John Ryan enlisted in the 69th Pennsylvania with a number of Schuylkill County men at Pottsville, PA in September 1861. The 69th, a largely Irish unit, became part of the famed Philadelphia Brigade during the Civil War.

He worked his way through the ranks to become an officer in the regiment.

Confederate infantry engulfed his company during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863 and Lieutenant Ryan was among those captured.

What followed was worse than the battlefield.

Imprisoned at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, Ryan contracted scurvy and dysentery, emerging at his parole eight months later covered in sores with an ulcer eating through his left leg.

His teeth blackened and decayed, he later developed heart disease and a hacking cough that never left him. He returned to Pottsville after the war and went to work on the Reading Railroad. He later moved to Washington, DC and worked as a doorkeeper at the House of Representatives in the US Capitol, a job he received as a disabled veteran of the United States Army.

He died at 59 in 1896 – a long suffering victim of our nation’s deadliest conflict.

Read the obituary of John Ryan from the National Tribune newspaper in Washington, DC:

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MONDAY, AUG. 10.—Capt. John W. Ryan died at his residence.

Capt. Ryan was born Aug. 21, 1836, in Pennsylvania. He moved to Schuylkill County, and the hose fire company to which he belonged was transformed at the outbreak of the war into a military organization known as the Union Guards of Pottsville, Pa.

At the expiration of his term of enlistment he re-enlisted, in Co. F, 69th Pa., as a private; was soon after promoted to be Second Lieutenant, and later First Lieutenant, promotions in each case being for gallant and meritorious service while in line-of-battle.

He was acting Captain of his company at the battle of Gettysburg when taken prisoner. He was a prisoner of war for nine months at Libby. In 1876 he was appointed to a position on the soldiers’ roll of the House of Representatives.

It was through his efforts that a resolution making the soldiers’ roll permanent was introduced and passed, was very well known around the Capitol, and had the privilege of meeting nearly all the Congressmen who have held seats during the last 20 years.

(Photograph of John Ryan at top of article – Gettysburg National Military Park)

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“I can’t tell you what we suffered” Prisoners, Part 2 – A Union Story – from Gettysburg National Military Park

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