Steuben County counted 66,690 souls in the 1860 census. Since just about half of them would have been male, figure that at 33,345. The looking at males of military age – would a third of those males be a reasonable proportion? That would make 11,115. Several thousand of them went off to fight in the Civil War, where they saved the Union, destroyed slavery, and re-established democratic majority rule. But they paid a high price, and over 500 of them died.
That’s a big number, and some of it came from sickness, and some from inadequate medical care. They were lost forever, while others came home, but came home incomplete.
One man, I believe from Caton, lost his hearing entirely, due to a bomb blast. A young man from Almond was part of a small rear guard left on the wrong side of the river to delay the attacking Confederates (they expected to be killed or captured) as Union troops retreated. They escaped in the end, and he had a distinguished civilian career. But all the rest of his life the sound of a whippoorwill “filled me with horror,” flashing him back to the long and terrifying night.
An Addison man came home despite having been shot in the head, but fell into despair at how many of his friends and neighbors did NOT come home. He found some measure of peace through prayer, church, and physical labor in the farm fields.
A Howard man was shot at a battle in Louisiana. The bullet drilled completely through his pocket diary, and mangled but did not pierce a tintype of his wife and child. He returned home to father more children, and lived a long life.
Monroe Brundage of Hammondsport lost an arm at Antietam – still the bloodiest day in American military history. Brundage stayed in the field commanding his men until doctors amputated on the following day. He tried to return to duty a few months later, but soon recognized he was no longer strong enough. He went home to a successful law career, but died young ten years later.
Lieutenant Henry C. Lyon was sent home after being gravely wounded at Antietam, but he died on the way, never seeing Pulteney, or his family, again.
R.C. Philips of Prattsburgh was shot in the shoulder defending Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and while a surgeon saved his arm, he lost the USE of that arm. He then became an officer (only one arm needed) with the U.S. Colored Troops. But farming was a struggle after the war. That caused much family pain two decades later, when he demanded that his eldest son, rather than continuing his education, stay on the farm to do the work that his father couldn’t.
Morris Brown Jr. received the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading his men out into the field of Gettysburg to attack Pickett’s Charge from the flank. He was finally killed between the lines in the Siege of Petersburg, and his body was never recovered.
Benjamin Bennitt signed up for an infantry hitch and a cavalry hitch, and became a P.O.W. He escaped four times from Confederate captivity, once cutting his way through the floor of a moving train. Civilians captured him after one escape, and Confederate Home Guardsmen had to pull him away from from a lynch mob. He was finally returned to Hammondsport on a prisoner exchange, once P.O.W. camp had rendered him so weak and sick that he could never fight again.
Marine Private Charles Brother was a runner on Admiral Farragut’s flagship during the Battle of Mobile Bay. “Men blown to pieces… Killed and wounded in every form,” he wrote. “Our cockpit looked like a slaughterhouse.” He returned safe home to Bath, but the war shadowed the rest of his life, which ended in what may have been suicide.
West Pointer W. W. Averell came from Cameron, but lived much of his adult life in Bath. The army rated him disabled by wounds from Indian fighting, but he immediately returned to the colors in 1861. He then contracted malaria, but nevertheless fought through most of the Civil War, and rose to be General.
As we said earlier, they saved the Union, destroyed slavery, and re-established majority rule. But the price, for them and their families, was very, very high.

There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. – William Tecumseh Sherman