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Our History: Flushing hero, scoundrel met during Civil War

By Joan Brown Wettingfeld

Sometimes, quite fortuitously, one interesting story leads to another though the two subjects may be as diverse as possible. Such was the case when I started to research the life of Jacob Roemer (1818-1896), who became one of Flushing’s Civil War heroes.

Born in Germany, Roemer came to the United States at the age of 22, a shoemaker by trade. By 1842 he had settled in Flushing, and in 1845 he enlisted in the local Light Horse Cavalry. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Roemer had attained the rank of lieutenant and a year later had risen to the rank of captain.

His new role in the war was challenging, and it was not long before he was plagued by desertions and transfers of needed personnel as well as their loss due to disease. Typhoid fever caused by polluted water was a constant problem in the ranks.

Trained as an artillery specialist, he was faced with commanding a Light Artillery Corps. There came a time when his men were granted a furlough, and when they arrived in town at the Flushing Depot the troops and he were greeted as celebrities.

In 1864 Roemer was wounded and later promoted to the rank of major. When the war ended he came home escorting his troops to an elaborate reception in Flushing including cannon fire and the ringing of church bells.

It was not long, perhaps two weeks, before the erstwhile war hero and survivor of nine wounds and 57 engagements was back at work in his boot and shoe shop on Main Street, Flushing. According to the Flushing Cemetery Association’s “Wonderland of a Million Blooms,” when he died in 1896 at the age of 78 he was buried in Flushing Cemetery.

Quite independently of his story I came upon the unlikely hero of then Capt. Roemer’s corps who became notorious in Victorian England for his flamboyant lifestyle and who led a double life among the rich and famous and was at the same time a notorious criminal and thief. His name was Adam Worth, who grew up poor and was determined after the Civil War to enjoy camaraderie with the rich.

Born to an impoverished German-Jewish family in Germany in 1814, Worth and his family emigrated to the United States when he was 5. They went to Cambridge, Mass., where his father opened a tailor shop, and young Adam watched his family struggle to make ends meet. As he grew older he observed the show of wealth and privilege in and around Boston and longed to emulate the lifestyle he saw. It was not long before he resolved to better himself.

In 1860 Worth came to New York City and, as his biographer states, “took his first and only honest job.” It lasted one month as he served as a clerk in a department store. The Civil War had begun and the North called on men to come out to save the Union. Worth evaluated the situation and enlisted not so much because of his patriotism but for the adventure of it all. Besides which he was guaranteed an attractive $1,000 bounty.

Lying about his age (he was 17 not 21), he went off among the other raw recruits to the boot camp of the 34th Light Artillery out of Flushing. The regiment drilled on Long Island about a month and went south to join the Grand Army of the Republic. His captain was none other than Roemer, who saw to it that the young man was quickly made a corporal, then a sergeant and eventually was put in charge of a cannon battery.

The 24th New York skirmished with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s forces in the hills of Virginia below our capital, and Worth’s cannoneers distinguished themselves at Manassas Junction, Bull Run, one of the fiercest battles of the war. Roemer was to comment, “Bullets shot and fell like hail in a rainstorm.”

Worth was wounded and accidentally listed as dead. He learned of the error while he was recuperating at Georgetown Hospital and he walked out after his convalescence, in his mind at least, “a free man.” His sole ambition at this time was to get rich.

What he did thereafter was to continually enlist in one regiment at a time under an assumed name and collect a bounty and then desert. His biographer maintains that what he did was to have a financial plan and that he was not cowardly. He repeatedly found himself in the thick of battle, including the Battle of the Wilderness. Word was out, however, that the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency was sent to find such runaways who, like Worth, were considered “war spoilers.” It was now that the young soldier fled to New York. By that time Lee had surrendered.

Joan Brown Wettingfeld is a historian and freelance writer and can be reached at JBBAY@AOL.com.