Samuel E. Cormany

Soon after marrying Rachel Bowman, Samuel Cormany settled down to raise his family in the Grand River Valley of Canada, his wife's birthplace. But in the summer of 1862, news of the Civil War and the Union's desperate need for soldiers prompted him to return to Pennsylvania, where he settled his young family in the Cumberland valley. Cormany volunteered and was mustered into the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry, a volunteer regiment that was to see action in most of the eastern campaigns right up to the final battle at Appomattox in the spring of 1865.

To a volunteer like Samuel Cormany, the life of a Union cavalryman may have appeared exciting and purposeful. But the pursuit of Confederate units after the Battle of Gettysburg, and the fighting at the Battle of Shepherdstown, in West Virginia, described in these diary...