Josiah Gregg

1840–1929
Hometown: Bath, Steuben County, New York

Before the Civil War, Josiah Collins Gregg was a schoolteacher and clerk.

Four years older than Charley Brother, Gregg and his friends took care of Charley. After the war was over, Charley’s father helped them both pay for a substitute to get both Gregg and Charley back home to Bath, NY.

In February 1865, after fighting in the Battle of Mobile Bay, both Gregg and shipmate “Dora” Harris stopped home in Bath. The Steuben Courier reported of the 15th, “Life in the gallant Navy seems to agree with them.”

Gregg’s sister Maggie married Marcus “Mark” Harris, Dora’s brother, during the war. Mark later became a wealthy merchant living in Cohocton, NY. During the war Gregg sent a photograph of himself to Mary Brother, the older sister of Charley, and it would not be lost on the boys to try to stay together before, during, and after the Civil War. But Gregg took off for Los Angeles and later Addison, NY as well as Hornellsville, NY as a crockery dealer and Michigan and Minnesota. His pension records show he suffered from rheumatism and deafness, stating that he was “unable to hear the ladies.”

In 1910 he applied for the Civil War Campaign badge with the General of the Marine Corps and after this developed chronic tuberculosis.

His Civil War journal was published in 2013. The Diary of a Civil War Marine: Private Josiah Gregg, edited by Wesley Moody and Adrienne Sachse.