November 9, 2011

Lightning Strikes Camp Nevin

Location: Camp Nevin, Hardin County, Kentucky
Pvt. William J. Morrissey, Co. K, 77th Pennsylvania
(Source)

In November 1861, a final group of men recruited for Col. Hambright's regiment as a company led by Capt. Frederick Pyfer, a lawyer from Lancaster, arrived in Kentucky.  With Hambright's regiment full, they ended up as Company K in the neighboring 77th Pennsylvania under Col. Frederick S. Stumbaugh of Chambersburg.

Anticipating the arrival of this group of men including Lieut. Ben Ober, former local editor of the Daily Evening Express who would soon resume contributing his own letters from the army, another soldier who served as the 77th Pennsylvania's quartermaster penned a letter from Camp Nevin.  Lieut. Jacob E. Cassell is listed as a farmer in Upper Swatara Township of Dauphin County with five children in the 1860 census, although his service record lists his residence as Lancaster County.  He later would write one of the Lancaster newspapers' more dramatic letters of war telling of his adventures of the Battle of Stones River in early January 1863. 

From the November 14, 1861, Daily Evening Express: (alternate link)

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