Treasures on display in Civil War Room

By Christine Haines

chaines@yourmvi.com

The Civil War takes a decidedly personal and local turn at the Rostraver Township Historical Society.

The organization recently opened its Civil War Room, featuring numerous artifacts such as weapons, bullets and other military items. It also features the letters of Col. Jacob Greenawalt of West Newton to his wife Rebecca, who carried them with her for 61 years after his death. A local dentist, Dr. Edwin Hogan, used the letters to write a book, “Waiting for Jacob.”

“His wife kept his letters in her purse until her death in 1925,” said Stu Boyd, vice president of the historical society. “They’ve been very generous in letting us be the custodians of these letters.”

The hand-written letters from more than 150 years ago span from four years before the war until two years after Jacob Greenawalt’s death when one of the nurses that cared for him wrote to Rebecca. 

Greenawalt was only 26 years old when he died at Spotsylvania, Va., in 1864.

“He lingered from May 5 to 17 after being shot in the lower abdomen,” Boyd said.

Local residents have been quite generous to the museum, according to Boyd, with one local gun collector loaning a Spencer carbine he recently acquired at a gun show in Gettysburg. The weapon had been carried by a Union cavalry officer and came into the possession of a Confederate soldier with the 18th Virginia infantry regiment. It remained in that man’s family until the recent sale.

Boyd said there are some unexpected local connections to the Civil War as well.

“There was a hotbed of secession in Fayette City and there are two Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery there,” Boyd said. 

To read the rest of the story, please subscribe or subscribe to our online edition at http://monvalleyindependent.com.