, late of the 97^th Infantry Regiment of New York State Volunteers died, 23 November 1869. An unsolicited Presidential Memorial Certificate was received last Saturday regarding the military service of our Great Great Grandfather William Moegling. Receipt of this Presidential Memorial Certificate is strongly appreciated. Certificate production must be an automatic process initiated by the U.S. Veterans Administration when a federal memorial headstone is processed, approved and presented. The Memorial Certificate is signed by President Barack Obama by facsimile, unstated but probably on behalf of the late American President and Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant. Our family extends very sincere thanks for this very fine gesture and gratefully accept the Presidential Memorial Certificate on behalf of our late Great-Great Grandfather William Moegling.

 

Our Grandfather Corporal William Moegling

My four-year search for the remains of Great-Great Grandfather Wilhelm “William” Moegling is continuing. But the discovery of new firm and valid related data relating to Potter Street Cemetery seems unlikely.  This Utica, NY municipal cemetery was unfortunately sometimes called “Potter’s Field,” so named to acknowledge the original Potter Family property owners who conveyed the three plots of land that became this city municipal cemetery.  The cemetery was not a burial ground reserved exclusively for the poor, as the name potter's field usually implies.  Many prominent early citizens of the Utica, NY area were interred at Potter Street Cemetery over the 122 year span of active use.  According to researchers with Saint Agnes Catholic Church in Utica, NY, as many as 10,000 persons were likely interred at Potter Street Cemetery.

It seems highly likely that Potter Street Cemetery was Grandpa Moegling's logical and probable temporary resting place. Further, it is probable his grave marker, if any, was a wooden marker design (as many there were), and by 1916 was lost, decayed and/or vandalized when the 1916 destruction of Utica's Potter Street Cemetery took place. We know from Corporal William Moegling's Compiled Military Service Record (CMSR), as received from National Archives and Records Administration that Grandpa did not receive his earned government-furnished headstone following his untimely 1869 death.  And about 80% of the several thousand late 1916 exhumed souls at Potter Street Cemetery were classified as unidentified persons, several skeletons grouped together in a single small boxes for "cost savings" and taken to Forest Hill Cemetery on Oneida Street, Utica, NY.  Most of Grandpa's remains were likely placed in one or more of these small containers with the remains of other unidentified persons and unceremoniously reburied in a 100' x 100' hollow purchased by the city of Utica as a mass grave site for unidentified Potter Street Cemetery souls. This Forest Hill Cemetery mass grave burial site is now defined as Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds"), a site purchased by the Utica city authorities in 1916. Any bureaucratic suggestion that absolutely none of the unidentified persons exhumed in 1916 from this 122-year old Potter Street Cemetery were U.S. Military Veterans of the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Mexican War, The American Civil War or even the Spanish-American War simply won’t pass a smell test. My Grandpa, Corporal Wilhelm “William” Moegling was a Military Veteran of both The Mexican War and The American Civil War.

Grandpa Moegling and his wife Rosella ("Grandma Rosa") Moegling had three minor kids at Grandpa’s death in late November 1869, they were financially not prosperous (perhaps considered today as working poor), they lived in rented housing on the corner of Varick and Fayette Streets in downtown Utica, NY, they attended the original Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church at Fay and Cooper Streets in downtown Utica, and Grandpa was working in his lifelong occupation as a "dyer" at Mrs. A. McClean's Scourer and Dyer Shop on 26 Hotel Street in downtown Utica. His home, his Church and his workplace essentially border the 1869 city-owned Potter Street Cemetery (all within a half mile radius). Grandpa had submitted a Military Disability Pension application in July 1863, this following his U.S. Army Civil War Discharge For Disability in early 1863. Official papers from the National Archives in Washington DC document he suffered several war-related disabilities including a gunshot wound received during the Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. His veteran's invalid pension application also states he has a service-connected double hernia. Strong evidence is that Grandpa's Civil War Army Veteran Disability Pension application had not yet been approved by his death 23 Nov 1869.

There is a spot in Forest Hill Cemetery nearly centered between cemetery Section 58 and 58A roadside signs on the lower southern perimeter road that Forest Hill Cemetery Superintendent Gerard Waterman called Section 58B (but there was no observed 58B signage here). Section 58B (a/k/a: "City of Utica Public Burial Grounds") is directly south from the small roadside gravestone of Mary M. (d. 1937) and Edward R. Stramm Sr. (d. 1926), the Stramm gravestone no more than five feet from the south side of this perimeter road, and has a couple large trees surrounding. Furthermore, Section 58B essentially borders the Forest Hill Cemetery heavy gage wire south perimeter fence. Superintendent Waterman told me his crew was digging a grave near this 1916 city purchased 100'x100' site and several bones were unintentionally dug up, causing him to research and discover that this location is where the bones of unknown souls from Potter Street Cemetery were re-buried in a mass grave. No honorary markers are present to flag Section 58B as the location for mass re-burials of those several thousand "Unknown Souls" exhumed from Potter Street Cemetery. This unmarked mass burial ground for the several thousand Potter Street Cemetery unknown disinterred is a colossal disgrace. Some form of significant memorial monument is required here to formally mark this ground. Section 58B is the same location where the majority of the identifiable disinterred Potter Street Cemetery skeletons were re-buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in a place between two other public burial grounds called “The Tiers."

The contempt we presently hold for our post Civil War federal government -- delay and more delay for those Civil War disability pension applications -- so therefore perhaps the pension applicant will die first as Grandpa Moegloing surely did. A contempt is growing for those period leaders of the City of Utica who allowed the city's first municipal burial ground Potter Street Cemetery at Potter and Water Streets to fall victim to the natural and unnatural ravage of time. 

Old 34th New York Remembrance

34th NY Infantry Regiment Monument at
Antietam Battlefield, Sharpsburg, Maryland

Spend some time this month in remembrance of those fallen boys from the “Herkimer Regiment”, those forty-three souls of the Old 34th Infantry Regiment of New York State Volunteers (NYSV) who were killed the morning of September 17, 1862 at the American Civil War Battle of Antietam. Three-Hundred & Eleven men of the 34th NYSV were engaged that day – men who hailed from upstate New York – and most of them Herkimer County residents. The Herkimer boys were engaged in a brutal fight -– perhaps better described as an ambush -- with well hidden Confederate forces for about one-half hour just after 9 o’clock that morning. The majority of these honored dead were fighting in the “West Woods” section of the Antietam Battlefield, slightly northwest of the now famous Dunker Church. An impressive monument was dedicated in 1902 to the valiant officers and men of the 34th New York Infantry Regiment, standing guard on the exact battlefield location where they struggled that truly longest day. This 34th NY Infantry tribute is displayed in the above photo.

I’ve been doing some research on the 34th NYSV for several months now – and can truthfully report that the real story remains unknown (maybe always will due to conflicting reports). But I strongly tend towards very bad leadership at all levels of federal command that day…of course starting right at the top of Union command with the cautious, ineffective, even incompetent leadership of commanding General George McClellan. The carnage inflicted this day by both Blue and Grey, the bloodiest single day battle of the rebellion and in American history, was nearly too awful for words. I’ll relate just one moving report quoted from the notes made during the Antietam Battlefield 34th monument dedication on September 17, 1902:

“The writer at the dedication related the following incident of the battle: Milford N. Bullock, of Company K, was found dead on the field after the battle. The position in which he was lying indicated the painful circumstances of his death. He was lying on his back, his rifle by his side. The ramrod of his gun was in his hand, the lower end against the trigger of the gun, and the muzzle of the gun at his head. It appeared at the time that the wound he had received had not been sufficient to cause instant death; but, being in mortal agony, he had contrived to end his sufferings by taking his own life. He had placed the gun by his side; the muzzle at his head, and by means of the ramrod had succeeded in discharging it. The circumstances were all so painful, that his comrades, at the suggestion of Captain Northup, agreed that they would not mention them in their letters home. But now, after forty years, there is no harm in referring to them. Young Bullock was from Stratford, Herkimer County, and was highly esteemed by all who knew him. His courage, his fidelity to duty were always unquestioned. His grave is not at home among his kindred, but far away, like that of so many others. He sleeps among the many unknown dead, in the great National Cemetery at Antietam; but we have never walked down those beautiful shaded aisles without feeling that we were again very near to our beloved comrade of those far-off days.” --Lt. L. N. Chapin


But today let’s just remember those forty-three men of the gallant 34th Infantry Regiment NYSV who made the supreme sacrifice the morning of September 17, 1862. Twelve of these 34th NYSV soldiers are buried with fellow New Yorkers in marked graves at the Antietam National Cemetery, the grave number is indicated following the soldier's name. Several more unidentifiable 34th NYSV soldiers rest in unknown graves in this hollowed ground. Here are the names of those killed-in-action or mortally-wounded-in-action on this single mid-September day:

· Adle, John H. C. -- Grave #826
· Allen, William G. -- Grave #834
· Armour, David C.
· Ashley, Sergt. Jacob J. C.
· Bailey, Henry C. -- Grave #845
· Beardsley, John G. -- Grave #524
· Bramley, Henry D.
· Buck, Martin A.
· Bullock, Milford N. K.
· Carey, Corp. David A.
· Cool, Stephen B.
· Coon, James E.
· Coonan, Patrick D.
· Crouch, Corp. David F.
· Dickson, John F.
· Donohoe, James A. -- Grave #832
· Easterbrook, Albert G. G.
· Eldridge, William E. G.
· Gadban, Lewis D.
· Gillman, Henry A. -- Grave #831
· Greek, Ezra I.
· Hartley, Robert H. A.
· Hawley, George A. E.
· Hayes, Dennis D.
· Helmer, Sergt. Aaron G.
· Hill, Second Lieut. Clarence E. H.
· Hicks, Lawrence G.
· Hubbell, Henry D.
· Jolly, Peter D. -- Grave #593
· Lewis, William K. -- Grave #844
· Ladew, Warren C. B.
· Lyon, First Sergt. Henry C. I.
· Mead, Sergt. Garland W. G.
· Murphy, John A.
· Mycue, John D.
· Keef, Corp. Arthur B.
· Orcutt, Alvin E. -- Grave #825
· Rhodes, Color Sergt. Chester S. H. -- Grave #828
· Rubbins, William G. -- Grave # 829
· Salisbury, William A. C. -- Grave #827
· Sashagra, Anthony D.
· Walby, Ralph B.
· White, Daniel E.

Note: the letter following the named dead is the Company within the 34th New York Infantry Regiment to which the man was assigned during the Battle of Antietam.


Another seventy-four men of the 34th New York were wounded-in-action on the morning of September 17, 1862 in their bloody engagement during the Battle of Antietam. Nine troops remain missing-in-action (MIA). Many of the MIA are no doubt buried in unknown graves at Antietam.