Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/44

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learning. Nevertheless, he was a man of excellent sense, had an intelligent conception of the great Civil War, its causes and results, and could give a vivid account of the campaigns in which he was engaged. He never boasted of the act which brought his name into the official report of the commander of the division in which he served, but he had no hesitation in telling the thrilling story when it became the subject of special inquiry.

During the last few years of his life Mauk drew a pension of $12 a month from the United States government, which, with his modest earnings as a carpenter and common laborer, enabled him to live in comparative comfort, in the plain, simple style of his neighborhood. At the time of his enlistment, he had a wife and two children. His wife died soon after the close of the war, and both children, by this marriage, died before reaching maturity. In 1866 he married his second wife, who is now his widow. A son, Mr. H. C. Mauk (who is a teacher in the public schools), and a daughter, are the surviving children. For twenty years or longer, Mauk was an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He led a quiet, unobtrusive life, full of toil, but honest, upright and manly.

Daniel Wolford, the comrade who fired the ineffective shot at Sergeant Tucker, when Mauk with steadier aim brought down Gen- eral Hill, is still living. He belongs to the class of honest toilers, of whom Mauk was an excellent type. He has spent his whole life in Bedford county, Penna., near to the spot where he was born. The tremendous events through which he passed in his youth, made no appreciable impression on his character and apparently had nothing to do with shaping his destiny. He is a quiet, well-meaning, hard working man, and this is what he would, in all probability, have been, if he had remained at home when the other farmer boys marched off to the war and had never seen "a squadron set in the field."

SERGEANT TUCKER.

The other survivor of the Hill tragedy, Sergeant George W. Tucker, who escaped through Wolford's bad marksmanship, in his best days bore but little resemblance to the two men just described. In his youth he was surrounded by an entirely different environment. He is a native of Baltimore and enjoyed the educational advantages that belong to a large city. Of handsome person and soldierly bear- ing, it is not surprising that he was soon taken from the cavalry com- pany, in which he had enlisted as a private soldier, and put into a