The Heat of the War Bring Young And Old to Fight for Pennsylvania

The summer 1863 was a hot one — not only in terms of temperature and humidity — but the Civil War was raging on and the southern Confederates were determined to repeat in Pennsylvania the destruction carried out elsewhere.

The men in Blair and Bedford counties were hesitant, for a variety of reasons, to take up arms and head to the trenches built at mountain passes in Morrisons Cove to keep the rebels at bay.

The call went out by Pennsylvania leaders for state militia volunteers, but very few volunteers responded, according to one Civil War expert Cloyd Neely, a Duncansville man who personally...