Today in 1961, a group of men located in the town of Morgantown, West Virginia, were encouraged to sit through the film, “Sunset at Appomattox.” The film was shown during the business meeting of the West Virginia Muzzle Loaders Association at Westover Park at 7 p.m. and the president, Robert Losh, asked that all members attend. The reason? The men needed “additional planning…for the group’s part in the re-enactment of the Battle of Philippi” that following June 3rd.1
Don’t try to connect the muzzle loaders with the final battle in the Wars of the Second Triumvirate in 42 BC at Philippi in Macedonia. That won’t work. Instead, think Civil War and 3 June 1861, when the first significant land battle of that war was fought in what was then Philippi, Virginia (now West Virginia).
This battle – or skirmish – lacked fatalities, but it was not without its injuries. A cannon ball slammed into a young Confederate soldier named James E. Hanger, an 18-year old college student, and damaged his leg below the knee. He became the first amputee of the Civil War, and a Union surgeon performed the surgery.2
After Hanger recovered, he returned to his hometown in Virginia. He made an artificial leg from whittled barrel staves with a hinge at the knee and his design worked so well that the Virginia State Legislature commissioned him to manufacture the “Hanger Limb” for other wounded Civil War veterans.
Mr. Hanger patented his prosthetic device in 1871 and founded what is now the Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc. Today, with 600 patient care centers nationwide, Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics is the world’s “premier provider of prosthetic and orthotic services – committed to offering the most advanced technology, clinically unique programs and unsurpassed customer service.”
Training for musket practice is one thing. Frankly, I’d like to know if there was a surgeon on board during that centennial re-enactment at Philippi, West Virginia on 3 June 1961. For that matter, I wonder how many of those same men knew about James Hunter.
- The Morgantown Post, 20 March 1961, pg. 7.
- Driver, Mr. Robert J. Jr., 14th Virginia Cavalry. Lynchburg and Appomattox, Virginia: H. E. Howard, Inc., 1998. 131.
