Henry W Spradley

Henry W Spradley, Civil War Veteran of Company G, 24th United States Colored Troops, who is buried in the former Lincoln Cemetery.

When Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers on April 14, 1861, one of the men who signed up was Henry W. Spradley.

Spradley was 31 and Black. Born enslaved near Winchester, Virginia in 1829 or 1830, he and his family had fled north. When he enlisted in the 24th United States Colored Troops in 1864, the Civil War was still raging, and although Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves through his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Southern states refused to recognize the act.

Spradley took up arms and risked a return to slavery if he were to be captured to fight for a country that did not fully recognize him as a citizen.

Prior to the Civil War, Spradley was a stone mason, likely a trade he learned in slavery. After the war ended and he returned to Carlisle, he became a janitor at Dickinson College, a post he held until his death.

When he died on April 9, 1897, 32 years to the day after the war which earned him his freedom his funeral services had to be moved from the West Street A.M.E. Zion Church to Bosler Hall, on Dickinson's campus, because the expected crowd of people could not fit into the church's hall.

Classes at the college were cancelled for the day and half the attendees at Spradley's funeral service were professors or students at the college.

Part of the funeral services included a rendition of "Safe In the Arms of the Lord," by the college quartet and the A.M.E. Zion choir.

Source: Sentinel Reporter, article by Lauren Maclane (April 16, 2011); Dickinson Archives