Gettysburg Rebels

Five Native Sons Who Came Home to Fight as Confederate Soldiers

Tom McMillan

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781621575924
• eBook ISBN: 9781621576181
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Gettysburg Rebels is the gripping true story of five young men who grew up in Gettysburg, moved south to Virginia in the 1850s, joined the Confederate army - and returned "home" as foreign invaders for the great battle in July 1863. Drawing on rarely-seen documents and family histories, as well as military service records and contemporary accounts, Tom McMillan delves into the backgrounds of Wesley Culp, Henry Wentz and the three Hoffman brothers in a riveting tale of Civil War drama and intrigue.

Notes

Introduction

1. Marilyn Brewer Koleszar, Ashland Bedford and Taylor Virginia Light Artillery, 103; Robert H. Moore II, Miscellaneous Disbanded Virginia Light Artillery, 29–31, 35–39, 106; Jim Clouse, Battlefield Dispatch, Vol. 17. No. 10, October 1998, 9–10; author visit to Green Hill Cemetery, Martinsburg.

2. Koleszar, Ashland, Bedford and Taylor Virginia Light Artillery, 103; Moore, Miscellaneous Disbanded Virginia Light Artillery, 106. There is no record of Henry’s birth, but both of these military histories list him as being forty-eight years old when he died in December 1875. That would make his birth year 1827. The inscription on his tombstone also has him dying at age forty-eight in 1875. (A newspaper obituary, however, says he was forty-seven.) Evidence that Henry was born in York County is persuasive but circumstantial. His father, John, was a native of York County and does not appear in the Adams County census until after 1830. He did not purchase his Adams County property until 1836. At least one of Henry’s siblings, Ann Maria Wentz, was “born in York County” (History of Adams County, Pennsylvania, 485). The same passage says John Wentz “came here from York County.”

3. Adams County Historical Society (ACHS), Survey For Restoration And Rehabilitation of Historic Structures: Wentz Buildings, “Record of Conveyance of the Wentz farm,” 9; Ibid., “Statements of War-period and Early Post-war Residents of the Wentz Property and Vicinity,” 7–8; Adams County Deed Book BB, 281–82; Koleszar, Ashland, Bedford and Taylor Light Artillery, 103; 1860 U.S. Federal Census, Martinsburg, Berkeley, Virginia; Martinsburg Statesman, “Sudden Death,” December 14, 1875; W.C. Storrick, Gettysburg: Battle and Battlefield, 90; www.fold3.com, Military Service Records (MSR) for Henry Wentz, First Regiment Virginia Light Artillery.

4. National Archives, MSR for John W. Culp, Company B, Second Virginia Infantry (Culp’s given name was John Wesley Culp); as will be examined later in the text, Henry Culp, whose farm encompassed part of Culp’s Hill, was not Wesley’s uncle. He was actually a more distant relative—the first cousin of Wesley’s father, Esaias.

5. Jefferson County (W.Va.) Deed Book 35 (1855–56), 374–75. On March 24, 1856, C. W. Hoffman purchased “a lot of ground in the town of Shepherdstown . . . on Princess Street and New Street,” which contained “a two-story brick house, two-story shop carriage shed” and a “brick carriage house;” George T. Fleming, Pittsburgh Gazette Times, “The Homecoming of Wes Culp,” November 9, 1913.

6. William Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg, 370; Hessler and Motts, Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg: A Guide to the Most Famous Attack in American History, 61-62.

7. Edwin B. Coddington’s The Gettysburg Campaign, which has stood for decades as the definitive history of the battle, does not mention either Culp or Wentz. Allen C. Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion and Stephen W. Sears’ Gettysburg each refer to Culp in just one sentence. Noah Trudeau’s Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, has two sentences on Culp. None of the latter three books mention Wentz. Harry Pfanz, in Gettysburg: The Second Day, referred to Wentz on 118. Pfanz also wrote four paragraphs on Culp in Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill, 328–29.

8. Pfanz, Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill, 328; Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg, 370; excerpts from “Family History of Hattie Grace Taylor-May,” provided to the author by Hoffman descendant Joe Thompson, along with other informal family history notes. C. W. Hoffman’s sister, Sarah Ann, and her husband, Sampson Taylor, lived on the Wentz farm property in the late 1840s. It is mentioned that Sarah was doing housekeeping for the Wentz family (and therefore likely lived with her husband in one of the outbuildings). Her son, Charles Williams (probably named for C. W.) was born there in July 1848. Henry Wentz was still living at home in the late 1840s. It is probable that C. W. visited his sister and, therefore, was at least acquainted with Henry.

9. Margaret E. Myers, “The Story of Wesley Culp,” unpublished, provided to the author by Culp descendant Michael Fahnestock; Fleming, Pittsburgh Gazette Times, “The Homecoming of Wes Culp,” November 9, 1913.

10. Fleming, Pittsburgh Gazette Times, “The Homecoming of Wes Culp,” November 9, 1913; www.ancestry.com, “Alabama, Texas and Virginia, Confederate Pensions, 1884–1958 for Robert N. Hoffman.” Fellow soldiers Benjamin S. Pendleton and William Arthur each filed an “Affadavit of Witness” on behalf of Robert’s wife, Ellen. Pendleton wrote that “I first knew (Robert) when he and his father arrived from Gettysburg, Penna. to live here about 1856 o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• One: Invaders
• Two: A Man Called C. W.
• Three: To Virginia
• Four: Drumbeats of War
• Five: Confederate Recruits
• Six: “Like a Stone Wall”
• Seven: 1862: Year of Turmoil
• Eight: Prelude to Gettysburg
• Nine: Brother vs. Brother
• Ten: Wes Culp Comes Home
• Eleven: War at the Wentz House
• Twelve: Confederate High Tide
• Thirteen: Prisoners of War
• Fourteen: Reconstruction
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Notes