Hiram Slagle: A Civil War Soldier Lost, Then Found, at St. Paul's

More than 1.5 million soldiers fought for the Union in the Civil War (1861–1865), and about 360,000 died. Many who came home led productive lives; thousands struggled. Hiram Slagle, buried at St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, was one who struggled.

A Zouave

• Enlisted: in May 1861, a month into the war, a 22-year-old shoemaker from Sing Sing (today's Ossining) joined Company F of the 17th New York Volunteer Infantry.
• The regiment: nicknamed the Westchester Chasseurs, it was a Zouave unit, styled after famed North African fighters, with baggy red trousers and fez or turban hats.
• The man: 5 ft 6¾ in (average then), black hair, hazel eyes, a ruddy complexion.

Service

• Captured at Second Manassas, Virginia, on August 29, 1862; paroled and exchanged in late October.
• Fought at Fredericksburg in December 1862.
• Wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville in early May 1863; honorably discharged on June 2.

A life unravels

Slagle married and had several children, but for reasons unknown his life fell apart. He left his family. His wife died, and the children were sent west on the notorious orphan trains to be adopted by farm families. For years around the turn of the century he lived, essentially homeless, in Mount Vernon, selling clams or mushrooms by the season.

On the winter night of January 14, 1901, he was found unconscious on South Fourth Avenue after falling down a flight of stairs, and taken by horse-drawn ambulance to Mount Vernon Hospital; he never woke. In his clothing were his Union army discharge papers — kept through everything. As an indigent, he was buried at city expense in an unmarked grave in the part of the St. Paul's cemetery Mount Vernon used as a pauper's field.

Found

A recent inquiry and visit by a descendant brought his story back to light. With that information, park staff determined where he lay, and a veterans' gravestone was installed.

Sources

Based on "Lost, then found, Civil War Soldier buried at St. Paul's," St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The original's picture, an old postcard of Mount Vernon Hospital credited to an unknown source, is left out.