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J.S. Evans

J.S. Evans

Federal (USV)

Chaplain

Joseph S. Evans

(1831 - ?)

Home State: Pennsylvania

Education: Lewisburg (now Bucknell) University

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 124th Pennsylvania Infantry

Before Antietam

Raised on a farm, he was a teacher in Chester County, PA before attending Lewisburg in 1855. He was licensed to preach in November 1860, serving at the Goshen Baptist Church in West Chester, and was ordained in the Baptist Church in November 1861.

On 11 September 1862, by then about 31 years old, he was appointed Chaplain of the 124th Pennsylvania Infantry by Governor Curtin. He was officially mustered as Chaplain on 13 September 1862, but by that time had already been to Washington, DC and had joined his regiment at Frederick, MD.

On the Campaign

He visited with wounded soldiers at field hospitals the day of the battle at Antietam and afterward.

The rest of the War

He resigned his commission for poor health on 9 January 1863.

After the War

He returned to his church and pastored there for nearly 50 years, until 1911, and was Chaplain of the regimental Association from its inception in 1885. He also opened a drugstore on Church Street and operated it until at least 1893.

References & notes

His service from the Register.1 Personal details and his role at Antietam from the History,2 source also of his picture, from a photograph. More from Samuel T. Wiley's Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Chester County, Pennsylvania (1893).

He married Ruth Anna Pierce (b. 1835) in 1859 and they had 6 children.

More on the Web

A photograph of him taken in about 1900 is in the collection of the Chester County Historical Society.

Birth

09/15/1831; Mount Holly, NJ

Notes

1   Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Adjutant General's Office, Register of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, 16 volumes, Harrisburg  [AotW citation 23865]

2   Green, Robert McCay, compiler, History of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion 1862-1863, Philadelphia: Ware Brothers Company, printers, 1907, pp. 61, 121, 147, 209-211  [AotW citation 23866]