Come my dear husband, this is no place for us: A Perryville Story

The 79th Pennsylvania, part of Colonel John Starkweather’s brigade, was marching into action at the Battle of Perryville side by side with the 1st Wisconsin. 

    “As the solid, serried ranks of glistening bayonets and brave men moved onward with all the regularity and precision of a dress parade, and with the steadiness of veteran troops, the two regiments involuntarily paid just tribute to one another by sending up long and loud cheers,” one veteran recalled. “It was a grand sight! There was no flinching- not a man! Every man stood his ground firmly and manfully.”

          But out of the eyesight of our correspondent, one man did flinch, indeed, making a conscious decision to flee the battlefield. He can perhaps be forgiven this decision because as John D. Kautz marched onto the battlefield at Perryville, his German-born wife Barbara and infant son Christian accompanied him. It’s an interesting if rather convoluted story.

Reunion card for the first regimental reunion for the 79th Pennsylvania Volunteers, held on October 8, 1877 at the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This date marked the 15th anniversary of the regiment's first engagement, the Battle of Perryville.
(Image courtesy of Lancaster at War) 

          John D. Kautz was born April 21, 1839, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. By the outbreak of the war, he had married Catherine Barbara Dussinger and was working a farm laborer. In January 1862, the couple had their first son (and only child) Christian D. Kautz. On September 5, 1862, John enlisted as a private in Co. H of the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry. The regiment was one of the few Pennsylvania regiments assigned to the western theater, and shortly after enlistment, John set off to join the regiment. What was very unusual is that both Barbara and Christian accompanied him as he went off to war.

“They journeyed to Pittsburgh by rail, and from thence to Louisville, Kentucky, by steamboat,” stated Barbara’s obituary. “There they joined the regiment, and Mrs. Kautz and the baby accompanied it from there in the baggage wagons. The young wife made herself useful about the camp and was finally dubbed the "Daughter of the Regiment." [Other reports stated she was called the “Mother of the Regiment,” but given her young age (she was only 24), Daughter probably is more correct. Reportedly, Barbara took up washing for Colonel Henry A. Hambright who was not only aware of this highly usual arrangement, but apparently condoned it.]

Colonel Henry A. Hambright
79th Pennsylvania

“She was with the 79th at the Battle of Perryville, and then a funny incident happened,” the obituary continued. Frightened by the noise and ferocity of the battle Barbara “approached her husband and cried to him in German, "Come, my dear husband, this is no place for us. Let us go home." [In German, "Komm, mein lieber Mann, das ist kein Ort für uns. Lass uns nach Hause gehen."] "And home they started, at once, soon procuring a rudely made little wagon for the baby.” The young family reportedly made the 600-mile journey back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania entirely on foot. All the while, John Kautz had been listed as missing in action as no one from his regiment had seen him since the battle. In truth, he had gone AWOL and once he returned to Lancaster, that fact became known to the army and he became a wanted man.

Barbara Kautz’s obituary simply states that her husband “returned to the regiment and served “bravely and with credit,” but the story isn’t so neat and clean. It was the summer of 1863 before authorities caught up with John Kautz and sent him back to rejoin his regiment, now poised to march into Georgia as part of General William S. Rosecrans’ campaign to take Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kautz was court martialed for being absent nearly a year without leave, but the court acquitted him, stating that Kautz was “always feeble-minded” and “has a degree of idiocy. He would have been discharged, but we had marching orders.” Kautz did not accompany the regiment into what became the Battle of Chickamauga but was instead sent back to a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.

National colors of the 79th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Note that the fight at Perryville was called "Chaplin Hills," a popular early name for the battle. 

Kautz bounced around the rear areas of the Army of the Cumberland for the rest of the war, transferring into the 78th Pennsylvania at one point but going AWOL again from October 17, 1864, to April 25 of the following year (he later claimed ill health). He took advantage of a general amnesty and procured an honorable discharge on July 12, 1865, mustering out with the 79th Pennsylvania although in all honesty he had scarcely served more than a few months in its ranks. His final pay roll record states that his account was never settled and that he was absent “by virtue of General Order No. 101 of the War Department.”

Kautz returned to his family near Lancaster and resumed his work as a farm laborer. In 1880, he applied for a pension and learned that the desertion charge (from 1864) was still on the books. This took several years to clear up, but by 1887, Kautz had not only been granted a pension, but had gained membership in Thomas Post No. 84, Grand Army of the Republic. Barbara, too, joined the Women’s Relief Corps of the G.A.R. and enjoyed her notoriety as “Daughter of the Regiment” at the 79th Pennsylvania reunions that the couple attended each October with Christian in tow, presumably no longer in a "rudely-made little wagon." At one such event, a photograph was made of the Kautz family, a souvenir of this strange little story of the Battle of Perryville. 

Sources:

Letter from “Occasional,” 79th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Lancaster Daily Inquirer (Pennsylvania), October 20, 1862, pg. 2

Find-A-Grave Memorial for John D. Kautz

Obituaries for Barbara Katherine (Dussinger) Kautz, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal (Pennsylvania), May 16, 1904, pg. 6; also, Lancaster New Era (Pennsylvania), May 16, 1904, pg. 2


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