The Regimental Staff
Major Arnold C. Lewis had served as a sergeant in the Mexican War. Because of that experience, Col. Knipe selected Lewis to serve as his major at the time the regiment was formed in 1861. On the second day of the regiment’s first march towards Darnestown, Maryland, on Sept. 22, 1861, Lewis was called upon to subdue a drunken and rowdy private in Company I, one John Lanahan. As Lewis dismounted, Lanahan grabbed a rifle and shot Lewis in the back. Lewis died a few minutes later. Lanahan was tried and executed for the murder the following December.
George W. Burke was only 21 when he joined the regiment, in August 1862, as its assistant surgeon. He remained with the regiment to the end of the war, famously collecting a skull from the Chancellorsville battlefield in 1865, which he took home as a wartime souvenir. After the war, he settled in Newcastle, IN, where he died in 1901.
George B. Cadwallader, a lieutenant in the militia, came to the regiment with Company K, and was picked to be the regimental quartermaster. He succeeded to the post of adjutant after George Boyd fell at Cedar Mountain. Cadwallader’s stay there was short-lived, for in January 1863 newly appointed Brig. Gen. Joseph Knipe promoted him to captain and brigade quartermaster, where he stayed for the rest of the war. He died in Sunbury, PA in 1914.
Levi Tice joined the 1st Pennsylvania Militia in April 1861, and Company C of the 46th later that summer as a private. After being wounded at Antietam, he became the regiment’s quartermaster sergeant in December 1862, and was promoted to 1st Lt. and quartermaster in April 1864, which meant he had charge of gathering many of the supplies needed during the campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. He died as a hotel owner in Bethlehem in 1913.
Joseph Ard Mathews was serving as the captain of Company A when Lewis was shot, and succeeded him as the regiment’s major. Active in the militia before the war, he was a member of the Logan Guards, one of the first companies to respond to the call for troops in April 1861. Severely wounded at Cedar Mountain, he left the regiment to serve as the colonel of the 128th Pennsylvania, a nine-month unit, which he led at Chancellorsville. In September 1864 he was chosen to head the 205th Pennsylvania Infantry, which fought at Fort Stedman.
Asst. Surgeon James B. McDonough. When the regiment’s other assistant surgeon, John B. Coover, was transferred to the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry in January 1863, McDonough took Coover’s place and stayed on the regimental rolls to war’s end, although he himself was hospitalized for a time in 1863. He died of tuberculosis in 1874.
Luther Witman joined the militia with his brother Ned, then rejoined when Ned and George Brooks recruited Company D. In May 1862 he became the regiment’s sergeant major, and in February 1863 was chosen by Col. Selfridge to act as the adjutant. He led the tattered remains of the regiment on May 3 at Chancellorsville. He was so serving when he was shot in the leg at Peach Tree Creek, from which he died on Aug. 6, 1864.
James Bray came to the regiment with Company F in the summer of 1861 as a 19-year-old private. He worked his way up to corporal and sergeant. When James Duncan moved from commissary to quartermaster, Bray took his place as the regiment’s commissary sergeant in April 1864. This meant that he was responsible for gathering food for the regiment from the plantations of Georgia and the Carolinas when Sherman headed south from Atlanta in November 1864.
Major Cyrus Strous began the war as the captain of Company K, recruited in and around Shamokin, Pa. When Mathews left the regiment, as the senior captain Strous rose to major. Due to the illness of Colonel Selfridge in the spring of 1863, he found himself in charge of the regiment when the Chancel-lorsville Campaign began. On the night of May 2, 1863, he was leading his men back to their trenches when a rebel demanded their surrender. Strous bluntly refused and was shot through the lung during the firing that followed, He died on May 5, on a hospital ship in the Potomac.
Charles B. McCarty listed his occupation as a “gentleman” when he joined the regiment during its formation at the age of 23. A favorite of Colonel Selfridge, he was selected to be the ranking enlisted man, the regiment’s sergeant major, when Luther Witman was promoted to adjutant. Serving all four years never listed as a casualty, he died in 1867.
Dr. William C. Rogers (or Rodgers in the government records) was mustered into the regiment on August 29, 1861 as its first surgeon. He was 28 years old, and probably was from the Philadelphia area to which he returned after the war. He was kept busy with the diseases that struck in the first winter of the war, and then with the wounded at Winchester, Cedar Mountain and Antietam. After the carnage at Chancellorsville, he resigned, on May 19, 1863. He lived until 1910.
James F. Duncan ran away from home in Philadelphia as a boy and worked his way along the canals all the way to Lewistown, where a few years later he joined Company A as a corporal. In November 1862, he became the commissary sgt., and quartermaster sgt. in April 1864. In July 1865, he became 2nd Lt. of Co. A. After the war he moved west and sat as a member of Arizona’s first state legislature in 1912. He died in 1926.
Although he was never on the regimental payroll, Abram R. Henwood was instrumental to the regiment up to the battle of Gettysburg, acting as the regimental sutler, operating his store on wheels, the PX of the Civil War, where the men could buy items that were not standard issue. More importantly, he acted as the regiment’s photographer, helpfully putting his and the regiment’s name on the backs of the pictures he took. Many of the known photos of the men of the 46th were his.
There are a number of other field and staff officers of whom we do not as yet have photographs. They are:
Lt. Col. William Foulk (or Foulke): He raised and served as the captain of Company B, before, based on seniority, he was promoted to Lt. Col. after the Battle of Chancellorsville. (He missed the battle because he was still recovering from a foot wound suffered at Cedar Mountain). Unpopular with the other officers of the regiment, he served on detached duty from February 1864 to the end of the war.
Surgeon Lavington Quick, the first surgeon assigned to the regiment, and who served with it until being promoted to serve as the brigade surgeon in January 1862.
Surgeon Daniel Holmes replaced Quick, but had been with the regiment less than two months before he resigned.
On July 4, 1863, the day after the Battle of Gettysburg ended, Assistant Surgeon George P. Tracy of the 90th Pennsylvania was promoted to full Surgeon and joined the 46th. He continued on as the only full-rank surgeon of the regiment to the war’s end.
Assistant Surgeon John B. Coover joined the regiment in November 1862, but less than a month later was promoted to Surgeon and transerred to the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. He was killed by bushwhackers in Virginia in September 1864.
George W. Boyd, who came to the regiment with Company D, was the regiment’s first adjutant. He lost a leg at Cedar Mountain, and resigned his commission in October 1862.
Adjutant Joseph H. McCarty joined Company K as a private on August 29, 1862. He was promoted to 1st Lt. and Adjutant on September 10, 1864.
John A. Reubelt signed on as the regiment’s first chaplain, but wasn’t up to campaigning and resigned in November 1861.
Chaplain Charles Strong replaced Reubelt in January 1862, but resigned the following September. No one stepped forward to replace him.
George Elberty, Company A, became the regiment’s first sergeant major in September 1861. However, his health failed, and he was demoted to 1st Sergeant of the company in April 1862, and he was discharged at the end of August 1863.
Jonathan Ocker joined Company A as a musician in September 1861. Re-enlisting as a veteran volunteer in January 1864, he was promoted to Principal Musician in August 1864.
Benavill C. (or Benjamin) Zimmerman joined Company K at the start of the war as a musician. He too signed on as a veteran volunteer, and was promoted to Drum Major on August 31, 1864.
Richard J. Stanley joined the regiment as its Band Leader in October 1861. He was discharged, along with the rest of the band, in August 1862.