John Hervey Sherts of Paradise Township, East Lancaster County

As anyone who has found a long lost treasure will know, it is rare to discover something exactly as you left it. Over time photographs grow weathered, foundations crumble and clothing disintegrates. Historians are often at the mercy of happenstance as they attempt to piece together fragments of the past when it is impossible to know which artifacts will stand the test of time. They grow accustomed to rely on carefully recorded clues like maps and property records to rebuild a story piece by piece, but once in a while, a well-preserved item appears and speaks for itself. These rare items allow archivists to translate a story with fascinating detail, as is the case with the life of James Hervey Sherts. In building our current Civil War exhibit, The Landis Valley Museum has been fortunate enough to acquire the well-preserved Civil War uniform of James Hervey Sherts, a member of Company K the 15th regiment of the Civil War Cavalry. The uniform represents an anomaly in the northeast with orange piping around the collar and along the front, which differ from the typical cavalry color (light blue). This pale blue normally would have distinguished cavalry members from the infantry and artillery at a glance, but somehow the 15th regiment received uniforms left over from the Mexican War era and therefore had a unique orange piping color. Its colors vivid, its stitches holding fast, and its buttons intact, the uniform provides a unique opportunity to step back in time. It acts as a prop, helping onlookers to imagine men marching through a country plagued with war, but the story does not end there. Beside the Civil War Uniform of J.H. Sherts stood the one-foot-thick Sherts family scrapbook. Its pages crammed with letters, sketches, and documents, the Sherts scrapbook offered a three-dimensional family tree spanning six generations. Within the scrapbook, each relative of the Sherts family was given several pages to explain a life well lived, and the story of James H. Sherts was no exception. Journal entries, photographs, and correspondence folded and tucked inside his section bring clarity to our vision of Civil War Pennsylvania. These mementos left behind by his grandson place a face and a voice with the uniform and illustrate a day in the life of James H. Sherts. From these we derived the details below. In the early 1700s, some time prior to the Revolutionary War, three brothers came to Pennsylvania from Germany. One of these men, Jacob Sherts, settled on a large tract of land in the eastern part of Lancaster County and began farming. He married Miss. Elizabeth Pickel, the daughter of a well-known farmer in Bart Township, and the two bore seven children, James Hervey Sherts, being one of them. Prior to becoming a farmer in idyllic Strasburg County, J.H. Sherts chose to fight for America’s Union in the Civil War. At age 22 in the year 1862, having graduated from the Normal School of Millersville, he enlisted as a sergeant in General Stoneman’s Cavalry (indicated by the piping and chevron badge on his uniform). Members of this branch fought on horseback armed with a carbine, pistol, and saber surveying the battlefield, delaying oncoming troops, pursuing defeated enemy forces, and performing offensive actions. Journal accounts from J.H. Sherts indicate that he performed the long-distance raiding function of Cavalry; a very desirable mission for Cavalrymen although these raids frequently had mixed

success. On April 11th, Sherts recorded burning a bridge and capturing prisoners on his march through Salisbury and on to Spartansburg. At this juncture, he narrowly missed participating in George Stoneman’s famous raid in the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Union failure that caused the fatal injury of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson by friendly fire. While in encampment, Sherts’ passed the time exchanging letters with his two brothers, John Jacob Sherts (also in the Civil War and a member of Company I the 20th Cavalry) and Henry Hartman Sherts (agriculturist and school director in Paradise Township and later West Lampeter Township). Most of these letters detail marches and captures, but J.J. Sherts’ provides a detailed account of the specific occasion under which his horse fell on him, inflicting a painful injury to his right leg. Cavalry injuries like these weren’t uncommon— the Civil War was the first to test weaponry advances like the percussion cap and rifled musket, which would have a profound effect on massed Cavalry charge battles between the infantry and Cavalry. Additionally, James often wrote to Henry asking for small comforts including some apple butter, a narrow necktie, and a few more pairs of cotton stockings. He loved receiving a new letter and always signed, “Your most affectionate brother, J.H. Sherts.” By their discharge, both J.H. and J.J. Sherts left the service mostly unscathed. J.J. Sherts carried on farming for several years in Lampeter Township, moved to Lancaster County, and then embarked in a mercantile business in Strasburg. After managing this business successfully until 1894, J.J. Sherts moved to the city of Lancaster and opened a grocery store at the corner of East King and Plum Streets before he died in 1922. In 1866, J.H. Sherts went on to marry Barbara Bachman, a member of the large and well-known Mennonite Bachman family, all of whose members were born and lived in former Bachmantown of East Lampeter Township. Sherts became a member of the Mennonite church and the two had three children, Jacob, Hervey, and William. Upon settling down, J.H. Sherts resumed his livelihood as a Farmer at 5082 White Oak Rd. in Strasburg, PA. This farm still stands today, and has remained remarkably unchanged through the years. Beneath layers of material on one of the Sherts scrapbook pages was an intricate watercolor of this barn painted in 1906 by Sherts’ grandson (also John Hervey Sherts) at age 16. This rendition offered a snapshot of the property frozen in time, and prompted us to set out on a walking tour of the property to see the scene for ourselves. Sure enough, Sherts and his wife are buried in a nearby Mennonite graveyard, and not far down the road is the exact barn featured in Sherts’ watercolor. The family home, tobacco, and grain sheds from the picture still stand soundly and the upstairs window offers the very vantage point that J.H. Sherts recreated in his painting. Much of the property is pristinely preserved down to a small family graveyard containing headstones from the property’s first owner, Uriah R. Rockey. Peering out the upstairs window at the beautiful landscape below, we kept in mind the warm reflections that Sherts’ great grandson scratched in the margins of his watercolor. “It was on this place that grandfather J.H. Sherts lived for 18 years bringing up his family and later where my father, William Sherts, moved back to again in 1902 when I was 10 years old. Here we lived until 1918. Every single inch of the old place carries with it fond memories of a happy and

carefree childhood.” J.H. Sherts died in 1906 at his home in Strasburg. Five years later, in 1911, his wife died here as well, described as a respected woman and cherished mother. An individual dedicated to cataloguing minute details about the lives of each of their loved ones is rare; however, it is clear that J.H. Sherts gained pleasure from spending time with his family, learning every story, and reflecting upon how far each person had come. His attention to detail and careful preservation of the past allows us to observe the life of his grandfather Sherts through new eyes and make personal connections, carefully bringing us back in time and illustrating the universality of the human experience.