The Union soldier (
John W. Mauk), who was the principal actor in this tragedy, died August 19, 1898, at the age of 58 years. He was a fair type of the enlisted men in the
Pennsylvania regiments.
The great majority of them sprang from the plain people, and were reared in humble homes.
They were mostly farmer boys and common laborers, with about the same proportion of mechanics in each company as could be found in the communities from which they came.
When the successive calls for troops were promulgated from
Washington, the village workshops as well as the farms yielded their quota.
Mauk grew up in a little valley in
Bedford county, not far from the town of
Bedford.
A high mountain overshadowed his home on either side.
With the exception of his three years service in the
Union army, his whole life was spent in the same neighborhood.
He died in the village of
Centreville, midway between the city of
Cumberland, on the
Potomac, and the town of
Bedford, on the headwaters of the
Juniata.
When a boy, he picked up the rudimentary education which most lads, in his condition of life, obtained in the ‘log school-house,’ and his ambition never reached beyond the simple employments which required no large stock of school-book
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learning.
Nevertheless, he was a man of excellent sense, had an intelligent conception of the great
Civil War, its causes and results, and could give a vivid account of the campaigns in which he was engaged.
He never boasted of the act which brought his name into the official report of the commander of the division in which he served, but he had no hesitation in telling the thrilling story when it became the subject of special inquiry.
During the last few years of his life
Mauk drew a pension of $12 a month from the United States government, which, with his modest earnings as a carpenter and common laborer, enabled him to live in comparative comfort, in the plain, simple style of his neighborhood.
At the time of his enlistment, he had a wife and two children.
His wife died soon after the close of the war, and both children, by this marriage, died before reaching maturity.
In 1866 he married his second wife, who is now his widow.
A son,
Mr. H. C. Mauk (who is a teacher in the public schools), and a daughter, are the surviving children.
For twenty years or longer,
Mauk was an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
He led a quiet, unobtrusive life, full of toil, but honest, upright and manly.
Daniel Wolford, the comrade who fired the ineffective shot at
Sergeant Tucker, when
Mauk with steadier aim brought down
General Hill, is still living.
He belongs to the class of honest toilers, of whom
Mauk was an excellent type.
He has spent his whole life in
Bedford county, Penna., near to the spot where he was born.
The tremendous events through which he passed in his youth, made no appreciable impression on his character and apparently had nothing to do with shaping his destiny.
He is a quiet, well-meaning, hard working man, and this is what he would, in all probability, have been, if he had remained at home when the other farmer boys marched off to the war—and had never seen ‘a squadron set in the field.’
