[R] Colonel Thomas F. McCoy of Scotch-Irish lineage, was born in Mifflin County, Penn., 1819. Having served seven years in the Militia, President Polk made him a first lieutenant in the Eleventh U. S. Infantry, when the Mexican War began. Participating in the principal battles of that strife, he came home a captain. A lawyer when the Rebellion began, he offered his services to Gov. Curtin and was made deputy quartermaster general of the state. When Col. Thos. A. Zeigle of the One Hundred and Seventh Penn. died July 16, '62, on the vote of the line officers of the Regiment, he was made colonel. He had a part in all of the varied service of the One Hundred and Seventh to the end and went home a Brevet Brig. General. General Warren was particularly warm in his appreciative remarks about the colonel. Going home to Lewistown, Penn., he resumed the practice of law. Marrying May 22d, '73, Miss Margaret E. Ross of Harrisburg, he led the life of respect and responsibility, one of the most prominent citizens of his town, for nearly half a century a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church and died July 20, 1899. His son, Frank R., a West Pointer, an officer in the Tenth U. S. Infantry, was wounded at San Juan, Cuba, and is now a Captain on the General Staff, Washington. Ancestors of the Colonel were in the Colonial Wars, members of Morgan's Riflemen in the Revolution; were in the War of 1812, and through father and son, in every National war since.
[S] Many opinions exist as to what and where the Petersburg Express was. Some even aver that it was a Confederate institution. General H. L. Abbot, in his History of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, has the following, "To check an annoying enfilade firing from the left bank of the Appomattox, a thirteen inch sea coast mortar was mounted on a curve of the Railroad track by Company G. This novelty was widely known as the 'Petersburg Express.' The mortar, on a heavy granite foundation, since Sept. 25, 1902, has stood upon the State House grounds, Hartford, as a memorial to the First Heavies."
[T] Peter Lyle, Colonel of the Ninetieth Pennsylvania, Bvt. Brig. General, and for much of the service of the Thirty-ninth in the Fifth Corps, commander of the Brigade, was born in Philadelphia, Christmas Day, 1821. Receiving very little education from the schools, he was apprenticed to the cigar trade while yet a boy. His marked boyish predelection was love for military matters, and he drilled his boyish associates, formed into a company, till they became noted for their proficiency, accomplishing in their juvenile way wonders with their broomstick guns. When only sixteen years of age, during the absence of the officers, he commanded and paraded the City Phalanx. While still a youth he organized an independent company which he commanded until it was taken into the National Guards. In 1846 he succeeded to the command of the company which before the war had increased to a battalion, becoming a regiment in 1860 under the command of Colonel Lyle. His organization had volunteered for service in the Mexican War but, the quota being full, it did not go. At the outbreak of the Rebellion, the Regiment, as the Nineteenth Pennsylvania, volunteered and so served for three months. Reorganized in August, 1861, it was sworn in for three years as the Ninetieth Regiment, still commanded by Colonel Lyle. He never fully recovered from a wound received at Antietam. Subsequent to the war he was elected sheriff in 1867, being a Democrat in politics, serving a single term. Much that he had acquired during his term was absorbed by an agricultural venture in Maryland which, failing finally, he was thrown entirely upon the outcome of carriage making, a business to which he gave immediate attention after the discharge of the Regiment, his associate being his late Adjutant, David P. Weaver. His last public appearance in a military capacity was during the riots of 1877 when, though suffering agonies from bodily ills, he sat his saddle and discharged his duties faithfully. Soon after he declined a re-election to the command of the Regiment and died in Philadelphia, July 17, 1879. His burial was attended with all the honors due a full Brigadier General, his body having lain in state in the armory of his Regiment that he had led so long and so well; it was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery by the side of his brother, David M. Lyle, the last Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Volunteer Fire Department. For the foregoing facts we are indebted to Captain P. Lyle Weaver, a son of Adjutant D. P. Weaver, himself a Philadelphia journalist.—A. S. R.
[U] One of the most pleasant memories of war times is that of the almost David and Jonathan relations that existed between certain regiments. This was the case with the Thirty-ninth and the Sixteenth Maine; either one had a feeling of security if, in the hour of danger, it was supported by the other; exposed repeatedly to a common peril, in a measure, the history of one is that of both; each regiment had the highest regard and respect for the leaders of its fellow organization and for years after the war exchange of courtesies on reunion occasions was an expected event. Closely related in early history as were Maine and Massachusetts, the equal intimacy between representatives of the two states in camp and march and on the field lingers long in the minds of those who participated.
[V] Condensed from a paper prepared by Captain Charles H. Porter and read by him before the Massachusetts Military Historical Society January 11, 1886.
[W] Governour Kemble Warren was born in Cold Spring, Putnam Co., N. Y., January 8, 1830, and was graduated from West Point, No. 2, in a class of forty-four members, very few of whom, however, are known to fame, Cuvier Grover and Powell T. Wyman being the most noted among his loyal classmates and Wm. T. Magruder and Robert Ransom among the rebels. Assigned on graduation to the Topographical Engineers, he was in constant and active service till his appointment as mathematical instructor at West Point, 1859, and there the Rebellion found him. At first he was Lieut. Colonel of the Fifth (Duryea's Zouaves), N. Y. Volunteers, soon succeeding to the colonelcy; he was the last to leave the field at Big Bethel, remaining to rescue the body of Lieut. J. T. Greble, the first Regular Army officer to lose his life in the war. He helped build the forts on Federal Hill, Baltimore. He served in the Peninsular Campaign, acquiring a brigade in May, '62, and, in the subsequent months, there was very little doing by the Army of the Potomac in which he did not bear a conspicuous part. His bronze figure on Little Round Top must forever tell the story of his watchfulness and alertness at Gettysburg and the members of the Fifth Army Corps, to a man, never failed to chant his praises. The incident of his suspension from his command at Five Forks is a blot on the fame of Sheridan and made Warren's place in the hearts of his followers warmer than ever. A skillful engineer, he was constantly employed in the army up to the time of his death, which no doubt was hastened by the unfortunate occurrence of April, '65. His relations with the Thirty-ninth, after the war, were of an unusually intimate character. He died in Newport, R. I., August 8, 1882.
[X] From the history of the Fifth Army Corps, William H. Powell, pp. 863-4.
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