The last direct link to an important period in Cecil County’s past was lost when 93-year-old Henry Jackson died at his home outside Perryville on a cold November day in 1939. As a teenager he ran away from home to serve in the Civil War, enlisting in the Union Army for three years with Snow’s Battery. After surviving the horror of Antietam and other engagements, he was discharged in 1864.
During a long life, the soldier who was growing old watched the ranks of his comrades, men who knew the madness of that time, thin. By the early 1930s, there were just a few old soldiers around Cecil who recalled frightened, brave boys in blue hastily forming ranks to march into harms way. The first-hand memories of those years, a time that called for the best from comrades, were rapidly fading as were the sad thoughts about comrades that fell on bloody, distant battlefields. Seventy five years after the bloody war staggered to a close, Private Jackson was laid to rest, the last local survivor of that unforgettable time.
This information about Henry Jackson comes from the Mahoney Civil War Inventory of county soldiers and the newspaper files at the Historical Society. In the 1960s, the Mahoney file established a register of men from Cecil County who fought in the war.
That’s a great story Mike, my wife’s great grand father Lt. Edward Smith who is buried in Bay View also fought for the North at many battles, Cold Harbor was his last. He was with the 2nd Conn. Heavy Artilery out of Litchfeild Conn. In 1870 after the Civil War, his mother and father bought the farms just above the covered Bridge 500 acres and named in Stony Chase. Part of the farm is still in the family. Across from the bridge is one part owned by the daughter in law of Alexander Smith and the rest just past the bridge on the right is owned by Ed Smith and a cousin named Baylog. So much history in this great county.
charlie
Thanks Charlie. There is so much history, much of it just waiting to be tapped. Fairly often I’ll hear from someone who has old family documents from the War of 1812, the Civil War and what have you. Did your familiy preserve anything. That’s always exciting to have the opportunity to see new documents, new bits of history, generated by the people who lived in the time. Thanks Charlie.