In the meantime Sergeant Steckner has returned and is with me in my tent. Before I had the opportunity to report I am notified by Captain Theilkuhl, Assistant Adjutant General of the Division, that a forage party must leave for Manassas Gap to collect ordnance and other lost articles. I prepare myself to go along but first go over to the regiment to collect my salary from the paymaster $443.56 - for four months. When I returned the expedition already had left and I had to spur at full speed until I finally caught up with them.
Close by a farm near Manassas a great number of left and destroyed articles. Among other things nailed iron cannon whose gun carriage we destroyed. Many bayonets, limberboxes etc. etc. Here I find a beautiful colts revolver (navy) which I left with Assistant Adjutant General Theilkuhl, upon his request, with the understanding that he did not have one. Later I found out that he has a very beautiful one. - - "Oh how dirty."
The cannon was connected with a heavy cable (whch had been left there) To the front wagon of a guncarriage, attached to a freight wagon in the rear and so transported homewards. We had gone as far as the rail road of Manassas Gap where we found ruins of terrible destruction. About one hundred freight cars of the rail road with freight for delivery to the military. An endless row of iron implements, burned weapons, shot and burst bombs, chains, saws, vast stocks of horseshoes etc. axes, anvils. We loaded two wagons with horseshoes for the horses and mules. The fourth wagon pulled the cannon and had parts of weapons and accoutrements. Return arrival about three o'clock. Out there we met General Mc Leans brigade who were returning from an extended reconnaissance. They had been about eight miles beyond Manassas. Upon returning I find another wagonload of Infantry and Cavalry munitions in our camp which was found in a farmhouse in Centerville. (Northern Ammunition). Sergeant Steckner who went to Fairfax to obtain permission for disposal of the munitions which was given to us, for lack of transportation, by the Indiana battery, has returned and brings a letter from Captain Dessauer with $132 - which I am to pay out to the officers from the fortyfifth regiment for which purpose I go there and take care of several things. Bill from Pierz paid $17.97. - De Kalb and Blenker regiment are going as far as Stone Bridge. The horse which I borrowed from Fanninger (sentence not finished)
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Thus concludes the known existing diary of Friedrich Ludwig Bisky.
18 Oct 1817 - 2 May 1863
Photographic copy, of a portrait of Friedrich Bisky, drawn by Salomon Levy in 1849. Bisky was born in Prussia in 1817 and died at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. His military service file is available in NNMS. The photograph was donated by Dr. Kurt Wernicke of the Museum for German History in East Berlin*; the original drawing is in the Jagella University Library in Krakow, Poland. The location of the negative is unknown.
Friedrich Ludwig Bisky
Birth Record copy
*Copy accessed 1986.
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I will periodically post further information about Louis Bisky and members of the 45th NY who were mentioned in the diary.
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