Remembering a western Pa. Civil War soldier who was the last man killed in the Army of the Potomac

The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought in Appomattox County, Va., on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War. It claimed the life of Pittsburgher William “Willy” Montgomery.

Late in the morning of April 9, 1865, at the village of Appomattox Virginia, the American Civil War was coming to an end after four long and bloody years.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Potomac had finally succeeded in surrounding Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Among the Union soldiers blocking Lee’s escape into North Carolina was a young private from Allegheny City named William Montgomery. Called Willy by his fellow soldiers, he was a member of Company I of the 155th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. The regiment was recruited in Pittsburgh in August 1862. The men serving in Willy’s company hailed from Pittsburgh, the Boston section of Elizabeth Township and Allegheny City, which is now known as Pittsburgh’s North Side.

Willy and the rest of Company I were deployed as skirmishers in front of the rest of the regiment exchanging fire with Confederate soldiers a few hundred yards in front of them.

Sometime around 11 a.m., they realized the Confederates had quit firing. Shortly after that, a mounted Confederate officer waving a white flag came riding toward them. Willy and the others immediately quit firing as Sgt. Maj. William Shore of their company guided the man through their lines.

All along the battlefront the guns of both armies fell silent. Although Willy and the other soldiers didn’t know it at the time, the mounted officer was delivering a message to Gen. Grant from Gen. Lee seeking a meeting place to arrange the surrender of his army. What they did know was the white flag and the ceasefire had to mean the wars’ end was near.

The men of the 155th were just beginning to relax and rejoice with one another when suddenly a Confederate Artillery Battery that, through some confusion hadn’t received the order to ceasefire, began firing again.

Shells began exploding near them and a New York regiment next to them on their right. Years later, soldiers who survived this last bombardment would recall they still felt confident that the wars’ end was near. However, their feelings of joy were replaced by an overwhelming fear that they would be killed so close to the end.

A Union soldier’s early years

As Willy lay face down on the ground, he may have been thinking of another morning eight months earlier, when he left the home he shared with his mother Catherine and his younger sister Kate and traveled to a recruiting office in Pittsburgh.

There he met with Mr. RW Wilson, a 38-year-old tack manufacturer from East Birmingham, which is now part of Pittsburgh’s South Side. Their meeting had to do with the controversial Conscription Act of 1863, which required all men between 20 and 40 years of age to register for the draft. The draft was initiated to help replace the men that had been killed and disabled in the volunteer regiments like the 155th.

What made the act controversial was a clause that allowed a drafted man to opt out of serving by paying a $300 fee to the government or he could hire a substitute for approximately the same amount. Because of this clause, people began to call the war a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

Willy was 18 and made his living as a laborer at the time of his meeting with Mr. Wilson. He was too young for the draft, but not too young to enlist. At the recruiting office they signed papers stating that Willy had agreed to enter the service as Wilson’s substitute. The $300 payment that Willy received was probably more money than he would have made in a year. That, along with his $13 monthly Army pay, would have seemed like a fortune to an 18-year-old laborer in 1864.

After their meeting, RW Wilson went home to his wife, 4-year-old daughter, his elderly mother and his two Irish servant girls; and of course his business.

Willy who was 5’6 and weighed 115 pounds, went off to war. When the Army reached Appomattox, Willy had only been with it for three months, due to travelling delays and his being stationed at Washington, D.C., for a few months.

By the time he joined his regiment he would have received word that his older brother Standish was home, after being wounded and having his leg amputated at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. Although this news would have been disheartening, he was happy to find out his uncle Joseph Peppard was also in Company I.

In his short time with the 155th, Willy had become a battle-hardened veteran. At the battle of Hatchers Run, his first time in combat, he would witness his uncle being shot and captured. According to Sgt. John Sias of Willy’s company, “this event preyed hard upon Willy but he soldiered on.”

Two months later with several battles and miles of hard marching behind him, Willy found himself hugging the ground at Appomattox. Sgt. Maj. Shore recalled that Willy was crouching a few yards in front of him and the rest of the company when he saw one of the last shots fired from the Confederate battery explode right beside Willy.

Shore initially thought that Willy was killed as he saw large pieces of his uniform blown away. Upon reaching him, Shore realized he was still alive, but he saw that most of Willy’s right leg was gone. Shore remembered that as Willy was being carried to a field hospital, he expressed no concerns about himself but that he was very worried about his mother.

Minutes after Willy’s wounding, the Confederate battery stopped firing. One hour later, Lee crossed into the picket lines and surrendered at the home of Wilmer McLain in Appomattox.

Willy would endure three weeks of suffering at an Army hospital in Farmville, Va. He would succumb to his wounds on April 28 as his comrades and friends marched northward and home.

Willy was buried at the National Cemetery in Petersburg, Va. The survivors of the 155th would always claim that Willy deserved the honor of being the last man killed before Lee’s surrender and thus the last man killed in the Civil War.

However, history generally gives that distinction to Lt. Hiram Clark of New York.

Clark was probably hit by the same battery, but he was killed instantly. Other men would also be killed in the following weeks before the remaining Confederate Armies surrendered.

As for Willy’s Uncle Joseph Peppard, he was never seen or heard from again. He most likely died from his wounds in a Confederate hospital.

RW Wilson and his family moved to Nebraska after the war where he owned an iron nail manufacturing business. He died at the home of his daughter Fannie in Omaha in 1911 at the age of 85.

Whether he ever learned the fate of the young man who died in his place isn’t known.

About the author: Love for Civil War history sparked Elizabeth Township resident Larry Gilbert’s story about Montgomery 

Lifelong Elizabeth Township resident Larry Gilbert is a 1974 graduate of Elizabeth Forward High School, and he graduated from Penn State University with a journalism degree in 1978. He is retired after a career working in sales and as a steelworker at TMC International in West Mifflin.

His parents took him to Gettysburg when he was 7 and he’s been interested in the Civil War ever since.

“When my grandfather told me that his grandfather actually fought in it I was hooked. I’ve dragged my wife (Janet) and kids and now my grandkids to Gettysburg and other battlefields to or three times a year,” he said.

During a return beach trip, he and his wife stopped at Appomattox, which was the only Virginia battlefield Gilbert had not visited. He noticed William Montgomery’s plaque on the battlefield and knew that his regiment was from Western Pa.

“I decided right then that I had to find out more about this guy. I sent to the National Archives for his military records and bought a book, “Under The Maltese Cross,” which is the history of the 155th Pa., written by veterans of the regiment. I also searched through the U.S. Census of 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910. I also used the website Find A Grave. Some information listed William as young as 15 and as old as 19,” he said. “I went with 18 from the census and his enlistment papers. The fact that he was a substitute was quite a surprise.”