Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
The return of Union soldiers to Page . . . after the
war
Part II
Article of February 22, 2001
After Captain Russell returned to his regiment and participated in Gen. William T. Sherman's famous - or infamous, depending on your viewpoint - "March to the Sea," his three-year term of service expired Dec. 28, 1864, and he was subsequently discharged. Instead of returning immediately to Ohio, Russell opted to remain in Savannah for a few weeks and went into the grocery business (he had just received "mustering-out" pay) with a German resident of the city.
Though in warmer latitudes, Russell was not quite prepared for a cold winter and, by February 1865, opted to go ahead and return to familiar surroundings and warmer clothing in Ohio. By 1867, Russell seems to have left Ohio and ended up in Rohrersville, Md. where, on Feb. 27, he married Almira J. Rohrer.
Russell's return to Page County may be the greater mystery. There may be the chance that he found Page captivating during his passage through the county in 1862. However, with the enlistment of a Francis P. Cave in August 1862, there are a few more questions to be addressed. There are records that show Cave as a pre-war Page County resident - though he does not appear in any of the census records prior to that time.
However, as did many of Page County's families prior to the Civil War, he may have been the son of a Page County resident who departed for Ohio (in addition to Ohio, other families seem to have moved to areas in Indiana and Missouri among other states).
The "Ohio theory" seems the possible. There were at least five Page County Cave family members to have served for the Commonwealth during the Civil War and, had Francis been from the county, surely his return as a former resident-turned Union soldier would have been found most difficult. But more on the strange tie with the Cave family later.
By the 1870 Page County census, Robert H. Russell (listed as a farmer) and his wife Almira were living in Springfield, in the same house as Jeremiah H. and Malinda Rohrer (both old enough to have been Almira's parents). The final curious link to the Cave family was that Lucy Virginia Cave (age 15) was also residing in the home in addition to a Mr. Benjamin M. McCullough (age 21).
Interestingly, one of Russell's residences in Page County was the famous Bell family home - which no longer stands. As some will recall, it was near there nearly 20 years prior to the war that John Wesley Bell was murdered by two of his slaves.
As a resident of Page County, Russell appears to have been rather successful. Russell's final resting-place can be found in Green Hill Cemetery alongside his wife.
Other former Union soldiers in Page County included John T. Baker, James Wade Laconia, Charles H. Carman, Washington Isaac, Benjamin House, Joseph M. Manning and several others, mostly hailing from Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York and Ohio.
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