1. The Young Apprentice

Go back to the introduction.

Abraham A. Sulcer began his life in the year 1839, on a farm near the rapidly growing city of Cincinnati, near the confluence of the Miami and Ohio Rivers. How did his family get there? Well, his own father, also named Henry, was the oldest child of Virginian, and Revolutionary War veteran, William Sulcer and his wife Jane. We don’t know whether he ever met his grandmother, but his parents had likely fallen out of touch with her. His mother, Catherine Van Horn, came from a sprawling Pennsylvania family with roots going back to old New Amsterdam, before the English took over New York.

While still a baby, his family moved to a farm in Carroll County, Indiana, not far from the state capital.

Theirs was perhaps the first generation of white farmers to have a completely peaceful life there. Of course, this came at the expense of the native people, recently driven westward in what would now be called “ethnic cleansing”. Things were changing fast. The land was claimed by white families, divided up and cleared for agriculture. Entrepreneurs were building an ambitious canal project right through the county, in those pre-railroad days, to connect the Ohio / Wabash river system to Lake Erie – the longest inland canal ever built in the world, after the Grand Canal of China. It started operation near the farm when he was 4 years old.

A school was built for the local children, where the young boy was told that “education makes the man”. He took that maxim to heart, apparently, earning certificates as being at the head of his class, and indeed he was not destined to remain the youngest farm hand.

The last child of six, he quickly took on the nickname of “A.A.” by which he was known his entire life. His older sister Hannah moved 80 miles down the Champaign road and across the state line to marry William A. Timmons of Danville, Illinois. By the age of 11 A.A. had joined them as apprentice to Dr. John McElroy there – and thus the Sulcers arrived in Illinois. Pioneer medicine would be his daily routine and he learned on the job by assisting in McElroy’s practice.

When Abraham was 21 years old, the southern states seceded from the Union and Civil War began, and young men were expected to sign up for a “3-month tour of duty”. Timmons, his brother-in-law, became Captain of Company D of the 35th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. Dr. McElroy joined the 125th Regiment as its surgeon, and his protégé, by then a six-foot tall, brown haired A.A., enlisted with the nominal rank of Sergeant along with the 90 men of Company G. Few of them knew anything about fighting or military life. Luckily for us, a few of them were good writers and described life in the regiment, as well as the terrible battles they became caught up in.

We can imagine them forming up at the county fairground, drilling and camping amongst the animal pens, about 1,000 strong. The war was considered by most as “a tempest in a teapot” and not taken seriously. A month later, after a rousing parade, they were sent off in train cattle cars to join the Army of the Cumberland in Cincinnati. Colonel Oscar Harmon, a prominent Danville lawyer and close friend of Abraham Lincoln, and a very popular figure with the men, led them.

It began with a simple walk across the Ohio River on a pontoon bridge, back into the slave state of Kentucky, reversing the journey of A.A.’s grandfather half a century earlier. After an uncomfortable flatboat journey to Louisville, the reality of war finally began to sink in as they encountered another Union regiment returning from the battlefield. One soldier of the regiment recalled:

Here they came, neighbor boys, old friends, who had left home only a few months prior to us; covered with the dust and stain of travel, no baggage, no impediments, nothing but their trusty Enfields, and sixty rounds of ammunition in their cartridge boxes, with a blanket to each man rolled up in a coil, and fastened around him, this was all they had, while we, in our clean, blue clothes, with thoughts of our having gone through with an awful experience, met these lads. The impression the writer received that night as we witnessed these boys come marching in, was like the opinion that was expressed by someone in our regiment: “Boys, we don’t know anything about soldiering”.

Indeed their high spirits were misplaced. By its end, the war proved to be a grueling three-year march for the 125th, consisting of many roundabout detours, dull spells of guard duty, punctuated by some of the most hellish fighting of the war, that changed them forever.

They had their first lesson at Perrysville a few weeks later, when the regiment was bloodied in an inconclusive battle, one that happened to mark the last time any Confederate army attempted to take control of Kentucky. The men were sent to protect field batteries under attack. Quickly they learned the hard way to stay low in the face of murderously accurate rifle file, lying down on the grass as gunfire sang over their heads. After the battle, they were moved on to Nashville for stint of guard duty that lasted until August, when they marched across the Cumberland Mountains, deeper into the South.

Provisions became scarce. Some of the soldiers hoarded coffee beans that could be traded for other goods. There were strict orders against taking food from the countryside – which were not always obeyed. There weren’t enough blankets, and soldiers without them had to “borrow” them from unsuspecting soldiers away from their tents. One evening even the doctor himself fell victim to a solider who slipped into his tent and stole his bedding, much to the amusement of the men.

As soon as he could, Dr. McElroy transferred A.A. into his personal staff as a medical orderly, beginning his transition to becoming a battlefield surgeon.

Go on to read about A.A.’s descent into the “hornet’s nest” of battle.

Sources

• “Abraham A. Sulcer”, An Illustrated History of Southern California, The Lewis Publishing Co., 1890 Jane’s pension claim lists the oldest child Henry with matching birth year and state of Virginia mentioned in the Sulcer family bible. This is the basis of the connection.
• Photo: Fouts Log House, built in 1839 by Noah Fouts, available at https://www.wabashanderiecanal.org/canal-village on 27 December 2019
• Advice written on each school achievement certificate by the Sulcer’s schoolteacher, ephemera in Henry and Katherine Sulcer’s Family Bible
• Drawing of the Delphi canal boat from https://www.wabashanderiecanal.org/history-of-the-canal on 1 January 2020
• History of the canal available at https://www.wabashanderiecanal.org/ on 27 December 2019
• “Savor Indiana – ‘Carroll County’ – Part 3 of 6 – Wabash and Erie Canal” video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6crm03l03g on 27 December 2019
• “Wabash and Erie Canal”, available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash_and_Erie_Canal on 27 December 2019
• Hannah A. Timmons, Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 History of Vermilion County IL, Vol – 1c. 1911, FHL Film # 1543819
• California Voter Registers, 1866-1898, San Bernardino 1872-1896, p. 94, No. 6558, Reg No 4864, Age 52, Height 6′ 0″, Dark Brown Hair, Brown Eyes, available at https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2221/32421_230590-00422/5204338?backurl=https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/33163727/person/18404512900/facts/citation/42354310141/edit/record on 5 January 2020
• Rogers, Robert M. The 125th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry: Attention Battalion! Champaign, Ill.: Gazette Steam Print, 1882, available at http://www.archive.org/stream/125thregimentill00roge#page/90/mode/2up on 9 September 2012
• “Recruiting for the War”, Illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 1964, available at http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/civil_war_series/3/sec2.htm on 12 January 2015
• “The Pontoon Bridge at Cincinnati”, sketched by A. E. Matthews, 31st Reg’t, O.V.; Middleton, Strobridge & Co. Lith Cin. O. Call Number: PGA – Middleton, Strobridge & Co.–Pontoon bridge at Cincinnati (B size) [P&P]; Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-pga-07659 (digital file from original item) LC-USZC4-1735 (color film copy transparency) LC-USZ62-142 (b&w film copy neg.). Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA; available at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91721226/ on 27 December 2019