By Matthew Cumberledge
The border conflicts of western Pennsylvania are recounted in endless volumes published over the last two hundred years. These early years were defined by conflicts with the indigenous tribes and later the issue concerning the boundaries between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Then the Mason-Dixon line was drawn. A mere line on a map that intended to establish colonial governance over an entire region, the Mason-Dixon line has defined more than just random shapes on cartographer’s paper – it has in part defined us as a people.
Nearly a century after Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began their infamous survey, the American Civil War occurred. The Mason-Dixon line would play an integral role in that conflict.
The life and times of average people are often overlooked by recorded history. The experience of typical families and their lives often provide the most interesting and relatable stories. This is the story of one family in the Civil War.
Joseph Cumberledge was likely born in England in the early 1740’s. He came to North America in one of the great waves of immigration of the 18th century. By 1777, he was living in Frederick County, Maryland and was listed in the rent roles as being a “Poor Man, no affects.”
Joseph saw the birth of the United States and the separation of ties with Great Britain. When the Western frontier opened up for settlement, Joseph answered the call and, along with his wife and two of his three children, he braved the wilderness and established a small settlement near the village now known as Brave in Wayne Township.
It was tough living then and every waking hour was dedicated to survival – planting, tending and harvesting crops, hunting, fishing and making everything you needed to get by. With the constant threat of attack by the Indians, and it was very trying existence. Joseph and his family were attacked on April 23, 1789, and the entire household was killed.
Joseph’s oldest son, George, remained in Maryland when the family left for the western frontier. By 1802, George had come to Greene County, also. Things had changed dramatically by then. The threat of Indian attack was nonexistent, the border disputes between Virginia and Pennsylvania were over, and civilization was in its infancy. George was here to stay. He reared a family of ten children in a simple cabin, likely on the same land where his parents and siblings were killed. He had a cow, a dog and a few horses.
On Christmas Day 1795, George’s wife Rachel gave birth to their first son, George Fielding Cumberledge. An older sister, Alice, was born in 1789, and the last child was born to this family in 1814. The last child was Daniel Cumberledge.
By 1836, George and Rachel had both passed, and George F. became head of the family. The younger George farmed his father’s land and became quite a prosperous farmer and father to sixteen children of his own. Many of George’s brothers and sisters lived nearby for the remainder of all their lives. Extended families were the key to survival in these early days. They lived together, worked together, and enjoyed the company of one another. These bonds of family and friendship were essential to survival.
Little changed for Cumberledge family for the first several decades of the 19th century. Crops were reaped and sowed and the cold winters were still a lean time, but mostly it was a peaceful time. That would all change in April 1861, when news of the attack at Fort Sumter reached George F. Cumberledge’s one room cabin on the waters of Dunkard Creek. The American Civil War had begun!
“Union Forever!” George is recorded as shouting. His ancestors had helped to build and settle this nation. The concept of “These United States,” was something he clearly held sacred. Politics of the day would have had little influence over George’s feelings. He understood how fragile the peace of such a young nation could be. He was born into the aftermath of the Whiskey Insurrection and had lived through the “Second War of Independence” now known as the War of 1812. George’s next door neighbor and close friend John Wiley had fought for Virginia in that war.
George insisted that all of his sons help to put this rebellion to rest. Eight of his sixteen children were boys and they all went off to fight in the war with the exception of the oldest son, John, who was born blind, and the youngest son, Henry, who was not yet of age to fight. All of these men would fight with Company K, of the 14th West Virginia Infantry. Two of George’s sons would die in the war; Mark would die of illness while on campaign and William, one of a set of twins who both fought in the 14th would die on October 31, 1862 from lung fever. Mark and William were buried side by side in the family cemetery, very near to William’s twin brother Simon. Simon survived the war and died in 1890. A medal posthumously presented to William Cumberledge still exists, and is held within the personal collection of the author.
George F.’s youngest brother Daniel would fight as well, along with many of his sons. Daniel, by the standards of the time, was an old man when he enlisted at the age of 47 in Blackville (West) Virginia on August 22, 1862.
Enlistment at such an age may have been a regrettable decision for Daniel, or Dan, as he is referred to in all the records. By late 1863 his health was failing, and he was given a furlough because of illness and returned home, on the condition that after a month had passed he would return to his company. Dan’s illness, however, hadn’t improved and on December 23, 1863, he was arrested on the family farm and returned to duty without trial, on condition that he remain for the duration of his enlistment. This condition was met, and Dan was honorably discharged on June 27, 1865 in Cumberland, Maryland. Although we don’t know what illness Dan was suffering from, it is likely a combination of rheumatism and aggravation of injuries received in his youth.
In the summer of 1851, when Dan was in his 30’s, he along with many of his cousins and brothers were passing the hours of a warm day by racing their horses on the new road that had just been created through the heart of the family farm. In the flurry of excitement, Dan lost control of his mount and crashed into an outcropping of rock near the road, severely injured his leg. After the war, when Dan was claiming his pension, this incident was recounted. In mid 1863, while in Virginia during the War, Dan was on a bridge that collapsed and this old leg injury was aggravated. Dan also suffered an injury to his left eye from an ember while riding on flat car of a train that was transporting troops north.
These are brief glances at one family that lived through the Great American Civil War. George and his brother Dan lived out the rest of their days on the family farm that sat upon the border of Pennsylvania and the newly formed state of West Virginia. At one time this family considered themselves to be Virginians but after the war they were Americans. The succeeding generations would fight in every conflict throughout American history, up to the present day.
Every family has a wealth of similar history, a symposium of very human stories that have shaped us into the people and communities we have become today. On this Veterans Day, let us not only give thanks to those alive who have continued this tradition of service down through the generations, but let us remember those generations who came before us that have instilled within us the values that are necessary to keep us moving forward.