Introduction

Your Subtitle text

    Wallick Soldiers
of the
     American Civil War
  One Family's Journey Through
      The War of the Rebellion

Introduction

This website is dedicated to the Wallick men who served their country during the American Civil War. The information in this chronicle of soldiers was compiled using a variety of historical and contemporary sources. The National Park Service has an exhaustive index of over 6.3 million names in their Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Fifty Wallicks are included in that database. The biographies presented here will concentrate on only twenty-three soldiers who are definitely descendants of Hans Michael Walck/Wallick, a German immigrant who came to America in 1732. All of these soldiers served in the Union Army. To date, there are no Wallicks from this family known to have served in the Confederate Army.

A search has been made for each soldier and his regiment using the Civil War collection of compiled service records from the National Archives and Dyer’s Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Histories that were written for state and local governments have also been examined. Some of these histories were mandated by state legislatures to be written soon after the war to insure their accuracy. Unfortunately, that goal was not always achieved. Some of the best and most authoritative accounts written about the military units of Wallick soldiers have been written by contemporary authors and scholars. By employ-ing all of these resources a fairly accurate account can be told of the Wallick family’s participation in the Civil War.

There are some battles and events where we know Wallick soldiers were engaged in the action and at other times we must assume they were present. There is always the possibility that a soldier was uninvolved for some unknown reason. The following service records are a combination of known incidents of involvement and assumed participation, taking for granted that the soldier was healthy enough to be an “effective” and take part in the activities of his regiment and company. Usually, no roll call was recorded just before a unit entered battle.  Different companies in the regiment may have had different assignments or an individual soldier may have been absent due to sickness, temporary assignment to other duties or on furlough.

                                                                                             Captain
                                                                                      William Wallick
We are fortunate to have two diaries that survived the war. We have the original diary written by Captain William Wallick of Peru, Indiana, and a partial transcript of a diary written by his brother, Corporal Charles F. Wallick. These two men give us a glimpse into what life was like as a soldier in the Union Army and in William’s case, as a prisoner of war. These eyewitnesses write first-hand accounts of their regimental actions and personal experiences. William’s diary was written from the spring of 1863 through the winter of 1864. Charles wrote from April 1864 to April 1865, however, there is a six month gap in the middle of his transcript. The original leather-bound diary became lost at some point in history and the author who transcribed Charles' diary left the transcription unfinished. William and Charles have two very different writing styles and excerpts from their diaries will be included in the biographies when it helps facilitate the telling of their stories. Both the original diary written by William and the transcript of Charles’ diary can be found in the Miami County Historical Society Museum in Peru, Indiana.

There are numerous Michaels in the lineage of the Wallick family and to help identify them the county or location where they are buried will preface the name. For instance, “Bedford County” Michael (1740-1823) is buried in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, "Bunker Hill" Michael (1775-1845) is buried in Bunker Hill Cemetery, Winfield, OH, and one of our soldiers, “Daviess County” Michael (1817-1905), is buried in Daviess County, Indiana. The same will be done with other family members with identical given names.

It will also be helpful when reading these biographies to have an understanding of army unit sizes during the Civil War. Theoretically, a company at full strength was 100 men, a regiment 1000, a brigade 4000, a division 12,000, and a corps anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 men. However, those numbers rarely reflected the actual size of Civil War units. Most regiments operated between forty to sixty percent of optimum size once they were in the field. Disease, desertions and battle casualties depleted the ranks quickly, so it would not be unusual during the war for a company to consist of just 50 men, a regiment 300 or less, a brigade 2000, a division 4000 to 6000 and a corps 12,000 to 15,000 men. At the battle of Gettysburg some regiments barely numbered 200 men. Charles F. Wallick's regiment, the 87th Indiana Infantry, left South Bend Indiana in August of 1862 with 945 men. Three years later, at the time they were discharged, only 313 of the original members answered the last roll call, Charles being one of them.

This website is now in book form!

The material from this website is also available in book form. The Descendants of Hans Michael Wallick in the American Civil War, by Michael David Wallick, can be ordered from the publisher’s website at www.createspace.com/3737055 (password: wallick) for $20.00, or through amazon.com for the same price. All the biographies from this website are included in the book, plus new material telling how to locate where the Wallick soldiers fought when one visits a Civil War battlefield.

                                                  About the Website Music

George Washington Wallick (1857-1932)

The violin music for this website is  played on a Civil War era instrument that was made by Francois Richard of Paris, France, and once owned by George Washington Wallick. "Wash" Wallick was an exceptional fiddler in his day and a nephew of Michael Wallick, who fought with the famous 27th Indiana Infantry. Wash Wallick's violin is played by his great-grandson and the developer of this website, Michael David Wallick, who is accompanied by Robert Borden. The title song for this webpage is All Quiet Along The Potomac Tonight, which was a favorite of the Union soldiers during the war. All musical selections for this website are songs of the Civil War and some may be  unfamiliar to the reader. The song titles are placed at the end of  each soldier's biography.






I want to thank Scott Alan Wallick, my brother and the administrator of the Wallick Family Website, for presenting me with the  challenge of  developing a website to honor those Wallicks who fought in the American Civil War.  This has been a labor of love for me and it would have been impossible to create this without Scott's knowledge and expertise in our family's ancestry. Also, I am deeply indebted to Jeff Wallick, from Los Angeles, California, whose research on the Hans Michael Walck/Wallick family was invaluable to me in writing these biographies. But most of all I want to thank my wife, Diane, who has helped me with some of the technical points in writing these biographies.  She has travelled with me through this Civil War journey as much as anyone and for that I am thankful.   Thanks to all of you!

                                                                           Michael David Wallick- August, 2010

Contact cwwallicks@yahoo.com for comments in regards to this website.


                                                       Resource Materials

The Compiled Service Records from the National Archives, Washington D.C.

A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, by Frederick H. Dyer

The Union Army, 1861-1865, Organization and Operations Vol. 1&2, by Frank J. Welcher
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Washington Government Printing Office, 1880
Official Roster of Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, The Warner Printing Company, 1887
Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 1-7, Alexander H. Conner, State Printer, 1869
Ohio In The War: Her Statesmen, Generals and Soldiers Vol. II, by Whitelaw Reid, 1868
Giants in the Cornfield, The 27th Indiana Infantry, by Wilbur D. Jones, Jr.
History of the Fifty-First Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry, by William R. Hartpence, 1894
History of the 102nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, by George Schmutz-1907
A Stupendous Effort- The 87th Indiana in the War of the Rebellion, by Jake Overmyer
The Civil War- A Narrative by Shelby Foote Vol. 1-3
Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864, by Noah Trudeau
Decision in the West: The Atlanta Champaign of 1864, by Albert Castel
Bentonville- The Final Battle of Sherman & Johnson, by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr.
The Battle of Bentonville, by Mark A. Moore
Shenandoah 1862, by Peter Cozzens
Brigades of Gettysburg: The Union and Confederate Brigades at the Battle of Gettysburg, by Bradley M. Gottfried
Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave, by Ernest B. Furgurson
Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster, by William O. Bryant
The Sultana Tragedy: America's Greatest Maritime Disaster, by Jerry O. Potter
Escape form Libby Prison, by James Gindlesperger
Libby Prison Breakout, by Joseph Wheelan
The Hans Michael Walch/Wallick Family Lineage- Researched by Jeff and Scott Wallick

Additional Websites

http://www.ancestry.com/

http://www.civilwararchive.com/files.htm

http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.cfm

http://www.ohiocivilwar.com/

http://civilwarindiana.com/