Search

Cornelius Hulsapple entered the Paoli Guards in October, 1864, as a two-year draft substitute for W. R. Ridgway. Only three letters of Cornelius Hulsapple's survive, two of which are addressed to the man for whom he was substituting, W.R. Ridgway.

Only three letters of Cornelius Hulsapple's survive, two of which are addressed to the man for whom he was substituting, W.R. Ridgway. Each of the letters provides detailed information of Hulsapple's activities.

Hulsapple's writing is typified in a passage written in March 1865. In the passage Hulsapple describes seeing a large number of deserters from Lee's Army and a flood of liberated, nearly debilitated Union prisoners marching north: "they are a sad site to look on some of them have the toes frsen [sic] off of their feet some of them without hat or coat and they say that they are diing in droves every day some of them are that starved that they would catch rats and mice and eat them and they would even kill dogs if they could catch them and eat them raw."