Editor’s note: The Civil War is well-plowed ground. This article, however, proves there are new discoveries to make if one only looks. Every headstone of a Civil War veteran; every image of a stiffly posed soldier, civilian, or enslaved person of the era; every document in an archive, museum, or historical society holds a unique story waiting to be unlocked by curiosity and research. And the Jersey Boy who wrote this article is not much older than the men he researched when they enlisted. That’s a good sign for Civil War history.
In early December 1861, a group of newly minted infantrymen walked into a Washington City photographer’s studio dressed in their freshly issued sky blue overcoats and arranged themselves to have their likeness taken. The five men were either directly related to each other or were friends before they answered Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers and enlisted about a month earlier. Their overcoats were unstained from the rigors of any campaign and their cloth forage caps were stiff from the warehouse. As they waited for the photographer to lift the cover off his lens, they made last-minute adjustments to those coats and caps, the position of their hands, and the expression on their faces. None of these men had any idea of the trials and tribulations that lay ahead during the course of their three-year enlistment.
The green soldiers were a part of Company H of the 7th New Jersey Infantry, a regiment recruited out of Cumberland and Gloucester Counties in southern New Jersey. Cedarville and Fairton, where these men hail from, are small towns close to Delaware Bay.
