The crossing at Berry’s Ferry
April 15, 1862 · The Shenandoah River
A repaired ferryboat, two companies of soldiers, and a sergeant who tried to save his captain.
Near midstream
The crossing at Berry’s Ferry on April 15, 1862, became a disaster. According to Samuel P. Bates’s history of the 75th Pennsylvania, the river was high and the current rapid. Several rafts were built to carry the troops, and Company D crossed safely. Then, to save time, an old ferryboat partly burned by the enemy was repaired, and a rope stretched across the river to guide it. Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania · Civil War in the East: April 15 at Berry’s Ferry
Companies I and K boarded. Near midstream, the boat swamped and began to sink. Bates describes knapsacks covering the water, the men burdened by what they carried. Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
Bates names Captain Christian Wyck, Lieutenant Adolph Winter and First Sergeant Joseph Tiedemann among the dead, followed by fifty enlisted men. Tiedemann, an expert swimmer, lost his life trying to save Wyck. The tally in that account is 53. Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
Bates says the loss cast “a deep gloom” over the rest of the regiment. The command did not cross there. It turned back through Paris and Upperville to Snickersville, crossed on a rope ferry built by General Banks’s troops, and reached Winchester on April 18. Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
News across a divided valley
News of the losses did not meet with sympathy everywhere. An article drawing on Amanda Virginia Edmonds’s journal places her reaction at the time the division was crossing the Shenandoah: “Good news from Blenker’s division—fifty more drowned…!” Her words offer a stark contrast to the regimental account of a sergeant trying to save his captain. Amanda Virginia Edmonds, quoted in Small but Important Riots · Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
The box below the ferry
Seven years later, the Winchester Times reported that two youths hunting mussels in the falls of the Shenandoah, just below Berry’s Ferry, had brought up a box holding a gold watch and twenty-six rings. The South Branch Intelligencer, in Romney, reprinted the item on August 27, 1869. South Branch Intelligencer, August 27, 1869, page 2, reprinting the Winchester Times
The paper supposed that the box had been lost by some of Blenker’s soldiers and called its contents “doubtless stolen property.” It placed the find a few hundred yards below the spot where, it said, “some eighty-three” of Blenker’s division had drowned trying to cross “on rafts” in 1862. South Branch Intelligencer, August 27, 1869, page 2, reprinting the Winchester Times
Its number differs from the regimental history’s tally, and its rafts are not Bates’s repaired ferryboat. But the item shows how the drowning was used by then: as a landmark on the river, and as part of the case against Blenker’s men. South Branch Intelligencer, August 27, 1869, page 2, reprinting the Winchester Times · Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
Sources and the differing accounts
Samuel P. Bates: the 75th Pennsylvania
Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–5, volume II (Harrisburg: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869), pages 915–916, read on the Internet Archive scan of the Allen County Public Library copy, a digital reproduction. PA-Roots transcribes the passage faithfully. It is the account behind the rafts, the repaired ferryboat and its rope, the two companies, the three named men, Tiedemann’s rescue attempt and the turn back to Snickersville, which Bates spells “Snickerville.” It names Winter as a lieutenant and reads “and fifty enlisted men were drowned” after the three names; the tally of 53 is that sum, and this page does not claim a new roster count.
Civil War in the East: April 15 at Berry’s Ferry
This regimental chronology places the accident at Berry’s Ferry on April 15, 1862, the day Bates also gives. Its description calls Winter a captain; the story follows Bates’s lieutenant. Modern retellings of the regimental account are not treated as independent witnesses.
Amanda Virginia Edmonds, quoted in Small but Important Riots
The article quotes Edmonds’s reaction and lists Nancy C. Baird’s edition of her journals among its sources, without a page or date. A HathiTrust search of that edition, Journals of Amanda Virginia Edmonds: Lass of the Mosby Confederacy, 1857–1867 (2nd ed., Stephens City, Va.: Commercial Press, 1988), finds “fifty more drowned” once, on page 81. The book is in copyright and can be searched there but not read, so we have not seen the entry, its date or its surrounding words, nor the original diary; that the words concern Berry’s Ferry is the article’s placement. Her words describe one person’s reaction, not the response of an entire community; “fifty more” is not used here as a separate casualty count.
Read Amanda Virginia Edmonds, quoted in Small but Important Riots
South Branch Intelligencer, August 27, 1869, page 2, reprinting the Winchester Times
Read on the Library of Congress scan of the page, a digital reproduction. The item, “A Wonderful Discovery and Rich Haul of Treasure,” is credited at its foot to the Winchester Times of August 25; that issue was not read, so the Romney reprint is our witness to the Winchester report. It gives “some eighty-three” and “on rafts” without naming an authority for either. It is evidence of what the newspapers reported seven years later, not a reason to replace the regimental tally with 83. The box, its contents and their values remain the newspaper’s report, and that they were stolen is its supposition.
Read South Branch Intelligencer, August 27, 1869, page 2, reprinting the Winchester Times
54th New York: another account of the crossing
The New York State Military Museum reproduces a historical sketch from the New York Monuments Commission’s 1902 final report. It describes high water and a raft made from an old barn, with one of the first companies of Bohlen’s Pennsylvania regiment drowned. Bates also says rafts were built but puts the drowning on the repaired ferryboat, and the 1869 newspaper says rafts. We have not combined these descriptions into a single reconstructed vessel or treated the sketch as support for an exact total.
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