Personal Memoirs of General Sheridan | Page 4

events of the last three

decades, in which I played a part, without entering too fully into the
history of these years, and at the same time without giving to my own
acts an unmerited prominence. To what extent I have overcome this
difficulty I must leave the reader to judge.
In offering this record, penned by my own hand, of the events of my
life, and of my participation in our great struggle for national existence,
human liberty, and political equality, I make no pretension to literary
merit; the importance of the subject-matter of my narrative is my only
claim on the reader's attention.
Respectfully dedicating this work to my comrades in arms during the
War of the Rebellion, I leave it as a heritage to my children, and as a
source of information for the future historian.
P. H. SHERIDAN.
Nonguitt, Mass., August 2, 1888

PERSONAL MEMOIRS
P. H. SHERIDAN.

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I
.
ANCESTRY--BIRTH--EARLY EDUCATION--A CLERK IN A
GROCERY STORE-- APPOINTMENT--MONROE
SHOES--JOURNEY TO WEST POINT--HAZING--A FISTICUFF
BATTLE--SUSPENDED--RETURNS TO
CLERKSHIP--GRADUATION.
My parents, John and Mary Sheridan, came to America in 1830, having
been induced by the representations of my father's uncle, Thomas
Gainor, then living in Albany, N. Y., to try their fortunes in the New
World: They were born and reared in the County Cavan, Ireland, where
from early manhood my father had tilled a leasehold on the estate of
Cherrymoult; and the sale of this leasehold provided him with means to
seek a new home across the sea. My parents were blood
relations--cousins in the second degree--my mother, whose maiden

name was Minor, having descended from a collateral branch of my
father's family. Before leaving Ireland they had two children, and on
the 6th of March, 1831, the year after their arrival in this country, I was
born, in Albany, N. Y., the third child in a family which eventually
increased to six--four boys and two girls.
The prospects for gaining a livelihood in Albany did not meet the
expectations which my parents had been led to entertain, so in 1832
they removed to the West, to establish themselves in the village of
Somerset, in Perry County, Ohio, which section, in the earliest days of
the State; had been colonized from Pennsylvania and Maryland. At this
period the great public works of the Northwest--the canals and
macadamized roads, a result of clamor for internal improvements--were
in course of construction, and my father turned his attention to them,
believing that they offered opportunities for a successful occupation.
Encouraged by a civil engineer named Bassett, who had taken a fancy
to him, he put in bids for a small contract on the Cumberland Road,
known as the "National Road," which was then being extended west
from the Ohio River. A little success in this first enterprise led him to
take up contracting as a business, which he followed on various canals
and macadamized roads then building in different parts of the State of
Ohio, with some good fortune for awhile, but in 1853 what little means
he had saved were swallowed up --in bankruptcy, caused by the failure
of the Sciota and Hocking Valley Railroad Company, for which he was
fulfilling a contract at the time, and this disaster left him finally only a
small farm, just outside the village of Somerset, where he dwelt until
his death in 1875.
My father's occupation kept him away from home much of the time
during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole
guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense
and clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties.
When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by
an old-time Irish "master"--one of those itinerant dominies of the early
frontier--who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, if
unable to detect the real culprit when any offense had been committed,
would consistently apply the switch to the whole school without
discrimination. It must be conceded that by this means he never failed
to catch the guilty mischief-maker. The school-year was divided into

terms of three months, the teacher being paid in each term a certain
sum--three dollars, I think, for each pupil-and having an additional
perquisite in the privilege of boarding around at his option in the
different families to which his scholars belonged. This feature was
more than acceptable to the parents at times, for how else could they so
thoroughly learn all the neighborhood gossip? But the pupils were in
almost unanimous opposition, because Mr. McNanly's unheralded
advent at any one's house resulted frequently in the discovery that some
favorite child had been playing "hookey," which means (I will say to
the uninitiated, if any such there be)