An Investigation Into Anti-war Sentiment in Greene County, Pennsylvania

Part I: “A Speck of War in Greene County”


When I was living on our family farm on Fonner Run in Morris Township during the early 1960s, there was a pile of old lumber smothered in brush in the center of our “Bottom” pasture which was all that remained of what my family called the “old sheep shed.” The site intrigued me as a boy because of the family legend that went with the ruins. My father, Henry Fonner, and his brothers and sisters all told the story that reached back to the time of the American Civil War. It seems that one of the Fonner girls (no one remembered her name) was engaged to a young man who was drafted to serve in the Union army. Fearing for his safety and hoping to keep him from being picked up by the military authorities that were patrolling Morris Township looking for draft dodgers and deserters, she hid him in the sheep shed until the patrols had left the vicinity.
As I thought about this story, I became fascinated by the motives that would make a normally law-abiding farm girl of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry defy the national government and risk being jailed herself. One explanation that my family gave was that the Fonners, being Pennsylvania Dutch, were conscientious objectors and opposed to the war on religious grounds. Indeed, on one county enrollment form I found that my great-grandfather, Frederick Fonner, was listed as “exempt” from military service, although no reason was given. There may have been some truth to this explanation, however, since I am not aware of anyone from my father’s family serving in the military until he and his brother, James Fonner, were drafted for service in World War II.
However that may be, the legend of the old sheep shed fired my imagination, and I became interested in finding out just how wide spread this resistance to the military draft was in Greene County during the Civil War. Accordingly, I began an investigation into anti-war sentiment in Greene County and to find clues to measure the extent of disloyalty expressed by Greene County residents during the Civil War. A Pennsylvania historian named Arnold Shank, in a book entitled The Pennsylvania Anti-war Movement, 1861-1865, provided a good starting point for understanding the extent of opposition to the Union war effort throughout the state. My investigation intensified, however, when another Pennsylvania historian, George A. Turner of Bloomsburg University, in his work on Columbia County in the Civil War, listed Greene County among three or four counties in western Pennsylvania where anti-war agitation was particularly acute. According to Turner, opposition to Abraham Lincoln’s war measures in Pennsylvania focused in several rural counties located in three sections across the state. Anti-war movements were thus found in southwestern Pennsylvania in counties bordering western Virginia, the central part of the state, and the anthracite coal region in northeastern Pennsylvania. All of these counties were strongholds of the Democratic Party, so much of this anti-war sentiment was based on political opposition to the Republican party and disagreement over how the war should be prosecuted.
Dr. G. Wayne Smith, in his History of Greene County, for example, on page 27, states unequivocally that “Greene County strongly supported the Union during the Civil War.” It has been estimated that 1800 men from Greene County served in at least forty different military units of the Union army, including several hundred men who served in regiments raised in western Virginia. Of the men who served, 352 died from either battlefield wounds or disease. Dr. Smith cites two Greene Countians, James Jackson Purman and James M. Pipes, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor. No record has been found of any person from Greene County who served in a military unit of the Confederate States. At home, patriotism ran high, and The Waynesburg Messenger reported on July 16, 1862, that the women of the town were organizing a soldiers’ relief society. Yet, there were still unsettling hints of problems that would emerge before the war ran its course.
Among the Greene County men serving in western Virginia regiments was Henry Solomon White from the Jollytown area who enlisted as a private in Company N of the 6th (West) Virginia Infantry in September 1861. The 6th (West) Virginia Infantry was used primarily to guard the B&O Railroad facilities in western Virginia and spent most of its time on patrols looking for guerrilla bands, guarding railroad bridges, and fighting off raids by Confederate cavalry and infantry from eastern Virginia. Private White kept a small diary of his experiences, and an abstract of that diary is in the collection of the Cornerstone Genealogical Society in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. An outspoken supporter of the Union war effort, White noted in his diary on April 15, 1862 that “bushwhackers have begun their guerrilla warfare in this country [near Farmington] this spring. I hope they will meet with untimely graves. They must give over and quit their secession principles or their lives, either will do.”
Three weeks later, Captain J. H. Showalter of Company A received information that some of these “bushwhackers” had dispersed, agreeing to meet and reorganize at Davistown in Dunkard Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania. Thus, on Monday, May 5, 1862, Private White made an ominous entry in his diary regarding his native county. He wrote that Lieutenant Pierpont of Company A had come to the camp of Company N to get some men to help “scout Monongalia, Greene, and Fayette Counties for secessionists and Knights of the Golden Circle [a secret organization of Southern sympathizers].” Leaving camp around four o’clock in the afternoon, the detachment of seventy men from companies A and N was accompanied by Captain Showalter and Lieutenant Pierpont of Company A and Captain John Kenney and Lieutenant Jackson Moore of Company N. Marching at night, the men reached Laurel Point in Monongalia County on Tuesday. After a day’s rest, they set out for Davistown, eighteen miles away that night. Crossing the border into Pennsylvania, the troop of Union soldiers stealthily approached the sleeping village, arriving on the outskirts of Davistown around three o’clock in the morning. Under cover of early morning darkness, Captain Showalter arranged his men on the ridges that enclosed the town.
In an article published May 14, 1862, The Waynesburg Messenger reported that the “inhabitants of the little town were greatly astonished when they awoke up in the morning and found a picket of seventy soldiers armed with the unerring Minie rifle, stationed on the hills around the town.” The Federal soldiers made a thorough search of the vicinity, but could not find any of the rebels they were hunting. Private White was not present, but in his diary on May 9, 1862, he noted that the “scouters” returned to camp and nothing much happened “while they were gone more than the inhabitants were very much frightened at the approach of our men in that country.”
Calling the incident “A Speck of War in Greene County,” the correspondent for the Messenger added that the residents of Davistown “served up” a warm breakfast, “which was eagerly discussed by the wet and hungry soldiers.” He further added that the “soldiers speak highly of the hospitality of the citizens of Davistown and vicinity.”
The first reported encounter between Greene County civilians and armed Federal troops during the Civil War therefore ended, after some initial trepidation, in a public display of patriotism and mutual respect. Reports of Knights of the Golden Circle operating in the area of Davistown seemed to be false. Whether future encounters would end so happily remained to be seen.