U.S. Colored Troops Civil War Artifacts at Landis Valley Museum

More than 178,000 African Americans fought for the North during the last two years of the American Civil War in units that became known as the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.). One of those U.S.C.T. soldiers was John Warful (1838–1923) — the spelling of whose name varies — of Chester County. Private Warful, of Company C, 32nd Regiment, was nineteen years old when he mustered in on February 9, 1864, at Camp William Penn, the Union Army’s largest training facility for African American soldiers, located at LaMott, Montgomery County, ten miles north of center-city Philadelphia. Of the 11,000 soldiers trained at the camp, 8,612 were from Pennsylvania. Warful was mustered out with his regiment on August 22, 1865. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster holds an exceptionally rare cartridge box and a rifled musket bearing Warful’s name. PHMC is observing “Black History in Pennsylvania: Communities in Common” as its annual theme for 2010.