Name/Title
Peter Schumacher / ShoemakerEntry/Object ID
2022.1.9Scope and Content
This entry primarily documents the military career of Peter Schumacher who changed his surname to Shoemaker sometime after spending three years in the German Army in his native Germany and migrating to America sometime around 1852. However, it also documents the long and widespread Shoemaker family legacy that he left. Peter later married Catherine Gula of Rensselaer in 1859, moved to the Town of Sand Lake from the Town of Berlin, NY, settled in a home a that still stands at 1466 Burden Lake Road, enlisted as a Private in the Union Army on September 6, 1862, as a member of Company H of the 169th Regiment of the New York State Volunteer Infantry (169th NYSVIR), and survived several of the most horrific battles of the Civil War located throughout Virginia and North Carolina. No doubt a $100 bounty paid evenly at $50 each by the Town of Sand Lake and Rensselaer County to volunteers helped influence his decision to enlist. He was severely wounded by a controversial gunpowder magazine explosion after helping the Union Army and Navy capture Fort Fischer, NC, on January 16, 1865. Fort Fischer was known as the Southern Gibraltar since it protected the final open seaport of the Confederacy at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, NC, was fiercely defended, and had resisted numerous previous attacks. Thus, loss of the Fort significantly helped end the war. The magazine explosion occurred during subsequent victory celebrations after the battle, severely wounded one of Peter's legs, killed over 200 other Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners and similarly wounded numerous others. Following investigations failed to determine if sabotage or negligence caused the explosion. Peter's great granddaughter and former Town of Sand Lake resident, Sharron A. "Chick" Shepard, and current 169th NYSVIR Historian, Steven M. Wiezbicki, collaborated to collect, compile, and present the documents and histories included in this entry. The 169th was known as the Troy Regiment and attracted volunteers from throughout Rensselaer County, including Sand Lake. The entries include a summary of Peter's service in response to an official US Government survey of those who served during the Civil War and compilations of excerpts from letters home and 169th NYSVIR histories and records that mentioned or involved Peter as well as several other Sand Lake Civil War veterans including Marcus Peck, Alfred Carmon, and Nathaniel Marvin. As a result, the entries document far more than Peter's service and relate to many other veterans from the Sand Lake area. Peter returned to Sand Lake after the war with his family substantially influencing the future of Sand Lake as well as numerous other communities for generations thereafter. In particular, Sharron helped organize a Shoemaker family reunion at Crystal Cove in Averill Park on August 6, 2022, that attracted over 88 attendees per the photo included below and featured her sharing her research and these entries with the rest of her family for the first time. The entries offer a fascinating understanding of military deployment under grueling and extraordinarily dangerous conditions long before the age of the Internet.Cataloged By
Michael Frederick PerryCreated By
curator@slhstrustees.orgCreate Date
November 19, 2022Updated By
curator@slhstrustees.orgUpdate Date
November 20, 2022
