Michael Sowers

After losing that horse, he charged the enemy works on foot.

Michael Sowers was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 14 September 1844. His name also appears as Michael A. Sauers. He enlisted in Pittsburgh in March 1864 and served as a private in Company L, 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry. That year the Union cavalry fought through the Virginia campaigns as the armies settled into the long struggle around Petersburg.

On 1 December 1864 Sowers took part in the attack at Stony Creek Station, south of Petersburg. His regiment and the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry approached a defended Confederate position. The attack depended on the mounted men closing quickly with the earthworks, but his own horse was shot beneath him during the advance.

Sowers continued on foot. His Medal of Honor citation specifically records that he "voluntarily and on foot participated in the cavalry charge" and behaved with exceptional bravery throughout it (https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/michael-a-sowers). Losing his mount had not taken him out of the attack; he pressed on toward the fort with the other troopers.

A later account attributed to Sowers in Deeds of Valor describes the two Pennsylvania regiments dividing to attack from opposite directions. He remembered taking his Spencer firearm and running ahead after the horse fell. He entered the fort among the leading soldiers as the 16th Pennsylvania came in from the other side. In that recollection he did not insist on having been the first man inside, explaining that the excitement of the charge had left him little opportunity to look around. Both the citation and his subsequent account place the emphasis on his decision to keep fighting after being dismounted.

He completed his military service in July 1865 and was mustered out at Lynchburg, Virginia. Recognition of the Stony Creek action came more than thirty years later, when his Medal of Honor was issued on 16 February 1897. The award connected his brief wartime service as a private with an act remembered by the men who had taken the Confederate position.

Sowers lived into the twentieth century and died on 7 January 1920 at Findley, Pennsylvania. He was buried in St Columbkille Cemetery at Imperial, west of Pittsburgh, returning in death to the region from which he had enlisted.