Private Solomon Crist of Bedford, PA: Missing no more.

The Bedford Gazette reported that a monument to 16 Bedford County soldiers, killed or missing in action during the Civil War, would be placed in Pavia’s Mount Zion Cemetery on May 25, 1909. One of those soldiers, Private Solomon Crist, was still listed as missing. He’d been on guard duty at Foster’s Farm on the morning of August 25, 1864, when General Pickett attacked and captured part of the Union line near Richmond. The attack was a feint to divert the Union command’s attention from a surprise attack that General Lee was going to spring on the Union Second Corps at Ream’s Station on another Pennsylvania native, General Winfield Scott Hancock. The man who received and repulsed the same General Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

Solomon Crist enlisted and served for a month in the Pennsylvania militia at the time of the Gettysburg battle. Six months later, at the recorded age of 42 (he lied, he was 50), the six-foot-tall farm laborer enlisted again this time in Company K, 55th Pennsylvania Infantry at Bedford, along with his 22-year-old nephew Francis T. Crist. The unit did duty in South Carolina, and then at the fight at Foster’s Farm, Solomon went missing. His nephew and family back home never knew what happened to him. He became a mystery of the War. Today, thanks to the electronic archives on the internet, we understand what happened to Solomon. In the fight at Foster’s Farm, the Confederates captured him and then marched him to Libby Prison in Richmond. On August 27, 1864, Solomon stood in line with 1800 other Union prisoners, most captured at Ream’s Station. Lee’s surprise attack was successful.

Less than a month after his capture, Solomon met the fate of many a Union prisoner. On September 20, 1864, he died of diarrhea, probably dysentery, in Richmond’s General Hospital No. 21. The Confederates buried him nearby, and after the War his remains were probably moved to the Richmond National Cemetery, where he rests as an unknown.