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Civil War CDV's Kansas 7th Cavalry


Bob Hudson
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I got this during a pick today. The fact there was a lot of named Civil War CDV's was pretty cool, but later when I started researching, it appears that they were all from the same unit: Company D of the Kansas 7th Volunteer Cavalry, known as Jennison's Jayhawkers after its first commanding officer.

 

I have 18 CDV's and 15 have the name on the front or the back and three have no name at all. I ran several names through a database that showed they were with Company D, but I haven't run all the names yet and haven't looked through records to determine if any of them were among the Kansas 7th's casualities.

 

I scanned the cards tonight in groups of three. Below is an enlargment of the names in each group, the front of the cards and the backs.

 

1.jpg

 

2.jpg

 

3.jpg

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Here's the names on these cards and some info about their service. It looks all but one stayed

with the 7th until the end of the war - the one was discharged for some sort of disability in 1862.

 

Dickes, Peter 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Dunham, Fletcher 7 Kan. Cav. D Geneva, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 22 Sep 1864
at St Louis, MO.
Fulk, Charles 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Gill, James W 7 Kan. Cav. D Lawrence
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Hewitt, Joseph C 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Knapp, Cyrus W 7 Kan. Cav. D Leavenworth
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 19 Oct 1861.Mustered out on 02 Dec 1862
at Keokuk, IA for disability.
Knight, Charles B 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 01 Nov 1861.Mustered out on 09 Jul 1865
at Ironton, MO.
Mowry, George 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Moses, Webster W 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Newton, Francis E 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Promoted to Full Captain on
15 Sep 1864.Mustered out on 15 Sep 1864.Commissioned an officer in on 15 Sep 1864.
Pomeroy, Fletcher 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company S, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Smith, Erastus 7 Kan. Cav. D Wyanet, IL
Enlisted in Company S, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Wehle, George 7 Kan. Cav. D
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 03 Sep 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Wilhoit, Greenup B 7 Kan. Cav. D Cameron, MO
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 19 Oct 1861.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.
Wilhoit, William M 7 Kan. Cav. D Leavenworth
Enlisted in Company D, Kansas 7th Cavalry Regiment on 27 Feb 1864.Mustered out on 29 Sep 1865.

 

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You had a pretty darn good day!

 

i drove 160 miles roundtrip for this pick - the stuff I came to look at wasn't all that hot, but the lady pulled these out and asked if I was interested.

 

While this was a Kansas unit, Company D included many men from Bureau County, Illinois. Two other companies were organized in Illinois, with one from the Chicago area.

 

(By the way: Buffalo Bill Cody was a member Company H of the 7th Kansas Cavalry.)

 

Some of the photos have a stamp on the back: it's not postage - it's a tax stamp to help pay for the war. These were not used after 1865 so it can help date Civil War CDV's if you're unsure.

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RustyCanteen

I had no idea Cody was in the 7th, very interesting! I'm not sure what you went to look at, but I think these more than made up for it.

 

The funny thing, is that CW era records are fairly good, and more researchable than most WWII army records thanks to the 1973 fire. So often we know more about someone's great-great grand daddy than our own fathers and grandfathers. CW stuff is cool.

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I had no idea Cody was in the 7th, very interesting! I'm not sure what you went to look at, but I think these more than made up for it.

 

The funny thing, is that CW era records are fairly good, and more researchable than most WWII army records thanks to the 1973 fire. So often we know more about someone's great-great grand daddy than our own fathers and grandfathers. CW stuff is cool.

 

ancestry.com, fold3.com, the National Park Service website all provide access to CW files (free at NPS) and while they're not real detailed in terms of each individual, if you have a name you can easily find enlistment dates, unit, and the detailed unit movements that will let you know where that soldier was during the war. (The NPS search is at http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm )

 

Certainly if'd had 15 photos of members of a WWII Army unit I would have been a lot harder to get as much info as i did for the CW soldiers, and using online sources it would have been impossible to get info for all 15 because of the lack of unit info in most available 20th century records.

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Very neat, Bob. Thanks for the great replications. Bob

 

It's always interesting to look closely at the faces of the CW soldiers. For most these would have been their first photos (and likely the only one ever taken of them) and this would have been their first time away from home.

 

I have to say that I was amazed to find this many from one unit, although the last batch of CDV's a found were all of wounded Union soldiers assigned to the Veterans Reserve Corps: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/157683-civil-war-wounded-soldiers-cdv-photos/

 

And here's closeups of some of these Kansas Jayhawkers:

 

d.jpg

 

c.jpg

 

b.jpg

 

a.jpg

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If you only know "Jayhawks" as ther nickname for Kansas football and basketball teams, it's worth a Google search. The 7th Kansas Cavalry had a some vehemently anti-slavery CO's who clashed with their superiors. Here's a brief bio of the unit's first CO:

 

Probably the most overt Jayhawker of all was Charles R. 'Doc' Jennison. In truth, Jennison was unique. A runty, consumptive dandy, originally from New York, he practiced medicine briefly in Wisconsin before coming to Kansas to practice the more lucrative trade of horse stealing. For years, the lineage of many good horses in Iowa and Illinois was said to be 'out of Missouri by Jennison.'
While Jennison's skill at stealing horses was apocryphal, his abolitionist sympathies were clear. He demonstrated this in 1860 by heading a posse that hanged two unfortunate Missourians caught trying to return fugitive slaves to their masters.

 

Some more closeups of Co. D -

 

g.jpg

 

f.jpg

 

e.jpg

 

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I'm not sure what you went to look at, but I think these more than made up for it.

I agree, I think you really hit it out of the ball park on this one! Besides just being a great grouping, I think the unit is particularly interesting....both hard fought and one that you rarely see.

 

Here is a bit about them....and if you look further online, you will quickly see their service was more like an old Western movie than a typical CW unit:

 

http://www4.pair.com/justfolk/RegHst1.htm

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There's a good arugment to be made that the Civil War fighting actually began during the Kansas-Missouri border wars of the 1850's, skirmishes driven by the issue of slavery.

Here's some more about Jennison's Jayhawkers from http://www.historynet.com/americas-civil-war-missouri-and-kansas.htm

 

One of the most notorious individual units operating in Kansas was the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Doc Jennison started it, although he was not around at the end. Ubiquitous Dan Anthony led it for a while. To both friends and foes, it was better known as 'Jennison's Jayhawkers' and was proclaimed as the 'Independent Kansas Jay-Hawkers' on Jennison's original recruiting poster of August 1861.

Political ambition fed Jennison's military ardor, as it did Anthony's and Lane's. On October 28, 1861, the 7th Kansas was mustered into U.S. service with Jennison as colonel and Anthony as lieutenant colonel. The regiment, comprising volunteers from Kansas and nearby states, became part of Jim Lane's Kansas brigade. Birds of a feather were now flying in formation. Or, more accurately, Jayhawking in cahoots. Jennison referred to his regiment as'self-sustaining,' which meant simply that every foray into Missouri liberated more supplies than were carried into the state. Contraband seized from Southern sympathizers inevitably included horses, livestock and wagonloads of agricultural products–a minuscule fraction of which found their way to the Federal commissary. Slaves, too, gleefully trooped westward to freedom in Kansas. If other items found their way into the Jayhawkers' possession–items such as civilian furniture, silverware and money–such was the bitter price of secession. And if a few Secesh homes caught fire along the way, that, too, was the price their owners paid for rebellion.

The Jayhawkers were no doubt motivated by the Lawrence (Kansas) Massacre when William Clarke Quantrill's raiders sacked Lawrence with instructions to kill every male big enough to carry a gun. In 120 minutes they killed 150 men in the town of 2,000 and set fire to the the town (Lawrence, by the way is today home to University of Kansas Jayhawks).

 

j.jpg

 

i.jpg

 

h.jpg

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I had wondered why so many men from one Illinoise town joined this unit. Here's an explanation I found online:

 

"Oddly enough, there was one company in the 7th Kansas Cavalry, that had a number of men from my small town in Illinois (Wyanet). There were no openings in any Illinois cavalry regiment, so they got on a train, and went to Kansas. Several are buried in our local cemetery."

 

One of those Wyanet recruits shown in these CDV's was Fletcher Pomeroy and parts of his CW diary are online: http://www4.pair.com/justfolk/index.htm

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and if you look further online, you will quickly see their service was more like an old Western movie than a typical CW unit:

 

More than one writer called them "marauders" and that was among the nicer names.

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All the marauders were on the Missouri side of the border, at least that is what they taught us in Kansas history in Junior High... ;)

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All the marauders were on the Missouri side of the border, at least that is what they taught us in Kansas history in Junior High... ;)

 

My wife grew up in the Kansas City area - on the Kansas side - but her parents both went to University of Missouri and her grandfather was a professor there, so Jayhawk was a swearword in their family and I've seen how intense that KU/MU rivalry is: I seriously believe some of that intensity lingers on from the Border War and Civi War. Look at how many violent conflicts in Europe and Asia stemmed from hatreds going back centuries: at least in the US we evolved to fighting them on the football field and basketball court and the people of Lawrence no longer sneak across Stateline to seek armed revenge.

 

If you live along the East Coast and a few hours drive from Gettysburg and other iconic battlefields, it's hard to even think of Kansas as having anything to do with the Civil War. When I lived in Overland Park it was a surprise to go on drives in the Missouri and Kansas countryside and find all these little sites marking skirmishes from the CW and the Border Wars, places like Black Jack.

 

Here's a wikipedia piece on the "Bleeding Kansas" prelude to the Civil War, described as a "proxy war between anti-slavery forces in the North and pro-slavery forces from the South"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas

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That is an excellent point. I know at one point, prior to the Missouri vs Kansas football game in Lawrence they would bring in the town historian to tell the story of the burning of Lawrence by the "bushwackers" from Missouri. Victims of the Quantrill's raid are buried very near the campus. The history is alive and well... but on pause due to the breakup of the "old" Big XII conference.

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Bob,the photos really are great. I also love the history being brought up in this thread.

 

Here in Arkansas, we learn in school that we should've stayed away from the bushwhackers and the jayhawkers :-)

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