Tales from the road: The dead of Falling Waters, a forgotten Gettysburg Campaign battle

The Donnelly House on the Falling Waters (Md.) battlefield. The remains of a battlefield
"witness" tree stand at right.

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Fifteen yards or so into George Franks’ backyard, Confederate Brig. Gen. James Pettigrew fell mortally wounded — by far the most famous of the casualties in the unheralded Battle of Falling Waters (Md.), fought July 14, 1863.

James Pettigrew
suffered a mortal wound
at Falling Waters.

But I’m less interested in the famous than in the common soldiers whose names rarely appear in the record: men of the 6th Michigan Cavalry, part of George Armstrong Custer’s famed “Wolverine Brigade.” They charged weary Confederate troops at Falling Waters in a rearguard action during Robert E. Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg — the final fight of the campaign.

Falling Waters paled in comparison to the war’s larger battles. Union forces captured about 500 Confederates and inflicted roughly 40 to 60 additional casualties. Federal losses ran to about 40 to 60 killed and wounded, with a few captured. Small numbers by Civil War standards — but not small to the families who received the news.

"How I could have escaped being killed or wounded is more than I know," a 6th Michigan soldier wrote his wife about the battle. [1]

Sergeant Monroe Livingstone’s father made the nearly 600-mile journey from Michigan to recover his son’s remains from the battlefield. “Pierced by a bayonet,” Livingstone’s local newspaper reported. [2] Recently promoted, Livingstone fell just outside hastily dug Confederate entrenchments. His hometown paper later charged that his body had been rifled and stripped of clothes, adding, “Such is the chivalry of traitors.”

A cropped enlargement of a wartime sketch by Edwin Forbes of fighting at Falling Waters.
Forbes depicted the Donnelly House and barn, which no longer stands. (Library of Congress)

This ugly scene likely unfolded near the Donnelly House — Franks’ home and a makeshift hospital on the Falling Waters battlefield. (He and Melissa Cooperson restored the house from 2003 to 2011.) In a contemporary sketch of the fighting, Civil War artist Edwin Forbes depicted the nearby western Maryland German-style barn already showing its age, a quiet witness to the chaos around it.  

George T. Patten
(Image courtesy Richard Howell)

Livingstone was described as a “kind-hearted and dutiful son,” barely 21. His younger brother John, a corporal in the same company, survived the charge.

The death of Capt. David Royce of the 6th Michigan “cast a pall of gloom” over the men in his company.  [3]

“He was always cool and collected, of a very even temper,” the Grand Rapids [Mich.] Eagle wrote of the officer, who was approaching 30.

In 1873, a Detroit newspaper published a grim account of Royce’s fate. According to the report, a “tall, ragged rebel” approached as he sat on a rock examining a bullet wound in his ankle, then shot him three times in the head with a pistol. [4]

In the chaos, someone made off with Royce’s gold watch and chain. “Hardly an incident of those dark and bloody days can be called up without having something bitter in it for one side or the other,” the paper noted.

On Christmas Day 1862, Quartermaster Sgt. George T. Patten wrote to his wife Lydia from a camp in Washington. “The people of Michigan know but little about war compared with the inhabitance [sic] here,” he observed, “and God grant that they never may.” [5]

Patten, only 28, closed with thoughts of family.

“Don’t forget to kiss little Georgy for me and do not let him forget his papa,” he wrote. “How I would like to see him and kiss him. Teach him to be a good boy and to fear God and obey his mother.”

Seven months later, both he and Lydia were dead. They were buried side by side in a cemetery in Kent County, Michigan. “Consigned to dust,” read the headline over his funeral notice. [6]

Charles Bolza
(Courtesy Richard
Howell)

Lt. Charles Bolza — a New York City native, orphan and jewelry store owner — adopted Grand Rapids as his home in 1856. He taught Bible class and served as acting assistant superintendent, a role in which he was described as “regular, punctual, and faithful.” 

“He is gone from the earth,” the Eagle wrote of the mid-20s officer who fell at Falling Waters, “but he will not be forgotten while those who have walked and worked with him live.” [7]

Major Peter Weber, a civilian clerk before the war, enlisted in the 3rd Michigan as a private.

“I have commenced at the lowest round,” he reportedly told a friend who spotted him in a private’s uniform, “and, one step at a time, I am going up, up, up.” [8]

After surviving Gettysburg, Weber — who rose rapidly through the army — wrote home of his good fortune, raising his family’s hopes.

“The gleam was but a lightning flash, portending the approaching storm,” wrote a correspondent for the Eagle, perhaps a soldier of the 6th Michigan Cavalry. “The burden was raised from the mother’s heart only to sink back, a dead weight. Twelve short hours of happy musing over the letter which brought good tidings — and then came the telegram.”

Peter Weber
(Find A Grave)

For his funeral service in Michigan, they placed Weber's body in a metal coffin draped with the American flag, with his saber laid on top. Mourners decorated the church with patriotic symbols, including battle-worn flags and flowers on the communion table. Several military officers — some of whom had served with Weber and had suffered war wounds — attended the service.  

"The loss of such generous and determined spirits," the Eagle wrote about the 6th Michigan Cavalry dead, "are not family but national losses." [9]

Weber was barely 22.

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SOURCES

[1] Grand Rapids (Michigan) Daily Eagle, July 25, 1863
[2] Grand Rapids (Michigan) Daily Eagle, Aug. 4, 1863
[3] Grand Rapids (Michigan) Daily Eagle, Aug. 5, 1863
[4] Detroit Free Press, May 30, 1873
[5] Hamilton, Richard L., Dearest Lydia: 1856-1864 Courtship & Civil War Letters from George T. & Lydia Ann Denton-Patten, 2016, Page 31
[6] Grand Rapids (Michigan) Daily Eagle, Aug. 8, 1863
[7] Grand Rapids (Michigan) Daily Eagle, July 27, 1863
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid