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Horatio Schowerman
Born 1840 Died 1935
Red Hook Methodist Cemetery. ME Cemetery Map: 31 C, west side to the southwest of the Near plot.
Also known as Horatio Sherman, this veteran of the Civil War lived to 95 years of age. He was interviewed for an article in the Rhinebeck Gazette published on the 16th of August 1920, which frustratingly leaves out many details that a modern researcher would love to know; however, what was recorded is a profile of an aged, local veteran who had an interesting life. Born in 1840 to William Showerman and Eve Funk of Red Hook, Schowerman left home at ten years of age just after he was listed with his family in the 1850 census to make his own way in the world. He told the Gazette interviewer that he had not spent one day in school. “My people was poor and they had to pay schooling in that time...Poor people couldn’t go to school for nothing like they do now,” Schowerman said. He worked for Alvie Coon for 28 years, and when he was interviewed at 86, he was gardening for Will Aucock. He said he was too feeble to walk himself home and had to have Will give him a ride. “My head pains me and I’ve got the rheumatiz in the worst way,” he admitted. He married Catherine Redder who died March 3, 1914, at 83. After she was gone, Schowerman said that he wasn’t ashamed to make his own meals, living with his bachelor son George L. Sherman. In 1920 they are both enumerated on East Market Street in Red Hook as farm laborers. Horatio Schowerman enlisted on August 3, 1864, while residing in Fishkill. He was 24 years old. He and Company F of the 150th New York Infantry participated in Sherman’s March (no relation) to the sea, and mustered out after one year at the close of the war on June 8, 1865. The Gazette did not record any details of the battle other than what he had to say--with the reporter attempting to re-create his informal speech--about the marching and the food:
“We drew seven days’ rations and we didn’t draw them again for sixty-seven days. We marched ninety miles for four weeks once without hardly a chance to get something to eat. And then when we cum hum [sic], we was there to Raleigh and they gave us eighteen days’ rations to make Richmond and we made Washington in eighteen days. We hoofed it every step from Raleigh to Washington!”
It seems Schowerman left Red Hook in the fall of 1920 to live with son George in the Rondout section of Kingston across the river. He died in 1935 and is buried next to his wife, Catherine Sherman and brother Allen Showerman, who also served in the same company in the Civil War.