Summary: His statement about Union service is accepted √

Date of Birth: May 28th 1850

Date of Death: 12th February 1954

Age at enlistment: thirteen

Rank: Private

Unit: 27th Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry Emergency Militia 1863. Perhaps others.

Service: Drummer boy and bugler for the militia Infantry

Combat Experience: He claimed that he was too young to fight. He also claimed to having been present at some battles, but this could have meant as an observer or as a musician, who while involved in unit movements, did not actually fight.

Length of service: uncertain

Evidence of Service apart from his own accounts. He is listed in Official Records, once as Franklin Mayer in the militia and then almost certainly as Frankel Mayer in the 27th Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry. However the given age cannot be right and was probably faked. Other enlistments for privates titled Frank Mayer also exist, but cannot be stated to be him with certainty. His Civil War service contains much that is uncertain. His militia enrolment is also in the Pennsylvania State Archives

Frank Mayer’s parents were European migrants. He was born in New Orleans in 1850, but his parents moved to Ashland Pennsylvania to be nearer to relatives in 1855.[1] As a child he loved fishing, hunting and guns and these loves never left him. [2]

Mayer gets continual references by those writing about him as a teller of tall tales concerning himself. Apart from his accounts, evidence for some of what he says looks thin or cannot be. He does not seem to have filled out a census until 1900 or 1920 and few records of his early life survive. However his very few and very brief references to Civil War service are not tall tales. One of his early stories can only be obviously false and others are unlikely, although much of his life was extraordinary.

The obviously false tall tale was that he would claim that as a Colorado sheriff he was in love with the dancer named Silverheels and that with her nursing and financial donations for medical aid, together they stopped a smallpox epidemic in the mining town of Buckskin Joe, Colorado. Out of gratitude the residents named a mountain town after her, but she left with his love unrequited, perhaps because smallpox had scarred her face, but then Mayer being eleven years old at the time may have had something to do with it. The epidemic, Silverheels and her charitable role and the naming of the mountain are all verified, but this happened in 1861.[3] Precocious as Mayer was, eleven year olds are not elected sheriffs or romance grown dance hall girls. Really being married at seventeen was precocious enough and Mrs Mayer’s name was not Silverheels.

A dubious claim concerns his rank. Mayer claimed to be a colonel, but in what? He may have been a militia colonel in some Wild West militia, or some such unit raised for the suddenly erupted Spanish-American War, when such units as the Rough Riders did emerge and where it is claimed he served.[4] He may have served. He could have been a colonel of scouts or given the honorary title by some state, territory or organisation, but where is the evidence? He told his friend Lucy Tarbell Roth that he “felt he was not a real soldier, having no gun, wounds or lengthy service.”[5] This also suggests that his emergency militia service may have been his total record.

What he could not have been was a regular U.S. army colonel serving (as one encyclopaedia claims) for thirty five years, although he was titled Colonel in many documents. [6] He was known to be a professional buffalo hunter through much of the 1870s and a Colorado sheriff after that. Either occupation would preclude him from holding a simultaneous U.S. Army Colonel’s rank.

Should such stories put his few believable statements about Civil War service in doubt? Bush and Woolson also told some impossible ones, and about their time in the Civil War, yet their service remains beyond doubt. Who alive has not told a tall tale or said something preposterous as a joke? Should their service in organisations then be discounted?

What cannot be a tall story is that Mayer appears in the Official Records as enlisted in the 27th Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry Emergency Militia 1863. This unit was rapidly raised to help counter Lee’s invasion. Mayer’s enlistment dates from June 22nd 1863 until presumably July 31st of that year, when the whole unit was mustered out.[7] They retreated in one skirmish where they took twenty-three casualties, but burned bridges across the Susquehanna River and by doing so protected Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capitol from falling to a rear attack. At this time Pennsylvania was already demoralised and the loss of its capitol could have led to a collapse of its war effort. This in turn could have had a domino effect on other northern states, then war weary and demoralised after the defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Instead of this possibility the destruction of these bridges shaped Lee’s movements, leading him to Gettysburg.[8] That skirmish could make Mayer the last Civil War veteran to be in combat. Both that and his being in the unit that changed the course of history were both things to boast about, but apparently if Mayer ever did boast of it, this remains unknown. Like Kiney, another likely last Civil War survivor, his actions and his usual silence means that he apparently did not want the possibility of being the last survivor. Also like Kiney, his accounts of his war service were brief, believable and free of bluff and bull.

A Franklin Mayer who appeared in this unit has his first name spelled a little differently and has a written down age of twenty-three. This age factor is the major barrier to Mayer’s verification, but it becomes a weak one that collapses on examination. It does create the possibility that it was someone else, possibly a relative as they lived around Ashland, where this unit was recruited. It may also be that Mayer was as precocious in his appearance as he was in his words and deeds. Pennsylvania was facing invasion and niceties about age were evaporating under the pressure. Another possibility which could mix with the first is that the enlisting officer needed every volunteer he could get fast for what was labelled the emergency unit and to boot Mayer was a crack shot. Official Records has a Frankel Mayer listed as being in the 27th Pennsylvania Regiment, but that regiment’s muster roll, compiled in early 1863 after it’s disastrous losses at Fredericksburg, does not list a soldier called Mayer. Official Records has a Private Frank Mayer in the 7th New Jersey Infantry, a unit that served at Gettysburg and Appomattox. This could be Mayer serving on. Whoever he was, he must have enlisted after the regiment was reformed in time for Gettysburg or perhaps just after - after the militia disbanded. The timing fits Mayer’s possibly continued service.

Probably one young man named Frank/Franklin/Frankel Mayer, existed, but possibly three did. Like many runaways or young volunteers Mayer may have changed his name slightly to avoid detection. Official Records lists nine Union soldiers named Frank Mayer. All nine were privates, but none are listed as a musician. Only one, an 1861 Indiana enlistee, definitely cannot be Frank H. Mayer (1850-1954) although the Private Mayer serving in a Minnesota unit must be unlikely as he never mentioned artillery service and Minnesota was along way from home. A Missouri Officer and anotherprivate also have the sam name, but being in the Western war and their age preclude them.

Others were involved with the Army of Ohio, and so are less likely than those in the Army of the Potomac. Even so preliminary investigations reveal no facts for excluding all but one of these nine from being Frank H. Mayer (1850-1954). He said that he had served as a bugler and a drummer, being too young to fight.[9] This seems likely: he also said that after war service he was like so many others still restless so he moved west, being part of the winning of the west.[10]

That restlessness that never left him.

In his biography Professor Hoar summarises Mayer’s post-war career. As mentioned in the 1870s he was a buffalo hunter and then a Colorado mining town sheriff. He must have been an Indian fighter at some stage, because aged 97, he finally had an imbedded arrowhead removed. The two bullets left in him around 1883 apparently stayed. They may have been from his years as a sheriff. Like James Erwin he travelled and worked extensively overseas in the years after the war, and doing similar work. He hunted in Alaska, built railways in Brazil and dug for diamonds in Australia. He claimed to have survived the great Chicago fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, three shipwrecks, two avalanches and again like Erwin, survived being hit by a truck. His occupations included being a rancher, a teacher, a surveyor and a mining engineer.

In the 1920 census he listed his occupation as ‘journalist’ and he did write three books and many articles. He retired in 1942 and the 1953 truck accident finally slowed him down, he became bedfast. He had his recollections taped late that year and died early in 1954, being very probably the second last Union veteran.

Annoyingly his unneeded tall stories detracted from his extraordinary achievements rather than enhanced them. He was probably indulging in bull sessions meant to amuse and amaze. In this situation insiders are knowing while outsiders are tested for gullibility or good humour.Those stories should have been labelled as such and published. He lived a life which gives the impression that giving it in full detail would be a life’s work.

*

This is an abridged excerpt from America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation by Garry Victor Hill. (Revised and Expanded Edition 2015) The full and illustrated text can be found for free at my website garryvictorhill.com.au/ Hopefully this will also soon be a free e-book. Twenty eight other claimed Civil War survivors alive after 1951 are also assessed.

[1] Hoar, Frank H. Mayer: Last of the Buffalo Hunters. Excerpted from Professor Jay S. Hoar’s Civil War Trilogy Sunset And Dusk of the Blue and the Gray (2006-2010) Temple, Maine: Bo Ink-um Press, 2012. p881.

[2]Ibid, p881.

[3] “Silverheels.” By Adam James Jones. Rocky Mountain Legends. Posted May 4th 2011

[4] “Frank Mayer.” (Colorado) Wikipedia

[5] Hoar, Vol. II p885.

[6] “Frank Mayer.” (Colorado) Wikipedia.

[7] Hoar, Vol. II p882.,

[8] Ibid, p882.

[9] Hoar quoting Mayer p883. The quotes come from The Buffalo Harvest a book Mayer wrote and his friend Charles B. Roth edited and had published in 1958.

[10] Ibid