Elizabeth area soldiers served bravely in the Battle of Gettysburg

By LARRY GILBERT
For the MVI

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, as the Battle of Gettysburg roared into its second day, a group of young men from Elizabeth Township found themselves in the middle of the fight for a boulder covered hill called Little Round Top. They were members of Company E of the 155th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Three of those young men would survive the battle, one of them would not.

The reason those young men were on that hill fighting for their lives had a lot to do with a proclamation President Abraham Lincoln made exactly one year earlier, calling for 300,000 more troops to assist in defending the Union and the Constitution.

Pennsylvania Gov. Andrew Curtain answered the president’s call by raising 21 new regiments of volunteers.

The 155th was one of those regiments. It comprised men from Pittsburgh and the towns and villages that surrounded it. Company E, one of the regiments’, 10 companies, was recruited from towns along the Monongahela, Allegheny and Youghiogheny rivers.

Called to serve

Joseph T Power

One of those towns was Elizabeth, where a young attorney and Jefferson College graduate named Joseph Torrence Power lived.

Power, who a few years earlier was the principal of a private school for young men in Elizabeth, encouraged several of his friends and former students to enlist in the regiment with him.

Among those men were 29-year-old Isaac Wycoff, who had also attended Jefferson College. He was the son of Isaac and Gertrude Wycoff.

Isaac Sr. was one of the wealthiest landowners in the Elizabeth area. He listed his occupation as a gentleman in the 1860 census, which was a sign of prestige and success in the 19th century.

Isaac Wycoff

Young Isaac was single and a farmer on his father’s estate when he enlisted in the war effort.

Two other recruits who joined with Power and Wycoff were Noah Pangburn a 21-year-old farmer from what is now known as Forward Township, and 19-year-old William Hindman, one of Powers’ former students.

Hindman left behind his widowed mother and two siblings when he went off to war. Power and Wycoff were soon promoted to lieutenant and sergeant. Hindman and Pangburn would serve as privates.

By the time these men arrived at Gettysburg, they had fought in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and had trekked over most of Virginia. They had spent most of June 1863 marching north chasing after Robert E. Lees’ Confederate army that had invaded Pennsylvania. The 155th reached Gettysburg late in the evening on July 1 after marching all day, and camped in the rear of the first days’ battle.

Heading to Gettysburg

At 4 a.m., the regiment was awakened and assembled before Col. John Cain. The colonel read the following order that had been issued by Gen. George Meade.

William Hindman

“The Commanding General requests that, previous to the engagement soon expected with the enemy, corps and all commanding officers address their troops, explaining to them the immense issue involved in the struggle. The enemy is on our soil. The whole country looked anxiously to this army to deliver it from the presence of the foe. Corps and other commanders were authorized to order the instant death of any soldier who fails “to do his duty at this time.”

Shortly after this announcement, the regiment was given orders to advance toward Little Round Top.

Noah Pangburn awakened that morning with feet so swollen from days of hard marching, he couldn’t get his shoes on. Even though Lt.

Power had given him a pass to report to the regimental surgeon, Pangburn hung his shoes over his shoulder and hobbled barefoot, behind the regiment. He feared missing the battle more than fighting in it. Civil War soldiers who fought alongside

Noah Pangburn

men from their hometowns didn’t want any accusations of what could be perceived as cowardice reaching their loved ones back home.

Upon reaching Little Round Top, the men of the 155th immediately recognized its importance. It was a hill on the far left of the Union line.

Confederate forces had just taken the ground below it and were charging toward the hill, just as the 155th and other regiments were occupying it. They knew if the rebels were allowed to take the hill, they could put artillery on it, and cannonade almost the entire Union army from its heights.

As Sgt. Wycoff stood placing his men into position behind the large rocks and boulders that were strewn about the hill, one of them a young Irish immigrant, named William Welton, who was struck in the throat and killed. Wycoff, who was remembered by his fellow soldiers’ as a man of courage and compassion, continued to stand, waiting for his men to find cover before seeking it for himself, when he was shot in the forehead and died instantly.

Power, Pangburn and Hindman had no time to mourn the death of their friend. The rebel army continued to advance. When they were 20 yards away, the 155th hit them with a deadly volley of musket fire. Still the rebels kept coming.

The fighting continued for another half hour, with men shooting at each other from a distance of 20 feet, before the Southern soldiers retreated back down the hill.

Later that night during a lull in the fighting, the three of them carried Wycoff’s body to the rear of Little Round Top and buried him in a shallow grave. They laid a piece of wood with Isaac’s name etched on it on top of it. They then hurried back to their regiment.

The rebel army never took Little Round Top and The Battle of Gettysburg would end the next day, with their defeat at Pickets charge.

The war would continue for almost two more years.

Life after Gettysburg for the Valley soldiers

Gettysburg would be the last battle for Lt. Power, he was transferred shortly after it to a non-combative role in the Quartermasters Department. After the war, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked in the Treasury Department and practiced law. He died there on Nov 4, 1886.

William Hindman’s luck ran out on May 23, 1864, when he was wounded at the Battle of North Anna.

The wound resulted in his left leg being amputated.

He died a month later in a Washington, D.C., hospital. His comrades remembered him as one of the most popular men in the regiment, who was very kind and deep in his faith, but also very brave when in combat. His remains lie in Round Hill Cemetery in Elizabeth Township.

When Robert E. Lee surrendered his army on April 9, 1865, ending the war, there were only 38 men of the 149 who had served in Company E, still with the 155th regiment.

Noah Pangburn was one of those men. Some of the others had transferred to different units like Lt.

Power, and a few had even deserted, but most of them were lying in their graves having been killed in battle or they had died from disease. The rest had been wounded and were at home trying to figure out how to make a living minus an arm or leg.

Pangburn was one of the few who had served in every battle the 155th had participated in. He returned home after the war and married Mary Roberts before moving to Beaver Falls, Pa., where he found work as an insurance agent. They would have a son that they named William, before Mary died in 1873. Noah would marry Britannia Howe in 1879, whom he would also outlive. He became one of Beaver Falls’ most respected citizens and was elected Burgess (mayor) three times. He died there on Oct. 7, 1908, the day before he was to travel back to Elizabeth to attend his family reunion. He is buried in the Curry Cemetery in the Bunola section of Forward Township, near a road that bears his family name: Pangburn Hollow.

Sometime in 1863 after the battle, some of Isaac Wycoff’s family members journeyed to Gettysburg to find his grave.

With the help of a map, probably drawn by one of the friends who buried him, they located his body and brought him back to Elizabeth.

He was laid to rest in the family graveyard on their farm. He would remain there until July 1893, when his family would relocate his and several other graves to the Elizabeth Cemetery on Blaine Hill in Elizabeth Township.

About the author: Larry Gilbert is a lifelong Elizabeth Township resident and graduate of Elizabeth Forward High School Class of 1974. He and his wife, Janet Butler Gilbert, live in Greenock. Gilbert is retired from TMS International in West Mifflin.

A Civil War buff, he has several ancestors who were in it. One of his hobbies since retirement is roaming through cemeteries and finding graves of Civil War soldiers and researching their lives, which is what led to this article.

Information for this story came from regimental history, The National Archives, U.S. Census records, newspaper obituaries, and a few books on the history of Elizabeth.