Joseph R. Findley was born on November 16, 1838, in Manor Hill, Pennsylvania, to William R. Findley and Elizabeth Fleming. He attended school in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, before enrolling at Lafayette College. By 1861, he was a student at the Polytechnic College of Pennsylvania. As his father attested, Findley “sought my consent to volunteer” as soon as President Abraham Lincoln “issued his first call for seventy-five thousand soldiers” in April 1861. His father agreed and provided the “money to outfit him.” Findley enlisted in the Union army on April 14, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company I of the 19^th Pennsylvania Infantry. The army stationed the regiment at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, and Findley mustered out on July 18, 1861.

 

He returned to the Union army several months later, receiving a commission as a 1^st lieutenant in Company F of the 76^th Pennsylvania Infantry on November 6, 1861. He took part in the assault on Fort Wagner, the Battle of Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. He was promoted to captain on October 23, 1862. In the fall of 1864, he suffered from a severe case of dysentery, and he was unable to join his regiment in battle that October. General Benjamin F. Butler labelled him a “skulker” and discharged him from the army on October 4, 1864.

 

Findley’s father immediately protested. “Is it not hard,” he wrote, “that, within twenty-five days of the fulfillment of his three years term of service, he should suddenly be deprived of his long and well-earned military reputation, have the odium of skulking coward affixed to him—and his future hopes & prospects be forever blasted?” Findley’s father urged Butler to allow him to “re-enter the service of his country,” writing that Findley “earnestly desires to participate in that service, till the rebellion is utterly officially crushed, and the Union restored.” Lincoln also intervened on Findley’s behalf, writing to Butler that “Such representations are made to me of his good character, long service, and good behavior in many battles as to induce the wish that you would re-examine his case.”

 

Butler, however, defended his decision. In November 1864, Butler explained that “Capt. Findley was found about two (2) miles in the rear of his regiment…under a tree cooking his supper, and apparently well, and that for the remainder of that day, and the next day, during which his regiment was engaged in action, he did not join them, nor did he join them until the fighting was over…My judgment approved the measure of justice given him [discharging him from the service], and…I cannot reverse it nor recommend his reinstatement.” As one writer noted, however, after “a long-continued effort [Findley] succeeded in having this most unjust accusation rectified by an act of congress and he was fully reinstated and honorably discharged.”

 

Findley probably spent the next several months in Washington, D.C. According to one writer, he “was present and saw President Lincoln assassinated by Booth. He immediately left the theatre and attempted to reach General Auger, commander in Washington…[Auger] took in the situation at once and ordered the closing of the Long Bridge, but too late to prevent the escape of Booth.”

 

He settled in St. Louis, Missouri, after the war and earned a living as a lawyer. He married Martha Black on September 27, 1866, and they had a daughter named Louise. His wife died sometime in the 1800s. Findley began suffering from a spinal disease in 1896. He was admitted to the Soldiers’ Home in Danville, Illinois, in February 1899. His admission records list him as 5 feet, 9½ inches tall, with gray hair and blue eyes. He died of heart disease there on August 28, 1903.

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