“Your Affectionate Pa”: Colonel Richard P. Roberts of the 140th Pennsylvania Regiment

ECW welcomes guest author Michael L. Giorgianni.

As the sights and sounds of battle grew nearer, and the wounded of Union units of the III and V Corps appeared, Brig. Gen. Samuel K. Zook’s brigade was directed to advance to the area of Stony Hill. Colonel Richard P. Roberts, commanding officer of the 140th Pennsylvania, and his regiment were placed into line of battle on the extreme right of Zook’s brigade. Just ten months into his military service, and with their only taste of battle at Chancellorsville two months prior, Col. Richards addressed his regiment of roughly 500 men.

“Men of the 140th! Recollect that you are now defending your own soil and are fighting to drive the invader from your own homes and firesides. I shall therefore expect you to conduct yourselves as if in the presence of your wives, your sisters, and your sweethearts, and not disgrace the flag you bear or the name of Pennsylvanians.”^[1] The men cheered and quickly moved through the Trostle farm towards the battle.

A closer look at Col. Roberts’s life reveals a sturdy passion for the Union cause, a successful professional career, unimaginable personal tragedy, and heroic service to the nation.

Richard P. Roberts was born on June 5, 1820 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, located just west of Pittsburgh. In 1845, he relocated to Beaver, Pennsylvania to begin a career in law, which he successfully did in March 1848. Roberts’s abilities as an attorney must have shined as he was appointed district attorney of Beaver County. He married Caroline Henry on May 1, 1851, and of their children only one, Emma, born in 1854, survived the initial years of life. Undoubtedly, the loss of two of his children must have been devastating, but on February 4, 1862, Caroline, Robert’s wife of just under ten years, died at the age of 31.^[2]

Richard Roberts was a solid backer of President Abraham Lincoln and was driven to express his less than moderate views against the southern states which had seceded. Throughout 1861, and the first half of 1862, he spoke in support of the Union at various regional meetings.

As excellent a speaker as Roberts may have been, when President Lincoln called on the nation to provide 300,000 troops in July 1862, he did not hesitate or consider his own family situation, but requested permission from Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin to recruit a company in Beaver County. Due to Roberts’s enthusiastic recruiting, three companies of men were recruited from the county.^[3]

The 140th Pennsylvania was officially formed on September 8, 1862 at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and was sent to Parkton, Maryland on September 10 to guard the North Central Railroad line. Notably occurring that first week of September 1862 was Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossing the Potomac River, opening the Maryland Campaign.

As Col. Roberts’s regiment guarded the rail line until December 1862, drills were conducted, and regimental elections and appointments made. However, handling life away from their homes and families certainly must have begun to impact Roberts and his men. It is difficult to grasp the anguish that he must have felt having just lost his wife in the last year and previously two of his three children, and knowing his eight-year-old daughter Emma remained at home. Colonel Roberts wrote more than 50 letters to Emma, sometimes daily, beginning on September 3, 1862 until the day before his death at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.^[4]

The 140th Pennsylvania was ordered to Falmouth, Virginia, where they arrived on December 20, 1862, just after the depressing Union loss at Fredericksburg. Roberts was now surrounded by thousands of experienced troops and drilled under the vigilant eyes of officers such as generals Burnside, Sumner, and Hancock, and Col. Zook, to whose brigade of the II Corps the 140th was assigned.^[5]

Roberts and his proud Pennsylvanians saw their first combat at the battle of Chancellorsville during the first week of May 1863. The artillery barrages sent in their direction and the terrible scenes of war must have impacted the men, as their brigade commander Zook stated that the shelling that Roberts’s men endured on May 3 “was the hottest place he had seen since the war started.”^[6] Following the battle of Chancellorsville, Col. Roberts, as well as Brig. Gen. Zook, requested a twenty-day leave of absence. Doctor John Wishart, the regimental surgeon, stated that Roberts suffered from a “complete prostration of his nervous system.” The leave of absence was granted on May 13, 1863. The condition must have been alarming as two doctors in Beaver, Pennsylvania on June 2 asked for an additional twenty days of leave, stating the colonel was “seriously indisposed” and mentioned typhoid fever in their report.^[7]

Roberts returned to the 140th Pennsylvania as soon as he learned Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was moving north. Sources place him back in command on June 27 or 28 after traveling several days to locate the II Corps. The men reentered their native Pennsylvania on July 1, with Roberts writing his final letter to his daughter, Emma, just prior to crossing from Maryland, saying “I expect we will soon have a battle – we are going to march in a few minutes.” Roberts lovingly concluded “Be a good girl, Good by my dear. Your affectionate Pa.”^[8]

As Gettysburg’s second day raged, after 4:00 p.m. John Caldwell’s first division of Maj. Gen. Winfield Hancock’s II corps was ordered to support the left of the Union left in the area of the Wheatfield, Stony Hill, and Rose Woods. The 140th Pennsylvania, along with the rest of Zook’s brigade, was directed toward Stony Hill, which placed them in difficult terrain including massive rocks and trees, initially facing the men of Joseph Kershaw’s 2nd, 3rd, and 7th South Carolina regiments.^[9]

Following the famous absolution delivered to the division by Father William Corby and the short speech by Col. Roberts quoted at the beginning of this article, Zook’s brigade advanced toward the wheatfield. The fighting was intense and at close range, with smoke and noise making it nearly impossible to communicate. After correcting the position of Zook’s brigade as it overlapped the Irish brigade, Col. Roberts drove his men into Kershaw’s South Carolinians who has just taken Stony Hill. Roberts directed his regiment to fire at will and drove the enemy from Stony Hill.

Then, the Union advance stopped. Kershaw’s Confederates reformed near the Rose Farm and were reinforced by W.T. Wofford’s brigade on their right. Sources state that Roberts had a strong feeling that he would not survive the upcoming battle and directed that his horse should be sent home. Even with this terrifying feeling of doom, men in the regiment remember Col. Roberts, with sword in hand, bravely yelling above the noise and with enemy getting off a volley, to fire low, and remember you are Pennsylvanians.  Similarly to many others killed in battle, Roberts’s suspicion came true, as he was shot in the chest directly in front of the men of Company K.^[10]

Colonel Richard P. Roberts was buried on July 17, 1863, in Beaver, Pennsylvania, having bravely served his country and overcome unimaginable personal tragedy in the process. Joseph Moody, honored Roberts by writing in his diary that “the regiment sustained a loss at this moment that never will be filled by as brave a man or better commanded.”[11] His now orphaned nine-year-old daughter was named the “Daughter of the Regiment.”^[12] She married in 1876, and lived in Canton, Ohio until her death in 1925.

Michael L. Giorgianni has taught social studies in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, for over 25 years with a lifelong passion for American History. He researches the Gettysburg campaign, western Pennsylvania Civil War units and individuals, as well as the Pittsburgh region during the Civil War.

Endnotes:

[1] David L. Ladd and Audrey J. Ladd, eds., The Bachelder Papers: Gettysburg in Their Own Words, (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside House, Inc., 1995) Vol. 1, 417

[2] Gregory Jason Bell, “In Defense of Colonel Richard P. Roberts, Commanding Officer of the Pennsylvania 140th Regiment,” Master’s Thesis, Marshall University, Huntington, WV, 2004, 6-7

[3] Ibid, 7-8.

[4] Megan Miller, “Richard P. Roberts” Beaver County Times, Beaver, PA, July 3, 2011.

[5] Bell, 36.

[6] Ibid, 72.

[7] M. Lawrence and George Allison, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, 2 June 1863, Typescript, Richard Temple Collection, US National Archives.

[8] Miller, Beaver County Times, July 3, 2011.

[9] James M. Smith II, Storming the Wheatfield: John Caldwell’s Union Division in the Gettysburg Campaign. (Gettysburg, PA: Gettysburg Publishing, 2019), 74-77.

[10] Ibid, 81.

[11] Joseph Moody diary, July 2, 1863, Lewis Leigh Collection, United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[12] Eide, Bradley, Colonel Richard Petit Roberts, http://www.gdg.org/research/OOB/Union/July1-3/rroberts.html\