Michael Dougherty - Bristol, PA
N 40° 06.343 W 074° 51.131
18T E 512598 N 4439501
This statue-memorial to this famous Irish immigrant is located at the foot of a pond/lagoon within Delaware Canal Park. This soldier won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Civil War. He was a resident of Bristol, PA.
Waymark Code: WM3TQ9
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 05/17/2008
Views: 28
He was born in Ireland, May 10, 1844. He came to Bristol in 1858. In August of 1862 he enlisted in the Union Army as a private in Company B, 13th Cavalry, Pennsylvania 117th Volunteer Regiment. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for "most distinguished gallantry in action" at Jefferson, Virginia on October 12, 1863. Private Dougherty was confined in various Confederate prisons including the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia.
History
there's the remarkable "super survivor," Michael Dougherty, from Falcarragh, County Donegal. Dougherty, a private in the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry in the Union Army, won the Medal for leading a group of comrades against a hidden Confederate detachment at Jefferson, Virginia, ultimately routing it. The official report noted that "Dougherty's action prevented the Confederates from flanking the Union forces and saved 2,500 lives." Later, Dougherty and 126 members of his regiment were captured and spent 23 months in various Southern prisons, finally arriving in Georgia at the notorious Andersonville death-camp.
Of the 127, Dougherty alone survived the ordeal, "a mere skelton," barely able to walk. But he walked aboard the homeward-bound steamship "Sultana," crowded with more than 2,000 passengers, six times its designated capacity. The crammed steamship was slowly moving up the Mississippi River toward St. Louis, when, on the fourth night out, the boilers exploded, cracking the ship in two and tossing Dougherty and the other passengers into the Mississippi. Only 900 survived, including Dougherty, who somehow found the strength to swim to a small island, where he was rescued the next morning.
Finally, after an absence of four years, 21-year-old Union veteran reached his hometown, Bristol, Pennsylvania. That's why AOH Division #1 of Bristol, in Bucks County, is known as the Michael Dougherty Division.
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