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While looking through some periodialcs for family research, I came across this little tid-bit. I thought it was interesting enough to share. This is copied from a book titled "A Pioneer Village", Fairmount, Indiana. Interviews of area residents in 1917.
I was a member of the Fairmount Militia Company refered to as the Home Guards for a short time in 1863, while I belonged we took our equipment home with us. This equipment consisted, as I now remember it, of a Belgian musket, bayonet, cartridge box, and sixty rounds of fixed ammunition. Very few of this comany had uniforms. They were boys from 15-16 and men 40-55, most of them clad in homespun, with straw hats made from straw plaited by mother, and now and then would be seen a coon-skin cap. Someone, whose name I do not remember now, would come to drill practice wearing a stove pipe plug hat. Several of the members had been discharged for disability or because of expiration of service and had a fairly good idea of military tactics. The Belgium muskets with which we were armed were quite as dangerous to the men behind the gun as the men in front. The boy's at the front used to say that there was death at one end and six months of sickness at the other end of the weapons.
J.M. Hundley
Summitville, Ind
April 2, 1917
I was a member of the Fairmount Militia Company refered to as the Home Guards for a short time in 1863, while I belonged we took our equipment home with us. This equipment consisted, as I now remember it, of a Belgian musket, bayonet, cartridge box, and sixty rounds of fixed ammunition. Very few of this comany had uniforms. They were boys from 15-16 and men 40-55, most of them clad in homespun, with straw hats made from straw plaited by mother, and now and then would be seen a coon-skin cap. Someone, whose name I do not remember now, would come to drill practice wearing a stove pipe plug hat. Several of the members had been discharged for disability or because of expiration of service and had a fairly good idea of military tactics. The Belgium muskets with which we were armed were quite as dangerous to the men behind the gun as the men in front. The boy's at the front used to say that there was death at one end and six months of sickness at the other end of the weapons.
J.M. Hundley
Summitville, Ind
April 2, 1917