I am the designated family genealogist. I found an ancestor this morning that is a semi famous civil war hero. This is Robert Henry Hendershot also known as The Drummer Boy of Rappahannok. He is from my fathers side of the family. I have much in common with this ancestor in that I too ran away from home at a young age and became a drummer. We descend from Michael Hendershot who arrived in America in 1710 on the ship Lyon. I am reading Robert Henry Hendershot's biography on line. It is a precarious process as the pages are very small and after zooming in on them, there seems to be no way to safely turn the pages without losing my place. This results in having to start over repeatedly and there are over 200 pages in the book. So far I have found out that Robert Henry ran away from home to join the army. From the sound of it his mother was pretty abusive in that she beat him within an inch of his life for his insolence and then tied him up for a week with the same implement she beat him with.
I ran away from home because in addition to my parents punishment, my brother and sisters started abusing me as well. I could not survive in that environment and so I left home and tried to become emancipated. This backfired and I ended up in the old county jail. Back in those days juveniles were locked up with adults. My life became very different after that. I returned home briefly only to run away even further, and stayed under the radar of law enforcement until I turned 18. So far I have not been able to reconcile with my family, even though I am officially in charge of the Genealogy project my Grandmother laid on me. She is no relation to Robert Henry Hendershot. She married into it. Because of her, I am a relative of him (Robert Henry Hendershot). I believe the Hendershots who originated from Bavaria have a cruel German streak that very possibly my father was victim too and could not stop himself from inherited violence. He apologized to me exactly a week before his own death. I got no such apologies from my mother nor the rest of my siblings but we see each other at funerals and sometimes weddings. I will be adding to this page as I find more information on my ancestors.
Robert Henry Hendershot--Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock (United States, 1846/51-19??)
Parents
Robert was being brought up by his widowed mother. He was apparently quite a handful for her.Childhood
Not lot is known about Robert's childhood. He was quite a kid, but full of stories. We are not sure where he was born or even when. His mother was habing trouble controlling him. He ran away from home several times and was becoming hat we would call today a delinquent. Robert claimed to be 10 years old in the summer of 1861 when he first tried to emoist (summer 1861). Various dicuments and accounts of his life place his birthday from 1846 to 1851. And there are four different birthplaces from Michigan to New York City. These discreapncies seem to arise from different accounts provided by Robert as he spoke with various journalists. He may not have been sure himself. He seems to have grew up in Jackson County, Michigan, but we are notvsure he was birn there. His widowed mother may also have hoped that military life might instill some discipline in her delinquent son.Education
Robert wanted no part of school. As a result, when he entered the military he was not even able to sign his name.Enlistment
The Confederacy began the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter (April 1861). War fever soon spread throughout the North and South and that included Jackson County, Micigan. One of the persons affected was a very young Robert Hendershot. Robert had no idea what War meant. For that matter most adults in 1861 had not idea. He wanted no part of school and was getting into trouble. The War sounded exciting to him. His mother was unable ton control him and appeas to have thought tht alittle discipline would do him good. At the time he attemoted to enlist, Rober was described as "a slight-framed boy, 41/2 feet tall, with fair hair, hazel eyes and a ruddy complexion. He bore a deep scar under his right eye that he would submit as his first badge of courage. He soon dropped his implausible claim to have received that scar as the result of a severe wound at Shiloh (at the time his regiment had been camped more than 600 miles away)." Robert soon became a fixture in the camp of the Jackson County Rifles who wre preparing for the War. He began practiced drum calls--apparently all the time. One of the recruits called him"a perfect little pest." Robert tagged along with the Rifles to Fort Wayne, outside Detroit. There the Rifles became Company "C" of the 9th Michigan Infantry. Robert attempted enlist at this time with the men, but the mustering officer rejected him because of his youth. That did not, however, stop Robert. When deployment came, he simply boarded the train with the men. Here the story is a bit confused. He may have stowawayed. Or he may have been employed as a servant by Captain Charles V. DeLand, the commander of Company "C" and editor of Jackson's newspaper--American Citizen. Robert finally managed to enlist. He formally enlisted in the 9th Michigan (March 1862) At that time the regiment moved from Kentucky to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.Military Experiences
Robert after enlisting remained with Company "C", which was posted at the Murfreesboro courthouse as provost guards. Robert was in Murfreesboro when Confederate Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest conducted a pre-dawn raid on the town (July 13, 1862). Robert claimed that he fearlessly exposed himself to enemy fire, which was apparently the case. It was substantiated by several 9th Michigan soldiers. Robert became known as 'the Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock.' He was a drummer boy for the Eighth Michigan. His regiment was stationed close to the Seventh Michigan during the Battle of Fredricksburg, Virginia. The Seventh was trying to cross the Rappahannock River under fire (December 11, 1862). Robert answered a call for volunteers and ran to help push the boats. He had crossed the river when a shell fragment hit his drum and broke it into pieces, so he picked up a musket. He encountered a Confederate soldier and, taking him as prisoner, brought him back to the Seventh Michigan. The story of a boy capturing a man made him a hero.
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After the War
Robert survived the war and toured the nation putting on drumming performances and telling of his experiences. Many poems were written about him; "The Hero of the Drum" is one of those poems."Another source:
ROBERT HENRY HENDERSHOT was a rambunctious boy. No, he was more than rambunctious, he was downright rebellious.
Hendershot had grown up in Michigan at a time when that state was still something of a frontier. His father died when he was just a few years old, leaving him to be raised by his mother. He was the sort of child every parent dreads.
“Robert had always been of a high-strung temperament,” his biographer, H. E. Gerry, explained, “with a force of willpower and temper hard to govern. He did not like attending school, absenting himself without leave or ceremony, and in preference hunted watermelon patches, fished, skated, blacked boots, sold papers, in fact anything suited to his fancy which was directly in opposition to the wishes of his mother and the family at home.”
The Civil War gave Robert an outlet for his adventuresome spirit. In the fall of 1861, a company from Hendershot’s town left the state and headed to the front. Although he was under age, the boy tagged along. Time and again, the officers sent him home, but each time he came back. As Gerry noted, “The officers were destined to find the little warrior a persistent fellow, and decidedly hard to get rid of.”
Hendershot eventually joined Company B, 9th Michigan Infantry. In a skirmish at Murfreesboro, Tenn., he was captured and sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, to await exchange. The impetuous youth had no intention of wasting time in an exchange camp, however, and he slipped away and re-enlisted in the 8th Michigan Infantry on Aug. 19, 1862, under an assumed name, Robert Henry Henderson.
The 8th Michigan belonged to the Army of the Potomac, and Hendershot soon found himself on his way to Virginia. He joined his new regiment on Nov. 28, just in time for the Battle of Fredericksburg. In an effort to seize the town, Union commander Ambrose E. Burnside ordered the 7th Michigan Infantry Regiment to cross the river in pontoon boats under fire and drive Confederate riflemen from the Fredericksburg waterfront.
Although Hendershot was in the 8th Michigan rather than the 7th, he tried to climb into one of the first boats as it pushing off from shore. Instead, he slipped and fell into the icy water. Rather than give up, he grabbed on to the boat and was dragged across.
When the boats touched shore, the 7th Michigan dashed into town and engaged the Confederates in house-to-house combat. Robert had a different agenda. Following in the wake of his adopted regiment, he “went into a house and set it on fire, stole a clock, two blankets, and some other small articles.” Somehow he managed to get the purloined items back to his camp in Stafford County.
Grabbing a discarded rifle, he then returned to Fredericksburg for additional booty. “He went into a different house,” wrote Gerry, “and assisted in destroying mirrors, pianos, and other valuable property.” He had just applied a match to another residence and was heading out the back door when he encountered a Rebel with a shotgun. Hendershot had the drop on him and demanded the man’s surrender. At the prompting of some other soldiers, he then personally escorted his prisoner to the rear, presenting him to Gen. Burnside in person at the Lacy House (Chatham).
The Union commander praised the boy for his gallantry. “Well, boy,” he was quoted as saying, “if you keep on in this way ... you will soon be in my place.”
Hendershot was then just 12 years old.
Burnside advised the youngster to return to camp, but Hendershot replied that he “preferred to go and capture another Johnny Reb.” Inspired by his spunk, the general and his staff raised “three cheers for Robert Henry Hendershot, ... the Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock.” The nickname stuck.
Hendershot remained at the front and was slightly wounded two days later in the Union attacks on Marye’s Heights. As a result of the wound, and possibly his age, he was discharged on Dec. 27. By then, Hendershot’s fame had spread across the country. When he reached Washington, Northern citizens hailed him as a hero. He dined with President Lincoln at the White House and appeared as a guest at both houses of Congress.
Later, when he visited New York City, the New York Tribune's editor, Horace Greeley, presented the lad with a fancy new drum. Capitalizing on the boy’s popularity, showman Phineas T. Barnham engaged Hendershot to play his drum at Barnham’s museum. In the years following the Civil War, a poem and a play were written about Hendershot, extolling his courage.
Hendershot enjoyed his celebrity status and milked it for all it was worth. In the decades following the war, he performed on his “Greeley Drum” at meeting halls throughout the nation. At Wa–Keeney, Kan., more than 200 people turned out to hear the now-middle-aged drummer play. (Wa–Keeney apparently was hurting for entertainment.)
Miss Ruth Welch, a local dignitary, brought the house to its feet with a stirring recital of the poem “The Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock,” after which the curtain opened and Hendershot appeared, beating his drum to the tune, “Marching Through Georgia.” His young son played the fife at his side.
The crowd went wild, wrote a Western Kansas World reporter, calling for encore after encore until Hendershot “had far more than exhausted the pieces which had been so industriously published as constituting his part of the program.”
The only ones not enamored with Hendershot were the soldiers of the 7th Michigan Infantry, the regiment that had stormed Fredericksburg. No one in that regiment remembered seeing Hendershot on Dec. 11, 1862. In their estimation, the real hero of the fight was their own drummer boy, John S. Spillane.
In 1891, the Grand Army of the Republic (an association of Union veterans) held its national meeting in Detroit and invited Hendershot to take part in its parade. The 7th Michigan was outraged by the invitation and publicly challenged Hendershot to produce even one witness who had seen him at Fredericksburg. “Failing this, we feel ourselves justified in declaring in a public manner our belief that this claim is a fraud.”
Hendershot answered his critics the following night at a reunion of the 7th Michigan. Taking the stage, he produced letters from President Lincoln, Gen. Ulysses Grant, and Horace Greeley attesting to his bravery. But none of those men had been at Fredericksburg, his critics countered; they had. Did any of the 200 veterans in the room know Hendershot? When no one rose to Hendershot’s defense, pandemonium broke out.
“Throw him out of the window,” cried one man. The crowd seemed at the point of doing just that, when the 7th’s own drummer boy, John S. Spillane (now a captain on the Detroit police force), entered the room. “There,” shouted a veteran, “there is the drummer boy of the Rappahannock!” The veterans hurried Spillane to the platform and unceremoniously booted Hendershot down the stairs.
After the meeting, the citizens of Detroit presented Spillane with a medal proclaiming him, not Hendershot, to be the real “Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock.”
Was Hendershot a hero or a fraud? As is so often the case with history, we shall probably never know. The witnesses, like the tap of Robert Henry Hendershot’s drum, have fallen silent.
More about Robert:
Robert Henry Hendershot (b.1850)
Robert Hendershot was twelve years old when he joined the 8th Michigan Infantry on August 19, 1862, at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He crossed the Rappahannock River on December 11, 1862, picked up a musket, and took a Confederate soldier prisoner. He became known as "the Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock." He was discharged on December 27. The North hailed him as a hero, he toured the country, and he had dinner with President Lincoln at the White House. A poem and play were written about him.
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