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In addition to the Bellefonte Fencibles, Curtin Guards, Eagle Guards, and Cameron Infantry, which, on April of 1861, responded to the call for troops, from Governor Andrew Curtin, Frank Hess, a school teacher in Potter's Mills, recruited a company. He was unable to fill the roster, and therefore joined forces with John B. Hoskins, of Schuylkill Co, who recruited men from, Schuylkill County. Reporting to Camp Curtin, they were mustered into the Fifteenth Regiment as Company I.
Although enlisted for three months service, Hess' men were immortalized as the first prisoners of war in the Civil War. On the morning of the 2d of July, near Williamsport, Md., the Fifth Brigade, to which the Fifteenth Regiment was attached, crossed the Potomac. Company I was then thrown forward to the right and left as skirmishers, having advanced about two miles, when the company stopped for rest and to allow the brigade to catch up.
A battalion of Confederate cavalry, under the command of Col. Ashby, came from a thick wood, and swooped down upon Company I skirmishers and captured them. At nearly the same time, another portion of Ashby's cavalry, came out of a second woods into the field where the main portion of Company I was resting. Ashby's men were dressed in blue shirts, which allowed them to encircle the Company before they were aware of the cavalry's identity. Captured, they were hurried off and onto Martinsburg, and to Winchester, where they were placed in jail, and remained until the 18th. They were moved to Strasburg, and on the 19th, Manassas Junction. On the 20th they reached Richmond, where they were met by an angry mob, and feared for their lives.
At Richmond, the prison hospital, James A. Zettle, of Potter township, died on the l6th of September of typhoid fever. On the 25th of September they, with several hundred other prisoners of war, were put on the railroad cars and transported to New Orleans. Reports from the prisoners told of terrible conditions, as they had to endure - ants, cockroaches, and mosquitoes.
They remained in New Orleans until February 6th, 1862, when they were moved to Salisbury, N. C., remaining there until the 3d of June, when they were paroled, in a prisoner exchange. There ordeal ended in New York City, on the 18th of June, 1862, when they were mustered out of service.
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