The sixty-two men of the Carlisle Fencibles were officially mustered in and began training under a drill instructor from the nearby Cavalry Barracks. They selected as their officers Robert Miller Henderson as captain and James S. Colwell as first lieutenant. Henderson was a Dickinson College graduate and among his men were at least three other alumni, including his brother Richard and his 1858 classmate Isaac Brown Parker. Lieutenant Colwell became the unit's first officer casualty when he was killed at Antietam on September 17, 1862. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65 ... (Harrisburg, PA: State of Pennsylvania, 1868), I: 720.
David G. Colwell, Bitter Fruits: The Civil War comes to a small town in Pennsylvania (Carlisle, PA: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1998), 40.
David G. Colwell, Bitter Fruits: The Civil War comes to a small town in Pennsylvania (Carlisle, PA: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1998), 40.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Carlisle/Dickinson