Staff Writer
On a spring day in April 1898, the members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band gathered in the cemetery of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains to perform a final tribute to one of their own, a black Civil War veteran who played the kettle drum and was considered something of an honorary member of the local group.
It has been 113 years since that day. But on Saturday, May 7, members of the band visited the gravesite once again, this time to help dedicate a veteran’s headstone that finally commemorates the military service of their musical forbear during the nation’s greatest period of tribulation and internal strife.
The soldier’s name is Charles “Tully” Schuyler, and local officials have searched far and wide to piece together as much information as they can on what was surely an interesting life.
When Schuyler was buried in the last years of the 19th century, Councilman Ed Engelbart said, there was no money to buy him a gravestone. As a result, he lay in an unmarked grave with no one knowing who he was or what he’d lived through until a member of the Pequannock Historic District Commission (HDC) came upon his obituary in an old copy of the Butler Argus.
That member, Dave Wisneski, said he was helping his wife do research on local history for her mas
On a spring day in April 1898, the members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band gathered in the cemetery of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains to perform a final tribute to one of their own, a black Civil War veteran who played the kettle drum and was considered something of an honorary member of the local group.
It has been 113 years since that day. But on Saturday, May 7, members of the band visited the gravesite once again, this time to help dedicate a veteran’s headstone that finally commemorates the military service of their musical forbear during the nation’s greatest period of tribulation and internal strife.
The soldier’s name is Charles “Tully” Schuyler, and local officials have searched far and wide to piece together as much information as they can on what was surely an interesting life.
When Schuyler was buried in the last years of the 19th century, Councilman Ed Engelbart said, there was no money to buy him a gravestone. As a result, he lay in an unmarked grave with no one knowing who he was or what he’d lived through until a member of the Pequannock Historic District Commission (HDC) came upon his obituary in an old copy of the Butler Argus.
That member, Dave Wisneski, said he was helping his wife do research on local history for her mas
ter’s degree when he came upon the colorful obituary, which described Schuyler’s love of the band.
Wisneski had an immediate interest in Schuyler’s story. Besides being in the HDC, Wisneski also has been a trombone player in the Coronet Band for the past 22 years, and he did further research into Schuyler’s life, using census records and the website ancestry.com to track backward through the years.
At the same time, Engelbart contacted Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) and asked him for help in procuring information about Schuyler from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as for assistance in securing a veteran’s headstone.
In the past few months, large chunks of the soldier’s past have been filled in through these combined efforts and have painted a picture of the life of a former slave who fought for theUnion.
Schuyler’s life
The HDC issued a pamphlet during the dedication of the veteran’s stone that states that Schuyler is believed to have been born inPassaicCountyin 1833.
Engelbart said that Schuyler appears to have been a slave who was freed;New Jerseywas slow to abolish the practice and didn’t do so officially until 1846.
In 1850, Schuyler was listed in theU.S.census as being one of the “free” residents of the township, and by 1860, he seems to have been living inBerry’s Hotel, which was acrossJackson Avenuefrom Jones Hardware.
Wisneski said that Schuyler lived there along with 15 other people, a mixture of both couples and single individuals. That building burned down during World War I when lightning struck it, and is now the site of the PNC Bank.
In January 1864, as the Union armies in the East were set to begin their most vicious series of battles, Schuyler left his wife, Hannah, and their 2-year-old child Francis at home to enlist with Company K of the First New Jersey, and was assigned the position of “Colored Cook.”
At 30 years old, Schuyler stood at just 5 foot 3 inches tall and was said to have a black complexion and black eyes, Engelbart said.
“Though African-Americans were frequently given low-level jobs, they also could get caught up in combat very, very quickly,” Engelbart said. “And if you were in the Union Army as an African-American, you were putting yourself at tremendous risk.”
Little is known about the particulars of his service, except that he was with the Army of the Potomac while it fought through General Ulysses S. Grant’s “Overland Campaign,” the final, ferocious advance onRichmondintended to pin down Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
It was a bloody time for the army— in the course of two months, from the start of May to the end of June in 1864, the Union Army racked up 55,000 casualties.
Schuyler was nearly among these, as he was listed “missing” at some point during the spring, but no information remains on what was surely a grueling period of being lost in the slaveholding South before he made his way back to the army.
He eventually returned to the army and finished out his tenure, being mustered out with an honorable discharge in June 1865.
Schuyler would have two more children, one in 1867 and another in 1870, and was baptized himself at the First Reformed Church in 1867.
Wisneski said that the 1870 Census recorded Schuyler as living in the Bloomingdale area and working as a “laborer/handyman.”
He was also playing as a drum major in the Bloomingdale Coronet Band, which was founded in 1884, and although he was not an official member per se, records say he was often in rehearsals and in parades as a drummer.
Schuyler was undoubtedly one of the few blacks in the area and likely the only one in the band at that time, but Wisneski said that he figures Schuyler was a local character who band members knew and let join.
“They seem to have liked and respected him,” Wisneski said. “If he wasn’t an official member, he was definitely ‘part of the gang’ so to speak.”
When Schuyler died on April 21, 1898, the band attended his funeral and played “several appropriate selections,” his obituary noted.
A headstone a century in the making
On May 7, several parts of the community came together to mark the dedication of the headstone to Schuyler, from the First Reformed Church to American Legion Post 242 to the HDC to the Bloomingdale Coronet Band themselves.
Englebart said that Frelinghuysen was able to get the process of securing a stone moving and that within three months of Engelbart’s initial calls, the congressman had the stone delivered.
Frelinghuysen also presented a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol to the church in celebration of its own 275th anniversary this year.
“Everything clicked with this. I couldn’t believe it,” Engelbart said.
About 20 residents turned out to see the dedication on the warm spring afternoon, and comments were made by Master of Ceremonies Lou Hebert of American Legion Post 242 and Engelbart about the significance of the event.
It was important, Engelbart said, to recognize this man who served in the Civil War with a veteran’s stone to acknowledge his existence and to carve out his own piece of the cemetery.
“It was these men who volunteered and joined who saved theUnion,” he said.
Wisneski agreed, saying that without a stone, it feels like Schuyler was completely forgotten.
“He was one case where nobody knew anything about him,” he said.
Wisneski said that he thinks that having about 20 members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band play the dedication is something that Schuyler himself would have enjoyed.
“I think he’d especially like the fact that it was still there all these years later, that the group’s still there and able to play,” he said.
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
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