On the evening of June 1, 1861, 21-year-old Henry Yeager of Pine Grove, Pennsylvania succumbed to a fast-moving illness that the medical doctors called “spotted fever.” He become one of the first soldiers from the Coal Region to perish during the Civil War.
This may have been meningitis – known at the time as “spotted fever” for the rash that often appears on the skin of those infected.
Yeager served with Company D, 10th Pennsylvania and died at the hospital at Camp Slifer near Chambersburg, PA. His body was sent home to Pine Grove and buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in the western Schuylkill County community.
The Miners’ Journal of Pottsville described Yeager’s death and funeral in a June 1861 edition:
Death of a Schuylkill County Volunteer
We regret to learn that HENRY G. YEAGER, aged 21 years, a member of the Washington Light Infantry of Pine Grove, died at Camp Slifer, Chambersburg, very suddenly on Saturday last [June 1, 1861].
His body, in charge of Capt. H.H. Bechtel and Sergeants Kelley and Wheeler, arrived at his home on Sunday.
He was taken sick on last Friday morning, at Camp Slifer, of a disease known as ‘Spotted Fever,’ and died on Saturday evening.
He was buried on Monday with military honors. The hearse which bore him to the grave was appropriately decked with American flags. A large concourse of friends followed him to his last resting place. The Junior Sons of America, of which he was an active member, performed the last rites.
Read more about the Coal Region and the Civil War
Letters from War: 1861 Project
A Civil War officer’s grisly amputation at Spotsylvania Court House on May 10, 1864
“Revolutionary Disloyalty” – A coal miners’ rebellion in Schuylkill County during the Civil War
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