Henry F. Huffer Letters, Harrisburg Civil War Roundtable, Box 8b.

Benjamin Cohee Letters, Harrisburg Civil War Roundtable, Box 7. 

U. S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Henry Franklin (“Frank”) Huffer (b. in Indiana ca. 1838) was from Newbern, Bartholomew County, Indiana and served as a corporal in Co. G, 6^th Indiana Infantry.  He mustered into service on September 20, 1861 and died of disease at Camp Shiloh, Tennessee on April 25, 1862.  The Huffer family came to Indiana by way of Ohio and  Kentucky, where H. F. Huffer’s father, David, was born.  The family is apparently descended from an ancestor named Johannes Hoffert of Berks County, Pennsylvania.  Henry F. Huffer, his wife, Alapher (b. ca. 1833), and their children do not appear in the Federal Census of 1860.  In the 1850s the Huffers had migrated to Kansas, where two of their five children were born, but returned to Indiana before the beginning of the war.  Huffer’s widow and children remained in Newbern following the war.  The collection includes letters written by Huffer to his wife while he was in service, letters by various relatives, including a pre-war letter written by H. F. Huffer’s sister, Sarah, and one by a brother, Aaron Huffer, who served with him in Co. G, 6^th Indiana.  There is also a letter written by Huffer’s company commander to Alapher following her husband’s death.  

This collection also includes letters written to Alapher Huffer by her brother, Benjamin Cohee (b. ca. 1837), who also resided in Newbern where he made his living as a tenant farmer.  Their father, Thomas Cohee, was born in Delaware ca. 1800, and the Cohee family had lived in Delaware since the early 18th century, having relocated there from Maryland.  The Cohees migrated to Indiana by way of Ohio, where Benjamin and Alapher were born.  At the time of the 1860 Census (in which the family’s name is spelled “Cohe”), Benjamin and he and his wife, Elizabeth (“Lidy”), and their two small children lived next door to Cohee’s father.  Benjamin Cohee mustered in as a private in Co. H, 12^th Indiana Infantry on August 17, 1862 and was killed at the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864.

Transcribed by Michael Ellis, December 2014