Roundheads: Corporal Frederick Pettit and The Boys of Co. C

Military Images, Jul/Aug 2004 by Kraus, Michael

The story of Frederick Pettit and his comrades of Company C, 100th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry.

By August 1862, early war 3-year regiments like the 100th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, were marking their first anniversary in the field as veterans. Originally raised in 5 western counties of the Commonwealth, the "Roundhead Regiment" commanded by Colonel Daniel Leasure, had since August 1861 distinguished itself in battle at James Island, 2nd Bull Run, and Chantilly. With that distinction came a depletion of manpower within the ranks, so much so that Captain Thomas Hamilton of Company D was sent back to Lawrence County to enlist new recruits in an attempt to bring some strength to the unit. Nine new men signed papers and left New Castle on August 26th with the intention of finding the regiment in the field. Among the new men, one assigned to Company C, was 20-year-old Frederick Pettit, from the tiny community of Hazel Dell, now known as Ellwood City.

It was September 10, 1862, while the Army of the Potomac was in motion making its way through the Maryland countryside, that Fred Pettit as well as the other recruits overtook and joined their new regiment. Four short days later, September 14, 1862, Pettit experienced his first battle, South Mountain, where the Roundheads, in Welsh's Brigade, Burnside's 9th Army Corps, supported a spirited Federal counterattack, only to be halted at the edge of a wood line (near the present day site of the Reno monument) by heavy enemy fire emanating from behind a stone wall.

In a letter home to his family on September 20, 1862, Pettit wrote that he fired 11 shots in the encounter while most of the boys fired 15 before the enemy broke and ran. He continued his written observation home recounting that the day after the battle he, along with messmate John P. Wilson, examined the Southern dead behind the wall where he counted 27 bodies that lay in one place.

On the morning of September 17th the regiment found itself near Sharpsburg, Maryland in reserve where it witnessed the morning assault on the Cornfield and Dunker Church. By afternoon the 100th advanced as skirmishers across Antietam Creek via Burnside Bridge to the top of the hill overlooking the stone bridge. In the move forward, Pettit along with other skirmishers in the vicinity, advanced too far and soon they found themselves retiring under a dangerous crossfire of musketry and artillery. As he retreated Fred found his friend J. Wilson wounded by buckshot in the knee, and helped him back to the hospital in the rear.

Reflecting on his army experience to date, Fred wrote home on the 21st, revealing an interesting fact that seems improbable in the world of military procedure. he told his curious family that "all the soldiering he has done is marching and fighting," and that "I never drilled a day in my life." He continues with his commentary to say "Anybody can do this that is brave and strong enough."

Fred Pettit went on to campaign with his regiment through Virginia, then Fredericksburg, and inevitably slogged through Burnside's tumultuous Mud March. The Ninth Corps then moved west with Burnside in March 1863 to campaign in Kentucky, Mississippi, and East Tennessee. Pettit and his comrades suffered from grueling heat and long forced marches from Lexington, through Kentucky, then into Mississippi, finally joining Grant's army at Vicksburg for the last part of the siege. With Vicksburg in Federal hands Burnside's Army of the Ohio, with Fred Pettit in tow, moved into East Tennessee in late September to face Longstreet who was now threatening Knoxville. Pettit and the Roundheads hastily moved back and forth jockeying for position finally resulting on November 29th in the Confederate assault on Fort Sanders.

The campaign had been hard on the boys from Western Pennsylvania as they suffered debilitating effects from the severe weather conditions coupled with hard fighting and marching. On New Years Day 1864, at Blame's Cross Roads, Tennessee, while living on rations of less than two ears of corn per day, three hundred and sixty six men re-enlisted for a second term of three years. Only twenty-seven Roundheads did not re-enlist. Fred Pettit was in the majority believing the war would be over in less than three years and in his words, "we wish to finish what we have begun."

No sooner than the time it took for the ink to dry on the reenlistment forms was the regiments on its way home on veteran furlough. After a grueling winter march made in threadbare uniforms and nearly barefoot across the Cumberland Mountains, the boys reached Cincinnati for transit home to Pittsburgh, arriving there on February 7th. No doubt it was on the trip home for veteran furlough that Pettit, as well as many other soldiers with time to spend in town, stopped to have his photograph taken by Cargo on Fifth Street.

By the end of March the veteran regiment had collected at Camp Copeland near Pittsburgh, at nearly full strength, and made its way to Annapolis, Maryland to drill and await the spring campaign, which would be disastrous for the Roundheads and Frederick Pettit. Tough fighting at the Wilderness, and particularly at Spotsylvania, were devastating to the regiment. Ironically at the Wilderness they faced the same enemy brigades under General James Longstreet that they faced in East Tennessee.