William David Hollabaugh - Post #2

An addition to a previous blog post on William David Hollabaugh, the great-uncle of my husband, born in Gettysburg, PA and died in Nebraska.

From the Nebraska Daily News Press, Sunday, March 19, 1933, p. 2 -

"RECALLS BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

W.D. HOLLABAUGH HAD A RESERVED SEAT IN A TREE AT THAT FAMOUS ENCOUNTER.

President Lincoln, because he looked perfectly human, was a disappointment to one Pennsylvania young man. 

'You'd think he'd look sort of different,' this young man thought.  'Being president and all that he should be rather distinguished, very out of the ordinary.'

But here was Lincoln, in a grey suit and looking quite homely, very thin, and not nearly as pompous as his high position entitled him to, standing on a crude platform in Soldiers Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pa., delivering the now famous 'Four score and seven years ago.'

W. D. Hollabaugh, 16 years old, was very disappointed.  He squinted his eyes at the president, wrinkled his nose, pressed closer to the speaker's platform, and today he can't even recall whether he shook Lincoln's hand, but he supposed he did.

Mr. Hollabaugh, now 86 years old, living at 518 South Eighth street, recalls that incident with amusement.  He was so excited because the president was coming to Gettysburg and he would get to see the great man of the nation - and then, he only looked like another man, not even as good looking as his neighbors.

Soldiers Cemetery, Gettysburg

 Hollabaugh is probably one of the first men to conduct a tree-sitting marathon.  He shinned up a tree when the Battle of Gettysburg led off with the first gun and he stayed there in his ringside seat, watched the three day battle, came down only for food and sleep.  

From his treetop observatory, he saw men fall mortally wounded, he heard the agonizing scream of wounded horses, he saw close combat and far range firing, he saw lines of men advance and retreat.

The Confederates arrived on the outskirts of Gettysburg on June 28, 1863, and they threw up entrenchments on what was known as Cemetery Ridge.  All around them were rocky hills soon destined to be scenes of horrible fighting.  There was Baltimore Pike, stronghold of the Union Army, Culp Hill, Wolf Hill and Round Top.  

Gettysburg citizens were all excited over the proximity of the warring armies.  They did not have to wait long for the fanfare of guns.  With the first boom of the real battle, Hollabaugh was out of the house and ensconced in a tree, at a safe distance from the battle, you may be sure.

He saw the Confederate strongholds fall one by one.  Cannon balls and bullets went zipping through the air and soon Round Top was barren of trees.  All the paths of that hill and the familiar woods were blown up.  At the foot of Round Top were two huge stones standing close together.  Seven men were found dead in the crevice the rocks formed.

Culp Hill was covered with cannon balls.  Hollabaugh had always remembered it as the best place in the country to get raspberries, blackberries, sugarberries and red haws.  The Sherfey peach orchard was cut down as clean as any woodcutters could do the job and the Hollabaughs had no peaches that fall.  The orchard belonged to an uncle of Emory Sherfey, living on north Tenth street.

'I saw a horse race that would excel any track champion demonstration,' Mr. Hollabaugh tells.  'About half a mile from where I sat, a Confederate and a Union soldier, both on horseback, came within sight of each other.  They pulled their guns and spurred their horses.  The shooting began and the horses skimmed over the ground.  After a couple rounds of shot, they were far apart and I don't believe either was hurt.'

An unsolved mystery came into the Hollabaugh family during the battle of Minnie Run.  A brother-in-law of W. D. Hollabaugh was in the battle.  He fell wounded and his brother, another soldier, ran over to him, propped him against a tree and returned to the ranks.  The brother-in-law was never seen again.

'Confederate soldiers did a great deal of pillaging.  Anything they wanted in the way of supplies they took,' the narrator tells.  'They appropriated horses, grain, food.'  One day an uncle of Mr Hollabaugh's refused to tell where he had hidden his horses.  A rope with a noose on one end was thrown over a tree limb and he was asked: 'Now, can you remember where they are?  We'll hang you if you don't tell.'

'That limb isn't strong enough to hold my weight,' was the repl and the soldiers set him free.

A face to face encounter Hollabaugh had with the Confederates came very unexpectedly one day as he and his two brothers were on their way to the hills carrying feed for the hidden horses.  Seven Confederates hailed them with: 
'Where are you going, boys?'
'Oh, nowhere.'
'You better take us where your horses are.'
'All right,' the boys bargained, 'we'll take you there if you let us ride your horses.'
Mr. Hollabaugh still regrets the soldiers went on and he didn't have a chance to ride off to safety on an enemy's horse.

The bloodshed did not end with the war, he says.  Bullets picked up off the fields were kept as souvenirs and it was not an infrequent accident to have a bullet suddenly explode and kill someone.  The lost brother-in-law and a bullet through the Hollabaugh house were the only war tragedies for that family.

The next excitement was the visit of the president of the United States.  It was a gala day and everyone turned out for the occasion.  As near as Mr. Hollabaugh can figure, the platform from which Lincoln delivered his famed Gettysburg address was built over a plot of ground in which his parents are now buried in Soldiers Cemetery."

******************

 The obituary of William David Hollabaugh, as it 
appeared in the Nebraska Daily News-Press, Sunday, January 5, 1936, p. 2.

"DEATH COMES TO W. D. HOLLABAUGH
Pioneer Farmer Drops Dead in Post Office.

William David Hollabaugh, 88, who, as a youth, watched the Battle of Gettysburg from a point of vantage in a tree, and a few months later, heard President Abraham Lincoln speak his immortal words at Gettysburg, dropped dead in Nebraska City Saturday morning.

Mr. Hollabaugh died in the post office, a building which he helped to build.  His heart failed him.  Mr. Hollabaugh had not been ill before his sudden death came.


Born in Gettysburg, Pa., July 24, 1847, he lived there as a boy until after the Civil War.  He was married April 10, 1873, to Margaret Jane Furnish at Spencerville, Ind., then he came to Nebraska.

Mr. Hollabaugh worked as a skilled carpenter on the Nebraska City Post Office when it was erected in 1886-1888.  For years he was a farmer southwest of Nebraska City.

Mr. Hollabaugh is survived by six children: W.E. and J.A. of Nebraska City; H.E. Hollabaugh of Overbrook, Kas.' Mrs. Mabel McWilliams, Mrs. Lulu Dwyer and Mrs. Emil Niemann, of Nebraska City.  Two sisters, Mary Hennigh, Carlisle, Pa., and Anna Pensyl, Sibley, Iowa, and two brothers, J. B. Hollabaugh, Biglerville, Pa., and Levi Hollabaugh, St. Joseph, Indiana, also survive.  Mrs. Hollabaugh died July 17, 1934, in Nebraska City.  Mr. Hollabaugh was a member of the Presbyterian Church.

Funeral services will be held at 2 o'clock Monday afternoon at the Karstens-Patterson chapel with Dr. Harry Markley in charge.  Burial will be at the Wyuka cemetery.  Pallbearers will be R.C. Jones, Frank Fields, Charles Lare, Sr., George Lathrop, Frank Sim and Dan Hill.  Mr. and Mrs. H.E. Hollabaugh of Overbrook, Kas., will be here from out-of-town for the funeral.