Editor's note: The latest in an occasional series recognizing the 150th anniversary years of the Civil War.
When the Civil War began in 1861, many men, both young and old, joined the service, and so did quite a few young boys.
The age requirement set forth by the federal government was that a volunteer had to be between the ages of 18 and 45 and in good health. The average age of a Civil War Union soldier was 21. Some men joined up who were old enough to have fought in the War of 1812 while most young boys who signed on were too young to even remember the Mexican-American War, which had only ended 13 years earlier.
Back in those days, if a boy of 16 wanted to legally join the Army, he could not. But some boys, the story goes, got around this problem, not legally, but as a salve on their own conscience. What they would do was take a piece of paper and write the number "18" on it, place it inside their shoe and when the recruiting officer asked how old they were, they would reply, "I'm over 18!" Samuel Fryberger, of Schuylkill County, may have been one of those boys who employed this tactic. However, Samuel Fryberger was only 14.
Samuel Fryberger was born in Fountain Springs, Oct. 28, 1846, and prior to his enlistment in Union Army, he worked in the hard coal mines like many other young boys of his and succeeding generations. But then the South seceded from the Union, plunging the nation into Civil War and prompting many Anthracite region boys (and grown men) into a way of escaping the toil of the mines for another line of far more dangerous though adventurous work. The Union Army was looking for mature men to fight, but they also needed boys to be fifers and drummers, stretcher bearers and perhaps as an aide to an officer or higher-ranking soldier. We don't know how Fryberger enlisted or the means he employed, but he was inducted into the Army on Aug. 2, 1861, in Company H of the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment as a private. He eventually participated in battle not a drummer boy, but as a combat soldier.
Mustered out of Pottsville, Fryberger was sent to Camp Curtin in Harrisburg for his basic training. From there, he was marched south into Virginia where his regiment became part of the Army of the Potomac. He participated in the Second Battle of Bull Run Aug. 29 and 30, 1862, a Union disaster, and another like it would have brought British and French intervention on the side of the Confederacy, increasing the possibility of an early Southern victory. Fryberger came out of that engagement physically unscathed. But on Sept. 17, 1862, at Antietam, Fryberger received his first wound in battle. He was shot through the right hip, causing his discharge from Army service after his recovery.
Fryberger returned home and became a shoemaker, but young men (though only 16, battle does make men of boys) can be prone to restlessness and his occupation as a cobbler lasted only a year before he re-enlisted with the 48th Pennsylvania on March 4, 1864, believing he was healed enough to take up a musket once more. This time, Fryberger intended to stay with the Army and see the war through to the end. Again, he was wounded by a musket ball to his chest on the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. Though not fatal, this wound kept him out of battle for the remainder of the war, but he wasn't discharged like previously. Instead, he was placed in a reserve corps and mustered out of the Army on July 15, 1865, after the close of the war.
During his time in the Army, Fryberger had grown four inches from his induction height of 5-feet, 5 1/2 inches to 5-feet, 9 1/2 inches at the close of hostilities. However, such events only go noticed by proud parents at home and not by battle-hardened soldiers worried about their own mortality during a time of war. One can only wonder if the company quartermaster noticed the difference when the "over 18" Fryberger put in a request for a longer uniform.
Fryberger returned home from the war and found employment as a railroad conductor in Schuylkill County. He was married in 1868 to Margaret Garing, who was born in France. He and his wife raised several children. In 1888, he was transferred to the Shamokin division of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company as an engineer and worked until 1893, when his lung wound caused him to become ill. Fryberger died June 6, 1896, from consumption, an old name for tuberculosis, and is buried in the Soldiers Circle of the Shamokin Cemetery, among his comrades of that long ago war.
As an interesting postscript to this story, the musket ball that gave Fryberger his second wound and caused his early death remained in his lung where he took it with him to his grave. The bullet which was removed from his hip was put on display at the former Welker's Cigar Store (now Stepp's) during the 100th anniversary of the Civil War and Shamokin's 1964 centennial celebration.
(Heather Makal, Samuel Fryberger's great-great-great-granddaughter, was instrumental in providing much of the information for this story.)