Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was one of the first places in America to officially recognize the holiday, originally known as Decoration Day. A commemoration of those who were slain in the Civil War, the name was given to this special day because the living showed their remembrance by placing flowers on the graves of the dead. Now known as Memorial Day, the holiday is a commemoration of all who have passed before us, with special attention to those who fought for liberty at home or abroad.
Memorial Day in the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg still follows a tradition that has existed since that first official Decoration Day on May 30, 1868. It began with the fate of one man, a husband and father slain in the Battle of Gettysburg.
Amos Humiston never set his sights on being a soldier. Born and raised in the village of Owego, New York, Amos was the youngest of four children. His father died young, leaving Amos’s widowed mother to raise her children alone. Times were tough, and Amos was loaned out to work for hire, a typical way to make ends meet during the era. By age 15, Amos was apprenticed to a harness maker, and had little schooling. Five years later, the young Humiston was tired of the life of a laborer and went to sea on a whaling ship. Three years later, he had traveled the South Pacific, the Arctic, and much of the Atlantic. He had visited exotic places like the Sandwich Islands and endured dangers like hurricanes at sea. He had witnessed the burials of shipmates to watery graves, and found that, after all his adventures, he received very little money. A much wiser Humiston returned to New York at age 23 and settled down to work with his brother, a tanner, in the village of Candor, which was situated near Owego. It was there that destiny intervened.
A young widow named Philinda Smith also lived in the village of Candor, and Amos was immediately attracted. A courtship ensued and the couple married on July 4, 1854. Three children were born to the couple: Frank in 1855, Alice in 1857, and Frederick in 1859. With a family to support, Amos moved his family to the village of Portville, a town just north of the Pennsylvania border in southwestern New York where a thriving logging industry insured plenty of work for tanners and leather workers, a skill in which Amos Humiston excelled.
Amos and his young family were living in Portville when the war erupted in the spring of 1861. Torn between his desire to aid his country and his love for his family, Amos did not enlist in 1861 – a decision that was due in part to Philinda entreating him not to go to war. She had already been widowed once, and did not relish in the idea of again being bereft of a husband. The war was expected to be of short duration, and so Amos stayed in Portville.
On July 4, 1862, the Humistons celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary. The milestone was marred, however, by President Lincoln’s second call for volunteers. Amos felt that he could not ignore the summons, as most of the remaining New York men eagerly enlisted.
Philinda did not take the news well. She pleaded with him to think of his children but Humiston stood resolutely by his decision. According to a close family friend, Philinda looked over her sleeping children that summer night and “sobbed in silence.” 1
Amos Humiston enlisted in the 154th New York Infantry. The regiment left for war in late September 1862 with nearly 1000 men in the ranks. The train bearing the farmers and laborers, fathers and sons left the nearby town of Olean for Elmira and Baltimore, and finally arrived in Washington, D.C. After a scant month of training, the 154th headed for Northern Virginia as part of the 11th Corps, in the Army of the Potomac.
Upon their arrival, the men from New York discovered that their corps was filled with a mix of many nationalities, most of them immigrants who did not speak English. Even some of the brigade and division commanders had names such as Sigel, Schimmmelfennig, von Steinwehr, and Krzyzanowski.
Because of the language barrier and the lack of New York men as commanders, the situation rankled the patriotic men of the 154th. To make matters worse, men from the country like Humiston and his fellow compatriots were placed in the midst of large populations from inner cities, resulting in disease. Many of the men of the 154th became ill and some of them succumbed to typhoid, smallpox, and influenza before ever seeing the front. In addition, the paymaster had overlooked the new recruits; and the needed funds to send to families back in Portville were not issued – a problem that continued for several months.2
The 11th Corps missed the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. When Christmas passed that year, a homesick Humiston wrote to his wife, lamenting the news of the repeated Union losses on the battlefield. He penned, “If I ever live to get home you will not complain of being lonesome again. Now kiss the children for me.” As the winter months passed into a new year, Humiston’s letters repeatedly admonished his wife to “take good care of the babies and kiss them for me.”3
In the year 1863, Lincoln gave the Army of the Potomac a new general. Joe Hooker replaced the affable but inefficient Burnside, and set about to boost morale. Soldiers began receiving their salaries, better food lessened sickness in the ranks, and the creation of corps symbols introduced a camaraderie among the enlisted men. The 11th Corps adopted the crescent. General Sigel resigned in March and was replaced by the pious General Howard from Maine. The German immigrants were displeased, but the men of the 154th were heartened. With the changes came many promotions, and Amos Humiston received the brevet of sergeant. Within a few days, the young father from Portville would be tested in his new position as battle loomed.4
The 154th New York fought their first battle on May 1-2, 1863 at Chancellorsville. The 11th Corps formed one of the flanks of the Army of the Potomac, and took their position in the woods. As the day waned and the sounds of battle seemed to fade, the men of the 11th Corps prepared their dinner over campfires and settled down for the evening. They did not know that the intrepid General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson with his corps of 30,000 quietly crept through the woods toward them. Deer bounded through the camp of the Union 11th Corps, disquieted by the advancing Confederates, but the soldiers ignored the warning. Suddenly men in gray swarmed the camp, and the panicked immigrants fled. The men of the 154th, the newest in the ranks, held their ground and fought bravely. Still, the stigma caused by those who were routed brought shame to the entire corps, even though the fight mortally wounded General Jackson, felled in the dark by his own troops. Still, Sergeant Humiston was cheered in the midst of the dismal circumstances. Philinda had written, and in her letter was a surprise gift – an ambrotype of their three children.5
Fate again played its hand with the overwhelming Confederate victory at Chancellorsville. Inspired by the win, General Robert E. Lee decided to take the offensive and bring the war to the North. His Army of Northern Virginia began their trek into Pennsylvania, and the Union army followed. It resulted in the Battle of Gettysburg, a fight that began on July 1, 1863. The 154th New York arrived with the rest of the 11th Corps during the afternoon after a hard march in the rain up the Emmitsburg Road. When they arrived, the battle already raged north and west of town as the Union’s 1st Corps grappled with two Confederate corps led by Richard Ewell and A.P. Hill. It was the only time during the Civil War where Lee’s Confederates outnumbered the Union army, now commanded by General George Meade.6
The 154th New York was part of Colonel Charles Coster’s brigade. Arriving at Gettysburg, they were first deployed in the Evergreen Cemetery – noticed by the high command as a good place to occupy with its high ground and easy view of the town and fields below. As the battle worsened, news of the death of General John Reynolds reached the men on Cemetery Hill. As General Meade had not yet arrived due to the unexpected fight at Gettysburg, and with Reynolds’s death, General Howard assumed temporary command of the battle. As “the mighty panorama of war” expanded and exploded to the north and west of town, Howard sent Coster’s brigade into the fray, using them to cover the retreat of the rest of the 11th Corps back to Cemetery Hill. The sight reminded them of the rout at Chancellorsville just two months earlier. Men in blue were rushing back toward the hill south of town as men in gray chased them. Coster’s men came too late to bolster the broken lines of the 11th Corps.7
Had the 154th New York been in the front lines that day at Gettysburg, they might have had a chance to survive it. Instead, they were sacrificed so that others might live. Near the railroad tracks Coster’s men took a valiant stand in Kuhn’s brickyard against equally valiant soldiers from North Carolina and Lousiana. Taking refuge near a fence, the 154th established their battle line in an attempt to hold Jubal Early’s Division at bay. Lieutenant Colonel Allen, commander of the 154th New York at Gettysburg recorded in his official report, “We were scarcely in position when the enemy, who were advancing in vastly superior numbers in our front, commenced the attack…We held the enemy in check in our front but their line of battle, being much longer than ours, soon came to our right flank and joined in a heavy fire.” Colonel Allen realized that the position was untenable and ordered his men to fall back. To his surprise the Union regiment to their left had already retreated, and the 154th was alone and surrounded. In order to avoid capture, Allen noted that “we were compelled to cut our way through them, and in doing so our losses were heavy.” Of the 350 in the ranks that day, only 18 succeeded in reaching Cemetery Hill.8
The Battle of Gettysburg continued for two more days, ending in a Union victory with the repulse of Pickett’s Charge on July 3. On July 4, the Humistons’ ninth wedding anniversary, the Army of Northern Virginia retreated from town, and the next day the Union followed. The myriad dead and wounded were gathered as they were discovered in varied places in and out of town. On July 4 the body of a Union soldier was found near the railroad tracks on Stratton Street. He had been shot through the lungs and had taken many hours, perhaps a day, to die. He had been found clutching an ambrotype of three children in his hand. The father, knowing that death was near, had taken out the image and looked at it one last time.
The story of the dead soldier clasping the photograph soon made headlines. Newspapers and magazines published the picture, hoping to find the identity of the ill-fated man and his three orphans. One of the magazines that published the photograph and the sad details of its discovery was The American Presbyterian, a small publication with relatively few subscribers. The magazine had one subscriber in Portville, New York. After the woman received the magazine in early November of 1863, and read the wretched story of the dead soldier found in Gettysburg, she recognized the photograph of the three children. They were her neighbors, the Humistons.9
Philinda Humiston and her three children became famous in their grief. Unable to bring her husband’s remains for burial in Portville, Philinda received an invitation to come to Gettysburg. Widows and orphans were a plentiful commodity during the war, and especially after the battle in Pennsylvania. The plight of the Humistons was the dilemma of many thousands, and the people of Gettysburg wanted to help. An orphanage opened in Gettysburg, and Philinda Humiston was offered the position of headmistress. Though not a happy occupation, it nevertheless gave Mrs. Humiston the opportunity to work, and to keep her children with her. 
On Decoration Day, 1868, Philinda Humiston and the orphans began a tradition that continues in Gettysburg today. In the National Cemetery, where Amos Humiston lies among thousands of others slain in the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Mrs. Humiston allowed the orphans to place bouquets of flowers on the graves of their fathers.
One man’s fate has brought a time-honored tradition to Gettysburg. Nearly a century and a half later, the orphans of Gettysburg are no longer with us, but school children of the town still reverently place flowers on the graves of those brave soldiers in the National Cemetery. In this way their loss and sacrifice, keenly felt for many years afterward, are still reverently remembered.
Sources: Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968. Dunkelman, Mark H. Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999. Fox, William. New York at Gettysburg. 3 vols. Albany, NY: J.B. Lyon Co., 1902. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue. Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Official Report, Lt. Col. Daniel B. Allen, 154th New York Volunteers Regimental File, Gettysburg National Military Park.
Notes:
1. Dunkelman, p. 57.
2. Fox, vol. 3, p. 1054.
3. Dunkelman, p. 80.
4. Warner, pp. 233-234.
5. Warner, p. 234. Dunkelman, p. 81.
6. Warner, pp. 233, 317.
7. Fox, vol. 3, pp. 1049-1050. Coddington, p. 305.
8. OR, Lt. Daniel Allen, 154th New York File, GNMP.
9. Dunkelman, p. 90.
