On the morning of July 3, 1863, Private Frederick Archbald of the 137th New York Infantry was killed in the trenches he had helped build on Culps Hill at Gettysburg. He was 29 years old, and he left behind a wife, Helen, back home in Otego, New York. Archbald was initially buried in a mass grave along the Baltimore Pike before his body was reinterred, along with the remains of many other soldiers, in the new National Cemetery at Gettysburg. Helen learned of her husband’s death and was devastated, like so many wives who received the same news during the war.
She never remarried. She died in 1917, a childless widow for more than five decades. On its surface, the story reads as one of lifelong devotion to a lost love. But the data on Civil War widows tells a more complicated story, one that has as much to do with economics as with romance.
The 137th New York was part of the Union XII Corps, commanded by Brigadier General George S. Greene, known to his men as “Pop” Greene. Approaching age 62 at Gettysburg, Greene was one of the oldest commanders on the field. When his brigade took position on Culps Hill on July 1, 1863, after the Union army had been pushed back through the town, Greene ordered his men to build defensive earthworks and breastworks along the wooded slopes.
His corps and division commanders disagreed, considering the digging a waste of energy. But Greene insisted, a decision that would prove critical in the fighting to come. Culps Hill protected the Union right flank. It was the anchor of the Union line, and directly behind it ran the Baltimore Pike, the main supply artery for the entire Union army.
If the hill fell, the Confederates would have a direct route into the rear of the Union position, threatening supply wagons, reserves, and the army’s ability to continue the fight. The danger increased on July 2 when Major General Daniel Sickles, acting on his own initiative, moved his III Corps forward from the Peach Orchard salient, creating a gap in the Union line. To fill that gap, troops from the Culps Hill sector were pulled away and sent to the left. The 137th New York, already on the extreme right of the Union army, lost significant support that had been intended to bolster its position.
That evening, Confederate forces under Brigadier General George Steuart launched a heavy assault against Culps Hill. The attacking force included roughly 4,700 Confederate soldiers, among them Virginians, North Carolinians, and Marylanders, moving across the fields toward the Union breastworks. Defending the position were about 1,400 to 1,500 Union soldiers, mostly the 137th New York, now holding a front far wider than a single regiment could properly defend. The earthworks that Greene had insisted on building proved essential.
They were described as head-high in some places, with a head log and sight holes that allowed defenders to fire down the slope while remaining protected. When Confederate soldiers reached those works and saw the fortifications, the overwhelming numbers they brought to the attack could not push the defenders out. The fighting was desperate and continued into the darkness. With night falling, Union soldiers could only locate the enemy by the muzzle flashes of their rifles.
At one point, the 137th New York was attacked from three sides at once. Lieutenant Colonel David Ireland, a Scot who commanded the regiment, was forced to bend his line back on itself, creating something close to a U-shape, and eventually pulled his men back to a fallback position in the saddle between Lower and Upper Culps Hill. Support arrived, briefly, in the form of a Pennsylvania regiment. But after about 30 minutes of fighting, the Pennsylvania commander reportedly decided he would not have his men butchered and ordered them to withdraw, leaving the 137th New York alone again.
The New Yorkers held the line anyway. During the fighting, Captain Joseph Gregg ordered a bayonet charge from the Union position. He was severely wounded in the shoulder, neck, and chest, and lost a limb in the fighting. His heroism cost him his life.
He died at Gettysburg. The fighting on Culps Hill resumed early on July 3 and continued for another two or three hours. In total, the fight around the hill spanned about seven hours across July 2 and 3. The 137th New York held its ground until it ran low on ammunition and was relieved.
By the time the regiment marched off the hill, it had suffered 137 casualties, a percentage loss roughly comparable to that of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, a fight that has received far more attention in popular history. Frederick Archbald was among the dead. He had enlisted in 1862, leaving his wife behind to join the army, and had been recruited into the 137th New York by David Ireland. He had seen combat earlier at Chancellorsville.
At Gettysburg, his first task had been the same one Greene had ordered for the whole brigade: building the earthworks that would help save the hill and protect the army’s supply line. After his death, Helen Archbald received a widow’s pension from the United States government. Her pension file number was 61334, and she collected the pension for the rest of her life. Around 1913, a document was filed that increased her monthly payment to $20, roughly half of what the average working man earned at the time.
The question of why so many Civil War widows never remarried has been the subject of historical study. A study conducted around 2014 examined more than 800 pension files to understand whether financial considerations played a role in the decision of many widows to remain single. The research found that the age at which a woman was widowed and how quickly she began receiving her pension significantly affected the likelihood of remarriage. A woman widowed between the ages of 24 and 27 who received her pension almost immediately was about 20 percent less likely to remarry than a woman who received her pension later or not at all.
Among women aged 27 to 35, the likelihood of not remarrying increased with age. For women 35 and older, the study found, receiving a Civil War pension made remarriage very unlikely. The reasons were practical as well as emotional. A widow’s pension was about $8 a month for a woman alone, more than half of what a working man typically earned.
With children, the payments were higher. But those payments stopped if a widow remarried. That meant a woman who remarried had to find a husband who could at least compensate for the pension she would lose. Marriage simply to trade one economic situation for a worse one made little sense.
There was also social pressure and expectation. The pension bureau investigated reports of fraud, including cases of widows who were said to be living with men while still collecting their pensions. In one documented case, a widow named Maria Vanurren lost her pension after a neighbor reported that she was living with a man named Frank Staer in what investigators concluded was more than a working arrangement. For Helen Archbald, the pension was not enough to live on alone.
Census records show she initially lived with her parents, then moved in with her brother and his family, and later moved between households. By the early 1900s, she had become the head of her own household. She was also recorded as working as a nurse. She died in 1917 at an advanced age.
Some interpretations of the lives of these widows emphasize love and loyalty. Others point to the financial logic of keeping a secure government pension rather than risking everything on a second marriage. The evidence suggests that for many women, remaining a widow was not simply a matter of broken hearts. It was also a matter of survival.
The 137th New York’s stand on Culps Hill has never received the same attention as other famous stands at Gettysburg. The 20th Maine, which held the Union left flank at Little Round Top, is celebrated in books and films and draws thousands of visitors. The 137th New York, which faced an entire Confederate brigade on the Union right, is marked by a single monument on a hill that most visitors never reach. The hill was held, the Baltimore Pike stayed open, and the Union army held the high ground until the Confederate attack collapsed.
But the cost was counted in the lives of men like Frederick Archbald, a young soldier from upstate New York who died in a trench his own hands had helped dig, and whose widow received a pension for the rest of her life but never saw her husband again.