Biography of Eli Bronson

From: Bronson, Bruce, SHR
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 22:29
To: srwings@aol.com Subject: HQ, 11th PA Cav

Sir, I just wanted to add my name to your list of interested persons in this Calvary Unit. My name is Bruce Bronson and I am a great-grandson of Trooper Pvt. Eli Bronson who joined the 11th Pennsylvania Cav. In Feb. 1864. He had originally served and enlisted in June 1861 from Wayne County Pennsylvania, Salem Independents, into the 3rd Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteers, 32nd Regiment. Interestingly enough, I learned through his military and pension records that he was discharged from his infantry service in Aug. 1862 on a Surgeons Certificate as he was suffering from the effects of contracting Typhoid Fever he contracted on a march from Catlett’s Station to Fredricksburg while serving in the Army of the Potomac. Evidently after a period of time of recovery and being back on the farm...Calvary Service became an interesting option for him to re-enlist in 1864. After the War in 1866 he married a lady by the name of Eleanor Beers and headed west. His journey took him thru farming stints in or around Iowa City, Iowa- Lincoln, Nebraska- Alexandria, Nebraska and ultimately to the fertile cattle rearing meadows of the Kansas Flint Hills near a prairie community of White City, Kansas in Morris County. White City, Kansas is just north of the town of Council Grove, Kansas which received much notoriety as a supply stop on the Santa Fe Trial. I am very new to this research and can’t seem to drink enough of it in. It was on a personal pilgrimage of mine that I found his grave site located in a small rural cemetery outside White City, Kansas where his prairie burial is marked by a Civil War Marker headstone which reads…Eli Bronson-Co. B-3rd. PA Res Inf. I located his Probate Death File in the District Court Offices of Morris County, Kansas and an asset he continued to receive until his death in 1931 was his soldiers pension. He was born In Wayne County, Pennsylvania in 1840.