It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
It was a warm, sunny, summer, sunday afternoon in the early Seventies. I was spending the day in York, Pennsylvania with my mother and father. After lunch we decided to drive 10 miles east on the Lincoln Highway, US 30, to Wrightsville, PA on the west bank of the Susquehanna River. On the west side of the borough we turned right off the highway into Fairview Cemetery. My father pointed out and we visited the grave sites of my various GIVENS ancestors. My great great grandfather David Givens lived most of his life in Hellam Township, a portion of which later became Wrightsville. Wrightsville was named after Wright, who owned and operated a ferry across the Susquehanna River at Columbia, Lancaster County.
One of the grave sites we visited, near the borough water tower, had a GAR flag holder in front of it. From the engraving on the tombstone we discovered it was for David Givens, my great grandfather. The son of the first David Givens. The inscription read:
At the time I did not know what all this meant. But, evidently he participated in the Civil War. I put this information on a separate 3x5 card as well as a separate 3x5 card with the information from the other family headstones. My mother later hand copied, in the court house, the information that was on his discharge papers. This was the first information I gathered about my great grandfather David Givens and his Civil War battery and regiment.
Later at the National Archives I learned much more about David Givens, and the organization he served with. All of this research preceded the creation of this 43rd Pennsylvania Web Site developed to share the information obtained about his Civil War Regiment. I found he was a Sergeant in Battery "E", 43rd Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, the 14th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserves, also named 1st Regiment Pennsylvania Light Artillery. (See Pennsylvania Reserve Corps in the Glossary for a more detailed explanation of the reason for the three names and numbers)
The information search and development of the web site is an on-going labor of love and will never be completed. So, stop by often if you are also interested in the 43rd Pennsylvania. The first and only Pennsylvania light artillery regiment formed during the Civil War.
Benjamin McKinley Givens, Jr.
Vienna, VA
July, 1999
Last Updated 05 November 1999
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
