Andrew O Apple
Andy was born on the 30th of January, 1845, in Northampton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Easton and his father was a distiller. He had five brothers and three sisters and by the time he was fifteen, he and the family had moved to New Cumberland, Virginia, where his father had become a miller. Two years later, at the age of seventeen, Andy joined the Union Army and was assigned to Company I of the 12th West Virginia Infantry. He participated in twelve different battles between June of 1863 and April of 1865 but it was his actions on the 2nd of April, 1865, during the Third Battle of Petersburg, that would earn him the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry as Color Bearer in the assault on Fort Gregg.
Andy had seen that his regiment's battle flag had fallen so he grabbed it, knowing that three had been killed carrying it that day. He later described that during most of the assault, which took about six hours, there was no time to reload muskets so the majority relied on the use of their bayonets for the rest of the battle. Andy went on to participate in two more battles, in which his regiment took to pursuing troops commanded by General Robert E Lee, and ultimately the surrender at Appomattox on the 9th of April, 1865.
Andy was one of forty men that received orders to board a steam boat in May (while the rest of their regiment rested after the War) and they escorted a load of boxes to Washington DC. They were originally told that these boxes contained guns but were later revealed to contain the battle flags taken from Confederate forces. Andy was part of the detail that delivered those boxes to the White House and to Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. These forty men were then given two months' pay and thirty days of furlough with transportation home. Once Andy returned to Richmond, he was presented his Medal of Honor on the 12th of May, 1865 and a little over a month later, on the 16th of June, he was honorably discharged. He returned to Pennsylvania and then moved to Illinois in 1868, where he worked as a hotel bartender in Elgin. Andy married Mary Pabst, his boss's daughter, on the 2nd of November, 1869, and they had six children. He went on to become a fireman and then became the assistant fire marshal, followed by the fire marshal of Eglin on the 14th of May, 1889. In an interview that Andy gave in 1890 about receiving the Medal of Honor, he described traveling to Washington DC with “shoes that would have disgraced an ash barrel” and going on to write about his leave and pinning:
I enjoyed every one of the thirty days, and went back to the front believing that I had been amply awarded for all that had been done in the assault on Fort Gregg, but ... the full payment for that day's work had not been made.
We went into camp like schoolboys who had earned an unexpected holiday, and without the slightest idea that anything more was to follow ... the whole corps was drawn up in a hollow square [at their camp in Richmond], and the name of each member of the furloughed party was called in turn.
As we stepped forward, General Ord's daughter came up and pinned a Congressional medal of honor on the breast of each one, and for the first time we understood that the country had decorated us with the highest possible gift as a reward for bravery.... It is not necessary to speak of the pride I felt at being singled out from so many brave fellows. If I had earned it unwittingly, it was none the less precious, and I value it more highly than words can tell.
Andrew O Apple died on the 7th of June, 1890 from complications of Bright's Disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys. He was 45 years old and following an escort by fire department and other city officials, he was buried in the Bluff City Cemetery in Elgin, Illinois: Section 4, Lot 166. His wife would join him 38 years later.
