



Produced by David Widger






PERSONAL MEMOIRES OF P. H. SHERIDAN, VOLUME 1.

By Philip Henry Sheridan



PREFACE

When, yielding to the solicitations of my friends, I finally decided
to write these Memoirs, the greatest difficulty which confronted me
was that of recounting my share in the many notable events of the
last three decades, in which I played a part, without entering too
fully into the history of these years, and at the same time without
giving to my own acts an unmerited prominence.  To what extent I have
overcome this difficulty I must leave the reader to judge.

In offering this record, penned by my own hand, of the events of my
life, and of my participation in our great struggle for national
existence, human liberty, and political equality, I make no
pretension to literary merit; the importance of the subject-matter of
my narrative is my only claim on the reader's attention.

Respectfully dedicating this work to my comrades in arms during the
War of the Rebellion, I leave it as a heritage to my children, and as
a source of information for the future historian.

P. H. SHERIDAN.

Nonguitt, Mass., August 2, 1888




PERSONAL MEMOIRS

P. H. SHERIDAN.






VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY--BIRTH--EARLY EDUCATION--A CLERK IN A GROCERY
STORE--APPOINTMENT--MONROE SHOES--JOURNEY TO WEST POINT--HAZING
--A FISTICUFF BATTLE--SUSPENDED--RETURNS TO CLERKSHIP--GRADUATION.

My parents, John and Mary Sheridan, came to America in 1830, having
been induced by the representations of my father's uncle, Thomas
Gainor, then living in Albany, N. Y., to try their fortunes in the
New World: They were born and reared in the County Cavan, Ireland,
where from early manhood my father had tilled a leasehold on the
estate of Cherrymoult; and the sale of this leasehold provided him
with means to seek a new home across the sea.  My parents were
blood relations--cousins in the second degree--my mother, whose
maiden name was Minor, having descended from a collateral branch of
my father's family.  Before leaving Ireland they had two children,
and on the 6th of March, 1831, the year after their arrival in this
country, I was born, in Albany, N. Y., the third child in a family
which eventually increased to six--four boys and two girls.

The prospects for gaining a livelihood in Albany did not meet the
expectations which my parents had been led to entertain, so in 1832
they removed to the West, to establish themselves in the village of
Somerset, in Perry County, Ohio, which section, in the earliest days
of the State; had been colonized from Pennsylvania and Maryland.  At
this period the great public works of the Northwest--the canals and
macadamized roads, a result of clamor for internal improvements--were
in course of construction, and my father turned his attention to
them, believing that they offered opportunities for a successful
occupation.  Encouraged by a civil engineer named Bassett, who had
taken a fancy to him, he put in bids for a small contract on the
Cumberland Road, known as the "National Road," which was then being
extended west from the Ohio River.  A little success in this first
enterprise led him to take up contracting as a business, which he
followed on various canals and macadamized roads then building in
different parts of the State of Ohio, with some good fortune for
awhile, but in 1853 what little means he had saved were swallowed up
--in bankruptcy, caused by the failure of the Sciota and Hocking
Valley Railroad Company, for which he was fulfilling a contract at
the time, and this disaster left him finally only a small farm, just
outside the village of Somerset, where he dwelt until his death in
1875.

My father's occupation kept him away from home much of the time
during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole
guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense and
clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties.
When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by
an old-time Irish "master"--one of those itinerant dominies of the
early frontier--who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the
child, if unable to detect the real culprit when any offense had been
committed, would consistently apply