James Albert Hard

Result: His Union Service is verified √

Date of Birth: July 15th 1841 or perhaps 1842 or 1845. This is uncertain as census and enlistment dates contradict.

Date of Death: 12th March 1953

Age at enlistment: given as nineteen but possibly younger

Rank: Private

Unit: 37th New York Volunteers. Company K and E

Service: Infantry

Combat Experience: extensive, from early in the war till Chancellorsville

Length of service: April 1861 to June 1863

Evidence of Service apart from his own accounts. He is listed in Official Records and in his unit’s muster roll. He had a sickness furlough recorded in late 1862. He went on to hold high office in the Union veteran’s association, the Grand Army of the Republic

By his own account in old age James Albert Hard was an upstate New York farmer’s son who worked from the age of five onwards.[1] He would rise at four and work till nine at night – and then study by lamplight. The second eldest of four, he would sometimes be hired out to labor for other farmers and his father kept the wages. This life was strong on self – sufficiency and simple pleasures. Hard recalled how he enlisted: “One day a wagon – load of fellows came by noisily and I asked what the racket was about. ‘The President wants volunteers and we’re enlisting.’ I joined them and we all went to Dryden in Tompkins County and enlisted Apr. 18th 1861 for two years.”[2]

Hard’s record has the usual problems with age/census/ enlistment verification and contradictions. Several sources give his birthdate as 1841, but three census statements give 1842 and 1843. He claimed to be nineteen when he enlisted four days after Fort Sumter fell, but may have been seventeen. He also claimed to have met Lincoln at a White House reception.[3] He also claimed to have met Lincoln at a White House reception.[4] Accessibility to Lincoln by ordinary citizens was extremely open.[5] Even so, this sounds odd for one of the millions of privates like Hard who came from an undistinguished family. He was at both the Bull Run battles, but saw only some fighting towards the end at both.[6] He also fought in much of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, including two of its toughest battles, Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill. For his unit the little known battle at Etham’s Landing was the toughest. He was also in the Battle of South Mountain, then Antietam. At the latter he was lucky to survive, a bullet going through his coat.[7] He also fought in two parts of the Chancellorsville battle, Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church. His obituary and some accounts state he was at the battle of Fredericksburg, but this is probably confusing the second battle of Fredericksburg in May 1863 with the better known first battle in December 1862. Writer David George Martin states that he was on sick leave from October 29th 1862 until the year’s end.[8] His two year enlistment expired and he left the army on June 9th 1863[9] He was a man of the most extraordinary luck, never being wounded despite being in some of the war’s toughest battles and missing both Fredericksburg and Gettysburg by fortuitous circumstances.

After his discharge he worked for the army in railway construction until March 1865. During this time he worked at rebuilding bridges destroyed by the rebels in Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia. Several times he was “close to the fighting” and was also in Nashville when it was besieged.[10] He then worked for himself in railway construction in the west, for several years, bluntly saying that he was working to make money fast. He married in 1868 but was left a widower twelve years later. He remarried in 1884 and survived his second wife and his only child, a daughter who died in 1948. He studied and became a successful notary in Rochester concerned with pensions, particularly Civil War pensions. He was a familiar figure as grand marshal of the veteran’s parades there. He never really retired from involvement in veteran’s organisations, despite blindness hitting in his last years. He did give some interviews and attended public events, but avoided the fuss made over his Southern counterparts.[11]

*

This is an excerpt from America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation by Garry Victor Hill. The full illustrated text can be found for free at my website garryvictorhill.com.au/ Hopefully this will also be an e-book. Twenty eight other claimed Civil War survivors alive after 1951 are also assessed and Part One assesses the sources, problems and controversies about the last veterans.

[1] Much of this account of Hard’s life comes from the segment on him in Jay S. Hoar’s second volume of The Boys in Blue pp872-880. Professor Hoar bases much of his segment on 1950 interviews with Hard, conducted, written and edited by Andrew D. Wolfe. These were published by the Rochester Historical Society. Another major source were Hard’s descendants who sent very detailed accounts and recollections to Professor Hoar.

[2] Ibid, p873.

[3] Unsigned Obituary ‘Hard Oldest Veteran, Dies at 111; He Spent Boyhood in Windsor’ Binghamton Press Fri. March 13th 1953 p12. ; Hoar Vol II, quoting Hard, p873.

[4] Unsigned Obituary ‘Hard Oldest Veteran, Dies at111; He Spent Boyhood in Windsor’ Binghamton Press Fri. March 13th 1953 12

[5] David Herbert Donald, Lincoln. London Jonathan Cape, 1995. p311.

[6] David George Martin, Second Bull Run Campaign July-August 1862 .Google Books n.d. p250 http:/com.au/books?id+o7g2DQoIFm EC&PG

[7] Hoar, Vol. II, quoting Hard, p873.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Binghamton Press; Martin p250.

James Hard