War Experiences of Samuel Wheeler, Private in the First West Virginia Cavalry

At the Grand Review of the Armies on May 23, 1865, General George A. Custer’s Third Division cavalry troops, including the First West Virginia, led the parade, followed by the rest of the Army of the Potomac, through the crowded streets of Washington. At one point, as they neared the reviewing stand, Custer, flamboyant as usual, lost control of his horse, causing his hat to blow off; after galloping off to retrieve it, he blithely resumed his place at the head of the column.¹ Samuel Wheeler,² a private in the West Virginia cavalry regiment, witnessed the incident and wrote about it forty-six years later in his memoir, War Experiences of Samuel Wheeler. He also recorded about that day: “Captain Wheeler³ had a wreath of flowers thrown over his horse’s head and it just fitted his horse’s neck like a collar. Well, we privates had flowers, too. We were marching with our sabers drawn and at a ‘Carry Arms,’ and in coming in front of the President’s stand we presented saber and then back to a carry saber, and when the flowers began to fall we began to catch them on our saber points, and before we got through our march we all had flowers on our sabers. It was the greatest event I have ever seen or heard, the rejoicing of the people, the greetings, the hurrahs. It made us feel like heroes.”

It was a fitting climax to his four long years of military service. In September of 1861, he had chosen the life of a soldier by enlisting in Company E of the First Loyal Virginia Cavalry Regiment (called the First West Virginia after West Virginia gained statehood in June 1863) then being formed in western Virginia. At the time, Wheeler was twenty-one and working as a farmhand near Cottageville in Jackson County. His parents, Wilhelm Van Ludy Wheeler, a farmer and cooper, and Ann Saylor Wheeler had moved their large family, seven sons and one daughter, to a Mason County, western Virginia, homestead near the Ohio River in the late 1840s from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where all the siblings had been born.⁴

Wheeler’s brothers had their own decisions to make. In June, Newberry W. Wheeler, the eldest, had crossed the Ohio River to sign on with the 22nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry for a three-month term. Also that summer, brothers Thomas J. and Joseph cast their allegiance with the South and joined the 22nd Virginia Infantry, the Kanawha Regiment, then recruiting in western Virginia. That autumn, Newberry, with brothers James W. and Samuel made the trek to Parkersburg to present Company E a package deal. Newberry was commissioned a first lieutenant, probably a reflection of his maturity at age thirty-two and recent military experience; James, age thirty, became a commissary sergeant for the unit; Sam, a private.

All five Wheelers served in their chosen regiments throughout the war, with time out for various periods spent in sick bay, hospitals, and prison camps, but, remarkably, they all survived to return to their West Virginia homes in 1865. The second eldest brother, Wilhelm Van Ludy Wheeler Jr., sat out the war until late 1864, then served brief stints in the 180th and 187th Ohio Infantry Regiments. The seventh brother, Alexander, did not follow in his brothers’ footsteps, but married during wartime and raised a large family on a Cottageville farm.

Following the Grand Review, Wheeler’s regiment was ordered to Wheeling and mustered out July 8, 1865. Sam Wheeler returned to Jackson County but soon sought work across the river in Meigs County, Ohio. He married an Ohio girl, Henrietta F. Thorn, on leap-year day, 1872, and they raised two daughters, Frances, born June 5, 1873, and Elizabeth, born October 23, 1875. While making their home with Henrietta’s mother in Letart township, Meigs County, Sam supported his family as a farmer and later as postmaster in the village of Saxon. By 1887 the family was living in Garden Grove, Iowa, and Sam listed his occupations as shopkeeper...