They fired two shots at me. One went through me, and the other struck on the top of my head and glanced off.

At the beginning of December 1890, a troop’s worth of recruits were transferred from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri—where the Army conducted entry training for the cavalry branch—to the 7th Cavalry Regiment in the field at the Pine Ridge Agency. Captain E. S. Godfrey, of D Troop, was en route to rejoin the regiment from Fort Leavenworth. Reflecting on that winter’s campaign later in life, Godfrey wrote, “Upon my arrival at Chadron Creek, [Nebraska] I found a detachment of recruits from Jefferson Barracks for the 7th Cavalry and a wagon train of supplies for the troops, awaiting escort. I assumed command of the detachment and supply train, and about the middle of December arrived at the Pine Ridge agency, where I joined my troop.” Godfrey arrived with sixty-seven recruits on December 6. Nine of the recruits were assigned to Capt. Nowlan’s I Troop, and of those, four had just joined the Army in October.[1]

One of the newest recruits was twenty-five-year-old Private Harvey Thomas, a cook from Jamesburg, New Jersey, who had joined the Army at New York City two months before Wounded Knee. He was the only I Troop recruit to become a casualty during the campaign. While convalescing in the post hospital at Fort Riley the following spring, Thomas wrote to the superintendent of the New Jersey reform school where he spent his formative teenage years. The letters appeared in the school’s newspaper, The Advance, in May, and were later reprinted as a single composite letter in The New Brunswick Daily Times.[2]

Fort Riley, Kansas, March 21, 1891.

Dear Sir,–It is some time since I was in Jamesburg, having enlisted in the army October 11, 1891.

When the Indians broke out in South Dakota last Fall, I was sent out with a detachment and assigned to the Seventh Cavalry at Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota. You have probably read something of the Sioux campaign, in which a number of our soldiers were killed and wounded. I was one of the latter, having been shot through the left chest, the ball entering nearly in the middle of the back, and came out just below the edge of the collar-bone.

It was a hand-to-hand fight, and I was in the midst of it, with Indians on all sides of me. It was impossible to escape, as the bullets were flying in all directions like hail. I received another shot on the top of my head, which did not do much damage.
I am still in the hospital. I have not much use of my left shoulder and arm, but I hope I will come out all right.

It is nearly three months now since the battle at Wounded Knee, December 30 [sic:29], 1890. It was a good initiation for one only five months in the service. It looks as if we would get some more this Spring, as the Indians are not satisfied. They are killing settlers and raiding the country, but when the Seventh Cavalry gets after them they will give them enough of it….

Harvey H. Thomas.

After being prompted for more details of the battle, Thomas wrote the following month:

Fort Riley, April 17, 1891.

Dear Sir,–I received your kind letter, and was delighted to hear from you, and will do my best to comply with your request.

We were camped at Pine Ridge Agency about a month, with Indians all around us, who appeared very friendly. One day there came a telegram that Big Foot’s band had got away from Colonel Sumner, and were coming towards us, and then the order rang out “boots and saddles.” At this sound from the trumpets every one was glad to take the march, and wanted to see a fight. We started at one o’clock p.m. As we had no horses, myself and sixty-one others had to walk 18 miles, over hills, plains and ravines. As there is no timber in that section, we could see a long distance.

When we reached the fatal spot every one was tired and hungry. We began tearing down a fence that was there to build a fire, and soon made some coffee, which with “hard tack” was quite a treat, having had nothing to eat since morning. When I had cooked some bacon and some coffee for the officers they retired, while the boys sat around the fire and told stories and laughed and were quite jolly, not one of them dreaming of what was to happen in that place in a short time.

On the morning of the 29th of December [sic: 28th] an Indian scout who was with us was offered twenty-five dollars to locate the hostile Indian camp, and at eleven o’clock, A.M., we saw him coming over the hill at great speed. He reported the camp eight miles away on Porcupine Butte, and “boots and saddles” rang out again. Every man was ready, and in five minutes out they went.

Myself and the other sixty men were left to guard the camp. One of the scouts captured one of the Indian chiefs and brought him into camp, and he was guarded until the command came in and then turned loose with the rest of them.

At two o’clock, P.M., we saw the boys coming with the Indians. They were three miles off, coming slowly, and hiding things away, and when they came in they were a sight to see. Some were painted green, and others red with yellow stripes around the eyes to represent the sun. This was war-paint, and they were a horrible-looking set, although no one was afraid of them.

That night everybody stood guard, and things were still until morning, and then came the hardest of all for the Indians, as they were ordered to give up their arms.

We surrounded their camp, and my battalion dismounted, while the other soldiers remained mounted. The Colonel called for their arms, and twenty Indians came out and surrendered two old worthless guns.

A searching party went out and found forty-three guns.

Then a pistol cracked.

I stood about ten feet from the main body of the Indians, and as soon as the shot was fired the Indians made a mad rush for the tents that were in the rear, and where the guns were. I could not fire for my comrades were on the opposite side, and I made for the heap of guns. They fired two shots at me–one went through me and the other struck on the top of my head and glanced off. I walked about fifty yards after I was shot to where the artillery was and that was as far as I could get.

The battle raged with fury until late in the afternoon, and then they loaded the wounded up in farm wagons, and started for the Agency, eighteen miles distant. There were two in each wagon, and the man who was with me died on the way in, and then he rolled against me. Every now and then the wagons would double up on the middle of the prairie, and the drivers and guard dismount expecting an attack.

The Indians set the prairie on fire ahead of us, but we took another route, and got into the agency safely. In the battle there were thirty soldiers killed and thirty-six wounded….

I send my best regards to Mrs. Farr and Mr. Dillon, and wish to be remembered to all the boys.

Harvey H. Thomas.[3]

According to Army, census and passport records, Harvey Holmes Thomas was born on October 2, 1865, in Jamesburg, New Jersey, a small community carved out of Monroe in Middlesex County that wasn’t formed as a borough until 1887. He may have been orphaned in early childhood, as the earliest possible record is the 1870 U.S. Census for Monroe Township showing a three-year-old Harvey Thomas living with sixty-four-year-old William and Margaret Reid and their six children.[4]

Whether because he was an orphan or a troubled youth, Thomas ended up at the New Jersey State Reform School for Boys, known locally as the Jamesburg Reformatory. During the 1880s while Thomas was at the school, the boys were supervised under the cottage or family system. Each “family” consisted of about fifty boys housed together under the watchful eye of a husband and wife. According to the article in which the Thomas letters appeared, he was a member of Family Number 3, headed by Mr. Thomas H. Dillon and his wife, known to the boys as “Boss Dillon.” The reform school had seven such families and housed boys from ages eight to sixteen with a regimented daily routine. According to a New Jersey State Library article, “The opening of the school represented a step forward in the care of young offenders as they had previously been housed in county jails alongside adult prisoners. The Reform School had a program of early rising (5:30am) and then work until lunchtime. Work tasks included printing, brickmaking, farming, making shoes and shirts and laundry and kitchen work. School followed lunch for three and a half hours, five days a week, fifty weeks a year.”[5]

In addition to Mr. Dillon, Pvt. Thomas mentioned Mrs. Joanna S. Farr, who headed up the kitchen work, where Thomas likely spent his mornings. When the 25-year-old Thomas enlisted in the Army in October 1890, he listed his occupation as a cook, and based on his letter, was employed as such in his troop.[6]

The regimented routine of reform school certainly fit Thomas well for a career in the Army. That career was cut short with the serious wound he received at Wounded Knee. Private Thomas was medically discharged at Fort Riley on August 5, 1891, just ten months after enlisting for five years. He applied for a disability pension a week later from Washington, D.C.[7]

Harvey Thomas spent part of the next few years traveling in Central America. He filed for a passport in 1894 while in Guatemala and later that year sailed from Honduras back to the United States arriving in New Orleans that October. He remained in the New Orleans area for the remainder of his life where he worked in the furniture industry.[8]

In August 1895, he married Mary Elizabeth Bachemin, the twenty-year-old daughter of Armand and Elizabeth (née Managan) Bachemin. Harvey and Mary Thomas welcomed their first child Harvey Napoleon a year later. A daughter Bethophera Colleen, the future Mrs. Louis M. Mire, was born in March 1907.[9]

Harvey Thomas died in 1943 and Mary in 1958. They were buried in the Chalmette National Cemetery, Louisiana.[10]

The National Cemetery Internment Control Form for Pvt. Harvey H. Thomas, 7th Cavalry states that he was buried at the Chalmette National Cemetery.[11]

Headstones of Pvt. Harvey H. Thomas and his wife Mary Bachemin.[12]

Endnotes

[1] Peter Cozzens, ed., Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890, (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2004), 615.

[2] Ancestry.com, U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914, year: 1885-1890, Name: L-Z, image: 500, line: 145; Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington D.C., roll 8, vol. 012: France to Guatemala.

[3] Ira Otterson, “One of Our Boys in a Battle,” The Advance, (Jamesburg, NJ: 7 May 1891), 2. A composite version of both letters appeared eleven days later in, “A Reform School Boy,” The Daily Times, vol. XLII, no. 116 (New Brunswick, NJ: 18 May 1891), 1.

[4] 1870 US Census.

[5] “Mr. and Mrs. Dillon,” The Advance, (Jamesburg, NJ: 15 May 1890), 2; Deborah Mercer, “The Advance and the New Jersey State Reform School,” NJ State Library (https://www.njstatelib.org/the-advance-and-the-new-jersey-state-reform-school/ posted 2 Feb 2023, accessed 10 Jun 2023).

[6] The Advance, (Jamesburg, NJ: 25 Feb 1892),2;

[7] Ancestry.com, U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914, year: 1885-1890, name: L-Z, image: 500, line: 145; National Archives and Records Administration, U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; NAI Title: U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934; NAI Number: T288; Record Group Title: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773-2007; Record Group N.

[8] Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington D.C., roll 8, vol. 012: France to Guatemala; Ancestry.com, New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963, The National Archives At Washington, D.C., Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At New Orleans, Louisiana, 1820-1902, NAI Number: 2824927, Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group Number: 85.

[9] Ancestry.com, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., Marriage Records Index, 1831-1964 (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2002), Original data: State of Louisiana, Secretary of State, Division of Archives, Records Management, and History, Vital Records Indices, Baton Rouge, LA, USA; Ancestry.com, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., Birth Records Index, 1790-1915 (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2002), Original data: State of Louisiana, Secretary of State, Division of Archives, Records Management, and History, Vital Records Indices, Baton Rouge, LA.

[10] National Cemetery Administration, U.S., Veterans’ Gravesites, ca.1775-2019, (Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006) Original data: National Cemetery Administration, Nationwide Gravesite Locator; LuannG, “Mary Elizabeth Bachemin Thomas,” Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32489716/mary-elizabeth-thomas, posted 29 Dec 2008, accessed 10 Jun 2023), Find a Grave Memorial ID: 32489716.

[11] Ancestry.com, U.S., National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962, (Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012), Original data: Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962. Interment Control Forms, A1 2110-B. NAID: 5833879, Record Group 92, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, The National Archives at St. Louis, St. Louis, MO.

[12] Joseph Mann, photo., “Harvey Holmes Thomas” Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32489697/harvey-holmes-thomas, posted 29 Dec 2008, accessed 10 Jun 2023), Find a Grave Memorial ID: 32489697; Joseph Mann, photo., “Mary Elizabeth Bachemin Thomas,” Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32489716/mary-elizabeth-thomas, posted 29 Dec 2008, accessed 10 Jun 2023), Find a Grave Memorial ID: 32489716.

Citation for this article: Samuel L. Russell, “Private Harvey H. Thomas, I Troop 7th Cavalry—Wounded in Action,” Army at Wounded Knee (Carlisle, PA: Russell Martial Research, 2018-2023, http://wp.me/p3NoJy-1ds) posted 11 Jun 2023, accessed date __________.