My father Daniel and mother Martha owned a farm in West Pikeland Township where I spent most of my time as a child. As a young man, I worked on this farm and many others in the area doing such things as threshing oats, painting fences, laying floors, and roofing barns. When life slowed down in the winters, I taught at a school near Reading in Berks County.

I waited until 1865 to enter the Union Army. Although I was the oldest, my three brothers William, George and Nelson had already served. Two of them served without difficulty. But Nelson, only 20 years-old, contracted typhoid soon after he left camp and died in September, 1861.

I enlisted in Harrisburg, as a sergeant in the 101st Pennsylvania Volunteers in February of 1865. During my first few weeks, I kept busy recruiting men, “the boys” as I called them. We boarded a train for Baltimore on March 28.
We stayed in Baltimore for a day, then our luxury ended?

Five to Six hundred of us crowded onto a boat and headed south. Many of us had to sleep on the wet and filthy deck that night with the boat rocking considerably from the wind. The next morning we reached our destination, Fort Monroe. Many of the Boys were vomiting tremendously, and we had to march two miles through the rain to our destination, Camp Distribution, a God-forsaken and awful place.

After two days, we boarded government barges that were made for moving cattle. For the next few days, they moved us. We headed further south but often had problems with the tides. The barge was too large, so when the tides let out, we ran aground a number of times. At one point, we started to run out of food and one of our lieutenants had to board a boat and return to Norfolk to bring rations back for us.

Eventually, we arrived at our destination, Roanoke island in coastal North Carolina on April 9, 1865. That same day, we heard that Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Shortly after we arrived, we set up camp among the men on the island. We spent the next weeks doing little of anything. We had dress parades from time to time and drilled nearly every day. We ate our beef and bean rations. Sometimes the boys would dig up clams or oysters too. We went for walks down the beach and sometimes shot targets with our rifles -- we had no other use for them because the war was over.

On May 21, we moved to another camp on the island, Camp Foster. At this point, officers had little control over the soldiers. Many men became resentful because they thought that officers were hoarding their rations. There was plenty of liquor on the island, mostly whiskey, and men did pretty much as they pleased.

Finally, we left the island and sailed to New Berne, North Carolina. After a short stop in Moorehead City, we found ourselves in Camp Palmer -- finally a place with excellent quarters. Shortly thereafter, we mustered out of service on June 25th, without having seen a moment of battle of skirmish.

John Himes received a “bounty” of 448$ from local government near Harrisburg to enlist. An additional 100$ from the federal government made a total of 558$. This was s good amount of money for only a few months of service, considering he made $87 to teach during the winter of 1858-1859

“Very poor quarters last night as it was late when we arrived here and therefore had not time to put up our shelter tents as they should have been?Think we shall have a very pleasant camp here among the sand and mosquitoes.” Diary of John Himes, April 10, 1865.