"....For those men in the regiment who were either born in, resided in, or enlisted from south-central Pennsylvania, from where did they exactly come? Of the 124, a full one-quarter of them—32—claimed the small Franklin County town of Mercersburg as their home. Founded in 1780, Mercersburg—also the birthplace of James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln in the White House—was a very small town. By 1860, the total population numbered only 900 men, women, and children, and, of this number, only 89 were identified as Black. While some of the 54th’s soldiers from south-central Pennsylvania may have come from Mercersburg-proper, most hailed from the area’s surrounding townships and rural farmlands. Many likely came from a thriving African American settlement located two miles west of Mercersburg known locally as “Little Africa,” which was home to more than 400 Black men, women, and children in the years before the war. Not surprisingly, this area of south-central Pennsylvania, being located so close to Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was a heavily traveled area along the Underground Railroad and many of the African Americans residents of “Little Africa” were either once enslaved or were the children of those who had previously and successfully achieved freedom. There they sought safe haven as well as the protection of a large community, composed also of free-born Pennsylvanians. Still, the Black residents of “Little Africa” and of all of south-central Pennsylvania remained ever wary and watchful for white Fugitive Slave Patrols and “slave catchers” from the South and from within neighboring communities. In total, 88 African American men from around Mercersburg and from “Little Africa” served in the Union army, 32 of them in the 54th Massachusetts.[8]

From the area around Mercersburg came the Christy brothers—Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, and William, the sons of Jacob and Catherine Christy—who served side-by-side in the ranks of Company I, 54th Massachusetts. Of the four fighting Christy brothers, two were destined to be seriously wounded in combat, while a third died in enemy hands after falling wounded at the Battle of Olustee. There was another set of four brothers who also served from the area around Mercersburg. They were the Krunkleton Brothers (sometimes spelled Crunkleton). Cyrus, James, William, and Wesley Krunkleton—all farmers—were mustered into service on the same date—May 6, 1863—becoming privates in Company K, 54th Massachusetts. Another brother, Henry, fought in the 54th’s sister regiment, the all-Black 55th Massachusetts Infantry. Like the Christy family, the Krunkletons also paid a heavy price. Two of the brothers were wounded in combat but survived and returned home; the other two did not.

Most of the 54th’s soldiers from Mercersburg and its surrounding area were mustered into service in either late April or early May 1863, having traveled to Camp Meigs, in Readville, Massachusetts, where the regiment was being trained and organized. In late May, the 54th departed Massachusetts and sailed to the coast of South Carolina. The men of the regiment from Mercersburg and all of south-central Pennsylvania were thus many hundreds of miles away from their homes and families when in late June 1863 soldiers of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia passed directly through their home area on the invasion that would ultimately culminate at the Battle of Gettysburg. Making their way north, Robert E. Lee’s men captured and kidnapped Black women, children, and men from southern Pennsylvania, bounding them by rope, placing them in wagons, and taking them south to be sold into slavery. This was especially true in and around Mercersburg. The Reverend Philip Schaaf recorded in his diary that “public and private houses were ransacked; horses, cows, sheep, and provisions stolen day by day without mercy; negroes captured and carried back into slavery (even those I know to have been born and raised on free soil).” It was, declared Schaaf, “a regular slave hunt” in Mercersburg, which presented the “worst spectacle” he saw during the course of the war. Thomas Creigh, also of Mercersburg, echoed Schaaf’s description of events, writing about one especially “terrible day” when Confederate “guerillas” passed several times through town with “several of our colored persons with them, to be sold into slavery.” When they finally left town that day, said Creigh, they carried with them “about a dozen colored persons, mostly contrabands, women and children. . . .Some of them were bound with ropes, and the children were mounted in front or behind the rebels on their horses.” One cannot know for certain, but there is a more than probable chance that among those so brutally hunted down, kidnapped, and sold into slavery while Lee’s Confederates operated in Pennsylvania were family members and friends of those 124 men who were serving in the 54th from south-central Pennsylvania, especially those who called Mercersburg home." - www.nps.gov/articles/000/54th-massachusetts-infantry.htm