151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment
Union Army regiment in the American Civil War
The 151st Pennsylvania Infantry was a Union Army regiment serving for a term of nine months during the American Civil War. The regiment sustained seventy-six percent casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg, its only major engagement.
Following the war, it also became known as "The Schoolteachers' Regiment" due to the war-time enrollment of at least sixty teachers in the regiment.
History
Forming of the regiment
The regiment was recruited from across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the early fall of 1862, with companies raised from the following counties:
Companies A and C, Susquehanna County
Company B, Pike County
Company F, Warren County
Company D, Juniata County
Companies E, G, H, K, and part of I, Berks County
Remainder of Company I, Schuylkill County
The 151st Pennsylvania was formed and mustered into nine months' Federal service at Camp Curtin on the outskirts of the state capital at Harrisburg. On November 4, 1862, the company commanders met to elect regimental officers from among the unit's roster. Harrison Allen, former major of the 10th Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment and captain of Company F, was elected colonel of the regiment. George F. McFarland of Company D was elected lieutenant colonel. John W. Young of Company C was elected major. On November 26, the regiment was issued its equipment and smoothbore muskets, and sent by train to Washington, D.C.
Early service
After a halt of a few days in Washington, the 151st Pennsylvania received orders to fall in under the New York brigade of Col. Frederick George D'Utassy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment” as union Army regiment in the American Civil War. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as union Army regiment in the American Civil War. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4550264. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1862.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment primary sources, 151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment archive and 151st research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “151st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.