Philo Pearce, the 11th Connecticut, and the Origins of the Blog

This past weekend during the Ohio Civil War Show at Mansfield, I purchased a special relic at a dealer’s table that took me back to the origins of this blog.

It was a simple piece of silk, a 35th reunion ribbon for the 11th Connecticut Volunteers held September 17, 1898, in Hartford, Connecticut. The ribbon was striking in appearance, featuring Hartford’s Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial. Every other ribbon in the binder was from local units such as the 49th and 101st Ohio from places like Tiffin, Norwalk, and Port Clinton, but there was this one 11th Connecticut ribbon. What was that ribbon for a Connecticut regiment doing in Ohio amongst a collection of Buckeye ribbons?

Well, I had a hunch, and it goes back to the origins of the blog.

This recent find at the Ohio Civil War Show opened a host of memories for me going back to the original inspiration for the blog. 


Way back on October 26, 2015, I took an early afternoon off work to visit Harrington Cemetery where an ancestor was buried. While there, I discovered graves of three soldiers of the 21st Ohio who had died of wounds at Stones River. Intrigued and thinking the local library may have some information on these men, I drove over to Harris-Elmore Public Library in Elmore. As noted in my journal , it proved a "serendipitous trip." As I perused the shelves looking for interesting Civil War information, I came across a thin manila folder that simply said, “Soldier’s Life of Philo Stevens Pearce.” Expecting to find a local Buckeye soldier’s questionnaire from Elmore’s Grand Army of the Republic post, I was stunned once I started to read the content and knew that I had found a gem.

Philo Stevens Pearce was born October 12, 1843, in New Fairfield, Connecticut. “We were a happy family raised in our humble home but always contented under our parents’ care,” wrote Pearce. “Our schooling was rather brief. After we were old enough to be of use, we helped father in the summer and went to school in the winter. We could read, write, and learned what we could, which was brief as we had to walk one-and-a-half miles to our schools.”

Philo stayed at home until 17 years of age when he hired out as a farmer to his Uncle Alva Pearce for $10 a month. The following spring, the war came. Caught up in the great excitement where “all you heard was war, war, war,” Philo joined a local company, which turned out to be Co. A of the 11th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

Private Philo Stevens Pearce
Co. A, 11th Connecticut
(Ancestry)

Pearce would serve with the regiment for three years and take part in 18 battles, including the bloodiest day of the war, September 17, 1862, at Antietam. “While our colonel was getting us into line and was on his horse, a shell from the Rebels broke a piece struck his horse,” recalled Pearce. “As the horse fell, I had to dodge to keep it from falling on me. I can say it took some nerve to keep cool as the shells were bursting all around us.” And so, Pearce continued for five more pages, the whole account of which can be read here “In the Shadow of Burnside’s Bridge.”

Wanting to better understand Philo’s experience at Antietam, I searched the internet and quickly stumbled across John Banks’ superb Civil War blog which, at that time, focused on “Connecticut, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the stories of the common soldiers.” John had a great post about Captain John Griswold of Co. A, whose mortal wounding Philo Pearce both witnessed and wrote about in his memoir. As a matter of fact, Pearce was one of four men who carried Griswold’s body back to the Henry Rohrback farm. After transcribing Pearce’s Antietam account, I sent along a copy to John who shared it on his blog.

To say I was impressed with John Banks’ blog and research is an understatement- I was both floored and inspired. His combination of great photographs, riveting soldiers’ accounts, and compelling writing made for a very attractive and informative presentation and quickly became (and remains) a favorite.

It took a couple of years but the germ was planted in my mind that “Hey, I bet you could put together a really cool blog like John's but focused on Ohio’s role in the Civil War.” I reached out to John and after he introduced me to Blogger and gave me a few pointers, Dan Masters’ Civil War Chronicles was born.  

    And so, I started on June 10, 2017, with a post entitled “On Cornbread and Christmas Dinners in 1861 Kentucky” which shared some juicy (or rather crumbly) tidbits from Captain John Stinchcomb’s letters written while serving with the 17th Ohio. The blog’s focus has broadened beyond just covering Ohio stories over the years, but 852 blog posts later, that original inspiration to share cool discoveries like the Philo Pearce memoir remains the key driving force of why I do what I do.

Now that you understand my connection with the 11th Connecticut and how discovering Philo’s story inspired me to start the blog, let’s get back to the ribbon. How in the world did an 11th Connecticut ribbon (and Pearce’s memoir) end up in north central Ohio?

Philo Pearce with his grandchildren
(Ancestry)

After being discharged in 1865, Philo returned to farming in Connecticut for a few years, then moved west to Danbury, Ohio where he met and married Ora L. Barnum with whom he had four children. The couple moved shortly thereafter to Allegheny Co., New York to work in the mercantile trade. In March 1875, Philo sold the business, moving west again to Catawba Island, Ohio in Lake Erie. He developed a fruit orchard, joined the local Grand Army of the Republic, and became a highly respected member of the local community. Catawba Island is located just a few miles north of Marblehead and is part of Ottawa County in the north-central part of the state.

Philo Pearce dictated his memoirs to one of grandchildren around 1925 and had them typed up; a year later, he died. Sometime in the 1980s, a copy of that transcription was donated by a descendant to the Harris-Elmore Library, likely due to Harris’s reputation of having one of the better genealogical sections in the area. And roughly 30 years later, I stumbled upon it with the rest of the story as I laid out previously.

While there is no way to know for sure that this particular reunion ribbon I purchased belonged to Philo Pearce, I’d like to think the chances are in my favor. The fact that it was part of an older collection of all local north central Ohio ribbons suggests that it, too, was of local origin. Knowing that there are few (if any) other 11th Connecticut veterans in north central Ohio, it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that this ribbon could have belonged to Pearce.

Regardless of whether he owned this ribbon or not, it was a totally cool and serendipitous find that provided a way for me to share the story of how this blog began. With  853 posts now behind me and who knows how many ahead, now you know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”

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