Showing results for "tales from a monk in the union army"

Tales from a Monk in the Union Army: A Solitary Monk

Part of a series. By November 1864, the St. Vincent monks—once united under the banner of the 61st Pennsylvania—now found themselves separated. Brother Bonaventure Gaul was the only one that remained with the regiment, serving as a nurse in the Sheridan field hospital in Winchester, Virginia. Brother Ildephonse Hoffmann, Gaul’s close confidante, fell ill that […]

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Tales from a Monk in the Union Army: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign

Part of a series. By the summer of 1864, the war showed no signs of ending for Br. Bonaventure Gaul. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac remained gridlocked in the Siege of Petersburg, while Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s armies stalled outside of Atlanta. To draw Confederate attention away […]

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Tales from a Monk in the Union Army: Petersburg

This is the first of a series. In 1864, the United States army was perhaps as diverse as it ever had been. By then, blacks, whites, Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all served side by side in defense of the Union. But one member of the Army of the Potomac, Pvt. Bonaventure Gaul, did […]

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Monks in the Military: The Benedictine Brothers Confront the Civil War Draft

ECW welcomes back guest author Joseph Casino. Evan Portman’s interesting article, Tales from a Monk in the Union Army, got me thinking about my own research on Catholic clergy facing the American Civil War draft. More specifically, I focused on those Benedictine monks at St. Vincent’s Abbey in Latrobe, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, addressed in that […]

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Brother Bonaventure’s “Wizard Oil”

ECW welcomes back guest author Joseph Casino. When Benedictine Brother Bonaventure Gaul returned from his Civil War service to St. Vincent Abbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he took up again his craft of shoemaking and occasional wood carving for the benefit of the community.[1] But Brother Bonaventure also returned with a new skill learned the hard […]

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