QUITE A TALE TO TELL
The two-quart unopened Mason jar with “Patent Nov. 30 1858” on its glass has been a hidden part of the collection of the Butler County Historical Society for more than 40 years.
The original metal screw top, rubber seal and jar are still intact. Locked inside are not only the 159-year-old fibrous remains of peaches floating in a now black sugary syrup, but the story of a promise kept to a Civil War soldier who marched off to war.
The only clue the jar had left behind after being recently discovered by Jennifer Ford, executive director of the historical society, was a small, yellowed newspaper article from the “Central New Jersey Home News” dated Sept. 15, 1927.
With this small but intriguing bit of information, I began uncovering the mystery of a jar of fruit from a long-ago summer and how it had traveled from Milltown, N.J., to Butler.
It was the last week of August 1861 and just a month after the death of his mother when unmarried Private Henry Kuhlthau, a week shy of his 25th birthday, stopped for a farewell visit at the home of 33-year-old Mrs. William (Elizabeth) Voorhees. Their families worked together in the local rubber factory in the small New Jersey enclave of Milltown.Henry had recently volunteered to serve in “Halsted's Independent Cavalry” named for 67-year-old William Halsted, a prominent member of the New Jersey bar and former member of Congress who was authorized by President Abraham Lincoln to raise a regiment of cavalry.The first four companies of the regiment had already arrived in the nation's capital while the remaining six companies, including Kuhlthau's, were about to depart from Milltown to join themBefore Kuhlthau left the Voorhees home, he asked Elizabeth to save a jar of her freshly canned peaches for him to enjoy when he returned.Elizabeth and her husband, William, 33, were raising their only child, 13-year-old William H., in Milltown.In 1861, William was employed as a carpenter at the Ford rubber factory, a manufacturer of rubber shoes and boots. His son at 14 would join him as a box maker.
During the Civil War, the company also produced rubber blankets for the Union Army. These were among the first items given to recruits such as Kuhlthau to offer him protection from the rain and muddy ground of his regiment's campsites.Kuhlthau must have been excited to be a soldier when on the official date of his enlistment — Sept. 9, 1861 — he was promoted from private to corporal in the regiment that would be officially accepted into the Union Army as the 1st New Jersey Cavalry in February 1862.One can imagine his large immigrant family's pride as they bid farewell to Kuhlthau as he waved goodbye as a non-commissioned officer. Henry's oldest brother Phillip had been the first to arrive in America in 1848 followed by his brother Conrad in 1851. The Kuhlthaus were farmers in Oberzell Kurhessen, Hesse-Kassel, part of Germany today.In 1853, their parents John and Barbara and the remaining siblings, including Henry, would join the brothers in Milltown.Phillip and Conrad were determined to fulfill the promise of their new country by engaging in farming and in the winter months working at the Ford rubber factory. In 1855, the two brothers opened what would become a large and prosperous general merchandise store located close to their former employer.In 1860, younger brother Henry was working as a clerk in Phillip and Conrad's store while his two older sisters Elizabeth and Margaret, as well as their younger brother William, were laboring at the rubber factory along with William Voorhees.The swelling of patriotism for his new homeland and the lure of adventure that called so many young to go off to war probably caused Kuhlthau to leave clerking in his brothers' store for the grand adventure of war as part of the Army of the Potomac.Henry's regiment would spend the next four years fighting in 97 engagements including the major battles of Cedar Mountain, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and Mine Run.It was six months after the Battle of Gettysburg on Dec. 29, 1863, that Kuhlthau re-enlisted for an additional three years. This fateful decision would lead the battle-hardened soldier to his destiny in the Battle of Haw's Shop on May 28, 1864, in Hanover County, Va.It was part of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.The seven-hour battle was the second-bloodiest cavalry engagement of the Overland Campaign and the bloodiest cavalry battle since Brandy Station in 1863. Both sides claimed victory.It was an unusual battle in comparison to previous cavalry engagements in the Eastern Theater because it was fought mostly by dismounted cavalry members, many of which were protected by earthworks.Kuhlthau's 1st New Jersey Cavalry lost 63 killed or wounded including 11 officers. One of those wounded by a gunshot to his right forearm would be the previously promoted 1st Sergeant Henry Kuhlthau, 27.Kuhlthau was taken to Mt. Pleasant General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finally transferred to the soldiers' hospital at David's Island located in the East River 25 miles north of New York City and only 60 miles from Milltown.Kuhlthau likely died from pneumonia brought on by infection on June 19, 1864, just a few weeks after his arrival.He is buried next to his parents in Middlesex County, N.J. The poetic inscription on his tombstone reads:“His Country Called and He Sprang to Arms,To Battle with the Brave,And Midst the Sound of War's AlarmHe Found a Hero's Grave.”Back in Milltown, Mrs. Voorhees would not forget her promise to the young corporal. Elizabeth and her family honored Henry's memory by never opening the two- quart jar of peaches.After Elizabeth's death in 1886, the jar was passed to her son, who worked 50 years at the rubber factory.Upon his death in 1927, the responsibility of keeping the peaches safe was passed to his widow, Anna Voorhees.Age required her to leave her home in Milltown in 1935 and move far away to Chicora, Pa., to live with her daughter's family. The Mason jar and its special meaning accompanied her to Butler County. It was placed in the basement of their home on the canning shelf where it rested untouched for another 50 years.Upon Anna's death in 1946, Kuhlthau's peaches' final owner would be her granddaughter Anna (died 1983) and her husband E. Leland Bartley (died 1984). I found the couple in the 1940 census living in Fairview Township outside of Chicora.Finally, I contacted their daughter, Patricia McElroy, who told me that it had been she who had wished to have a permanent and safe place for her family's unusual artifact. Her donation of the jar of peaches along with the newspaper story taped to it was hidden from view in a box for another 40 years until Ford at the historical society discovered it, and I conducted the research to tell its forgotten story.Kuhlthau's family did not forget their brother Henry who had sacrificed his life for their adopted country. His brother Conrad named his oldest child Henry after his fallen brother.In 2011, Milltown finally erected a monument to the men of their town who served in the Civil War.Through the efforts of a local Girl Scout, Rebecca Petry, a collateral descendant of Henry Kuhlthau, the small granite obelisk honors the 10 men from their community who served from 1861 to 1865.Out of the 10 who served, only three were wounded and of those, only Kuhlthau paid the supreme sacrifice.Bill May is a local historian and speaker.
