of the Pennsylvania
troops, remarks that this regiment was composed of a remarkable body of
men. This judgment must have been based upon his knowledge of their
work. Every known trade was represented in its ranks. Danville gave us a
company of iron workers and merchants, Catawissa and Bloomsburg,
mechanics, tradesmen, and farmers. From Mauch Chunk we had two
companies, which included many miners. From Wyoming and Bradford we had
three companies of sturdy, intelligent young farmers intermingled with
some mechanics and tradesmen. Scranton, small as she was then, gave us
two companies, which was scarcely a moiety of the number she sent into
the service. I well remember how our flourishing Young Men's Christian
Association was practically suspended because its members had gone to
the war, and old Nay Aug Hose Company, the pride of the town, in which
many of us had learned the little we knew of drill, was practically
defunct for want of a membership which had "gone to the war." Of these
two Scranton companies, Company K had as its basis the old Scranton City
Guard, a militia organization which, if not large, was thoroughly well
drilled and made up of most excellent material. Captain Richard
Stillwell, who commanded this company, had organized the City Guard and
been its captain from the beginning. The other Scranton company was
perhaps more distinctively peculiar in its personnel than either of the
other companies. It was composed almost exclusively of Delaware,
Lackawanna & Western Railroad shop and coal men, and was known as the
Railroad Guards. In its ranks were locomotive engineers, firemen,
brakemen, trainmen, machinists, telegraph operators, despatchers,
railroad-shop men, a few miners, foremen, coal-breaker men, etc. Their
captain, James Archbald, Jr., was assistant to his father as chief
engineer of the road, and he used to say that with his company he could
survey, lay out, build and operate a railroad. The first sergeant of
that company, George Conklin, brother of D. H. Conklin, chief despatcher
of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, and his assistant, had been one
of the first to learn the art of reading telegraph messages by ear, an
accomplishment then quite uncommon. His memory had therefore been so
developed that after a few times calling his company roll he dispensed
with the book and called it alphabetically from memory. Keeping a
hundred names in his mind in proper order we thought quite a feat. Forty
years l