quoting Lincoln
Evidence (to the left) indicates that three years and a day after the National Cemetery at Gettysburg was dedicated another dedication was held in the town – this time for the National Soldiers’ Orphans’ Homestead. The orphanage was inspired by the story of Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Infantry Regiment. On July 1, 1863 the 154th was trying to help cover the retreat of the 11th Corps. Their position was soon attacked by a much larger Confederate force, which soon surrounded and captured most of the 154th. Sgt. Humiston was shot dead as he tried to make his escape. In the days before dog tags the only identification found on the corpse was an ambrotype of the soldier’s three young children, which Sgt. Humiston was clutching in his hand. A huge publicity campaign was launched to try to find the dead soldier’s family, and eventually Philinda Humiston and her three children were identified in Portville, New York. The Humistons’ story inspired the founding of the Gettysburg orphanage. You can read a very good article about Amos Humiston, his family, and the orphanage at Historynet. The Humistons stayed at the Gettysburg orphanage from October 1866 until Philinda remarried in October 1869. After a few successful years, the orphanage eventually closed because of mismanagement and mistreatment of the children.
There is currently a monument commemorating Sgt. Humiston and his children in Gettyburg.
Amos Humiston, 154th NY Infantry
“The children of the battle field” (front)
proceeds for the orphanage (back)
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154th decimated at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg
154th Regiment
Monument at Gettysburg
The image of the 154th’s monument, the losses table, and the roster all come from New York State Military Museum, which also provides several letters home from the regiment’s major, Lewis D. Warner. A July 10, 1863 letter discusses the disaster at Gettysburg and the difficulty of accurately reporting the losses: “As we did not recover this ground [where the 154th was captured on July 1st] until the 4th, and as the dead were by that time under the intense heat, so swollen and disfigured that recognition was impossible, we cannot, until the return of the prisoners, make an accurate report.” The Library of Congress provides the images of the poem, children, Frank Leslie’s. There seem to be a couple factual discrepancies in the accounts I linked to.
anonymous Amos Humiston in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, (1864 Jan. 2)
