The National tribune., 1882-07-01
THE NEW GRAND COMMANDER.
Interesting Biographical Sketch of Pau
Vandervoort-His Military Career.

Interesting Biographical Sketch of Paul
VanderVoort-His Military Career.
Pride of ancestry among Americans, although
frequently the subject of invidiOus remark, is
as much cause for pride here as in Europe.
That ones forefathers were held in high esteem
by their compatriots, and that they rose above
the dead-level of mediocrity, and perchance
wore q title, naturally incites within the breast
Of manly man desire to show cause why he
is fitting representative in the nineteenth
century of the knight whose good right arm
carved for himself a place in the ranks of chiv-
airy three hundred years ago. What the
French Huguenots are to South Carolina and
Georgia, the English cavaliers to Virginia, the
Quakers to Pennsylvania, the Puritans to New
England, or the French refugees TO louisiana,
the Hollander is to New York. Among the
earliest settlers on Manhatten Island were
three brothers, Peter, Paul, and John VanDer-
Voort. Washington Irving assigns to the Van
DerVOort family an honorable place in his
chronicles of the Dutch colony. Paul remained
in New York, Peter emigrated to Virginia,
and John TO Canada. From the Virginia fami-
lysprang the Commander-in-C Chief of the Grand
Army of the Republic. His grandfather emil
grated to Warren county, Ohio, early in the
present century, and bore an honorable part in
the war of 1912, having been present at the
battle of the River RaisOn, and nearly all the
engagements with the French and Indians on
the Ohio frontier The maternal grandfather
of General Vandervoort gave his name to Har-
veysburg in Wayne county, where the latter
was born, July II, 1916. At ten years of age
he removed, with his parents, to Illinois, where
the family settled on farm near Bloomington.
The breaking out of the rebellion found young
Vandervoort student of fifteen years of age
at the Illinois Wesleyan University His SYM
pathies were enlisted in the cause of freedom,
and he longed to follow the flag of his country
to the tented field. Three attempts TO run
away and join an Illinois regiment were frus-
trated by his being captured and brought back
to the university. At length the dark days or
the spring of 1862 came, and with them the
call for three months volunteers TO guard
posts and communications in the rear to
allow Soldiers to go to the front The stiffness
of the midnight hour was broken at Blooming
ton by the violent ringing of bells, groupe of
students gathered upon the college campus,
where they were spleedily joined by the pro-
AeosoIs' 1he spIlI ol 40 "i' e"i"<'A III 'i10
air. With one accord they took their way to
recruiting station and were mustered into the
service of the United States. The President
with a handful of students alone remained to
Keep aglow the flame upon the altar of learning.
Out of this promising material the Sixty eight
Illinois infantry was formed, in which organi-
zation Paul became high private. The regi-
ment was at once ordered to duty at the front
and soon after reached Alexandria, Virginia
ON the Potomac. The Army of the Potomac
returning from the campaign on the Peninsula,
was being concentrated in front of Washing
ton, and the Sixty-eighth was doomed to mac