George Washington Lowery was drafted July 19, 1864 at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He was assigned to Co. A, 81st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry for three years. Born in Franklin County, PA he was a 37-year-old laborer. At 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a fair complexion, grey eyes, and dark hair, he was an average guy, his description not uncommon for the time.
Serving during the latter part of the war he was a draftee. I suspect my grandfather left his wife and six children a bit reluctantly to answer the call of his country. (I have found a tidbit of information that suggests he was a substitute. I’m still working on verifying that.)
After a brief two-month training stint to make the “every-day man” a soldier, Lowery and the rest of the recently drafted recruits were sent to join their regiment. The 81st Pennsylvania had been mired with the rest of the Second Corps at Petersburg, Virginia, which had been under siege for months. Even though they were in the midst of war, it has been written that many Confederate officers who lived in the area were able to slip away and visit with family and attend Sunday church services. The fighting here didn’t come in intense bursts as so many other battlefields but it was long, hard months of exhaustive trench warfare.
Soon my great great grandfather was about to learn the true magnitude of war. His regiment pulled out of Petersburg and was involved in what is now known as Lee’s Retreat. The pursuit of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, west across the state, in the final week of the war. The experiences this regiment endured would hardened any soldier. This was the time George experienced the full impact of fighting. The nine months dug in at Petersburg probably did not prepare him for sleeping only moments at a time, the constant skirmishes and out-right battles. His regiment continually moving, marching with the weight of supplies and a rifle. Smoke so heavy in the air an infantryman couldn’t see where his bullet hit if it hit anything at all. The regiment found sporadic food consumption a luxury. Yet above all that – experiencing those you’d come to depend on, your fellow soldiers, your friends, ripped apart by flying shrapnel. The thud of a minie-ball as it plunges into a human body. The yelling, cursing, and then slow moans as the injured soon become casualties. It was during this time my great great grandfather came to know the full meaning of war.
There was the fighting at White Oak Road, where the Confederates prevailed. The battle at Sutherland Station was a union triumph due in great part to the fighting of the 81st. The battle at Sailor’s Creek was some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, yet recognition has been lost to the surrender at Appomattox, which was only three days away. There was the skirmish at High Bridge, reminiscent of a modern day movie, and finally just outside Farmville, on April 7, 1865, was the Battle of Cumberland Church, where George Washington Lowery was wounded. As the 81st Pennsylvania, 2nd NYHA and part of the 5th NH encountered Confederate soldiers entrenched upon the ridge surrounding a church, intense fighting broke out. A minie-ball struck my great great grandfather in the chest, one and one-fourth inches below the right nipple. The ball traveled through his body, ranging downward and lodged against the skin about a half inch right of his backbone, where it was taken out by an Army Surgeon the day after he was shot.
Transferred to Carver Hospital in Washington DC my grandfather recuperated there for two months. He was honorably discharged with a Surgeon’s Certificate of Disability June 5, 1865, and went home to his wife and children back in Franklin County, PA.