Greetings, friends. (LXVIII)

Greetings, friends. My grandfather Luther Erle used to retell the family legend that his grandfather, who was also known as Luther, had ran away from home as a teenager, and lied about his age in order to enlist in the Union army during the American Civil War. At least, I had always regarded the tale as a legend, because stories like this are so common as to be almost cliché, from the ancient Roman legions clear down to Audie Murphy.

After reading Shelby Foote’s monumental history The Civil War: A Narrative over a period of months some years back, I became intensely curious about my family’s own participation in that conflict. I have already told the story of the elder Luther elsewhere, but I hope those of you have heard it before will indulge the reiteration.

My patrilineal great-great-grandfather was baptized Augustus Martin Luther Erle in 1847. He was the eldest surviving son of Carl Ludwig Erle, who was the first Erle in my family in America.

Carl Erle himself originally came from Hanover in 1824 by way of Ellis Island, and then settled in upstate Pennsylvania, which had a large community of German settlers. He became a Lutheran minister and preached entirely in German until the age of 70, when his parishioners petitioned for a pastor who could preach in English. For all I know, he may not have even spoken English.

Be that as it may, Grandpa Carl had by then married into the Hunsinger clan, a sprawling collection of German-American families in and around Sullivan County, Pennsylvania that traced their (our) ancestry back to Old Johan Georg “Jurg” Huntzinger, who came over from Württemburg in 1749. Old Jurg’s sons Bernhard and Young Jurg were born in America. Both served in a state militia unit during the Revolutionary War. I suppose this means that, as descendents of Bernhard Huntzinger, everyone in my family qualifies for membership in the SAR / DAR, if any of us wanted such a thing.

So Carl Ludwig Erle married Bernhard’s granddaughter Hettie in 1836, and over the course of 18 years, they had nine children, of whom only five apparently survived until adulthood, including my great-great-grandfather Martin Luther Erle, or simply Luther, as he was known later in life.

The printed record doesn’t say much about the elder Luther Erle, aside from his decennial appearance in the US Census records, which list his birth family, and later his wife and children. But the Tunkhannock, PA weekly newspaper did offer a solitary tantalizing mention of his name in a February 1890 issue, listing him the attendees of a reunion of the Union Army’s 58th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, under Company B.

The thing is, the Union Army kept pretty detailed personnel records, and Great-Great-Granddad Luther does not appear by name on any muster roll, much less that of the 58th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company B. This baffled me.

However, another thing that happened in 1890 was that the US Census Bureau conducted a special census that year of war veterans and their widows, for the purpose of setting two and a half decades of pension claims. Half of the records from this special census were subsequently lost in a fire, but not the one naming Luther Erle of Colley Township, PA, alias John Eberly, as a private of Company B, 58th Pennsylvania.

Wait a second. Alias? Alias? My great-great-grandfather had a nom de guerre?

Evidently he did. What’s funny about it is that his German father probably pronounced our surname something like air-leh, which is why the family’s name is variously listed as Early or Earley in the 1840 and 1850 Census rolls. Of course it is shameful that somewhere in between Grandpa Carl and yours truly, we anglicized the pronunciation of our surname, but that’s another story.

So Luther’s assumed surname Eberly almost sounds like a nervous stutter, like something he made up in the moment. But he also had cousins in Sullivan County on his mother’s side named Eberlin, so maybe he was really just filching a familiar but similar sounding name.

Anyway, returning to the muster rolls, we do find Private John Eberly, enlisted in March 1864, at the age of 18. Except that Luther Erle was born in November 1847, so in March ‘64, he was only 16.

So my great-great-grandfather Luther did in fact run away from home to enlist in the Union Army under an assumed name and a falsified age. I have the documentary evidence to prove it.

Of course I wonder what the experience of the war was like for him. The 58th Pennsylvania Volunteers were sent to Yorktown in April 1864, where they participated in some minor battles south of Richmond in May. The turning point for the regiment came in June, when they marched into the Battle of Cold Harbor, one of the bloodiest and most lopsided defeats inflicted on the Union side in the entire war. By the end of the month, the unit was evidently so shattered that all the veterans were furloughed home for the remainder of the summer, and they were never employed in anything more strenuous than garrison duty thereafter.

Of Martin Luther Erle, alias Private John Eberly, I know almost nothing except that he returned home to Sullivan County and settled down, marrying his second cousin Susannah “Susan” Hunsinger three years later.

One interesting fact, though — Susan was the eldest child of her family. In August 1864, while Susan was still 15, her parents Amos and Eady had another child, whom they named Luther Martin Hunsinger. “Private Eberly” would have returned home to Colley on the very first leave of his military service only a month beforehand, probably still in uniform. Was Baby Luther named for the still-teenaged war veteran (and his future brother-in-law)?

I don’t know what they looked like. I have found portraits of Carl and Hettie on genealogy sites, but I’ve never seen any images of Granddad Luther or Grandma Susan. The 58th Pennsylvania Volunteers had a group photo taken for their 40th anniversary reunion in 1914, but the elder Luther wasn’t in it. He’d already passed two years before.

So it was with not a small amount of curiosity that I rolled out of bed on Sunday morning at a quarter to seven to go see the final resting place of my great-great-grandparents at Tioga Point Cemetery in Sayre, Pennsylvania.

Conveniently, the hotel I’d picked out turned out to be not 5 minutes down the road from Tioga Point. The cemetery has over 20,000 graves, but some third cousin had already done me the favor of cataloguing theirs online, so I knew in which plot to look, and what the headstones looked like.

Nevertheless, I had a sense of urgency and some trepidation. I still planned to visit to gravesites of my great-grandparents Nelson and Mae, and then I had to drive to Buffalo, get Suzy, drive to Franklin PA to visit some family friends there, and then drive almost the rest of the way to Columbus to see my cousin Abby in time for dinner. Time seemed of the essence.

Tioga Point is a beautiful cemetery, a lovely oasis set squarely in the middle of Sayre, quite large but neatly kept, dotted with graceful old hardwood trees. A forest of American flags attended many headstones, evidently to mark the graves of deceased military veterans. I wondered if Luther’s would have one.

To my surprise, I found Luther & Susan’s headstones rather quickly, but almost by accident. The two low rectangular headstones were so encrusted with lichen that I had nearly walked past them until I glimpsed the inscription “CO. B 58 PA. VOL.” out of the corner of my eye. I knew it right away. I had found them!

Sure enough, there they were, Luther and Susan, side-by-side. The headstones were recognizable from the photos on the Internet, although barely, on account of the flora.

Luther’s headstone was in fact accompanied by a freshly placed American flag, and next to it a medallion emblazoned “Grand Army of the Republic”. It warmed my heart.

Next to his, Susan’s headstone merely read “His Wife.” This seemed unreasonably paltry for a person who had birthed and raised to adulthood seven children, including my great-grandfather Nelson. That’s a lot of work. I think Grandma Susan also deserved a flag and a medallion, at least. Also, they got her birthdate wrong.

Anyway, here was the final resting place of my great-great-grandfather Luther Erle, for whom my grandfather was named. And next to him, my great-great-grandmother Susan Erle, for whom my aunt was named. I marveled over the unbroken chain of chemical reactions which had so many years ago produced the two human beings now reposed six feet below me, and then gone on to create me, and so many of my loved ones.

I know that I have third and fourth cousins out there who are also descended from Luther & Susan, such as the one who is maintaining probably the best collection of genealogical information about them currently online. But I don’t really know who visits these graves, or how often, aside from the stranger who comes along, working from a list, and plants a flag by every veteran’s headstone.

Meanwhile, I had places to be myself, but I also don’t know when I’ll be back. So I found an appropriately sized stick, got out a penknife, whittled down the end to use as a cleaning tool, and then I got to work.

If you’re reading this, I send you my love. More about the road trip tomorrow.