In the tumultuous decades around the Civil War, the lives of three Adams County residents – Isadore Keefer, Caroline Shenabrook, and John Wolford – became unexpectedly intertwined. Their story, marked by war, scandal, and survival, offers a window into mid-19th-century life, morals, and policing in the Gettysburg area. Isadore Keefer was a Maryland-born shoemaker-turned-Union soldier whose postwar years were marred by personal and legal troubles. Caroline Shenabrook, a farmer’s daughter from Hamilton Township, bore two illegitimate children with John Wolford before having a third with Isadore – a scandal that would bring them both before the courts. And John Wolford, himself a local farm boy and Civil War veteran, would see his surname become that of Caroline’s children. Through their experiences, we glimpse the era’s social fabric: the expectations of family and reputation, the functioning of local justice, and the use of the almshouse (poorhouse) as a refuge of last resort. In this article, we get to know Isadore.

Shoemaker and Soldier

Born around 1830 (some records say 1832) in Maryland, Isadore Keefer made his living as a shoemaker. By 1860, he was living in Hanover, York County, Pennsylvania, with his young family and working in his trade. That year’s census lists “Isadore Keever,” 28, occupation shoemaker, in Hanover – suggesting a modest but respectable working-class life. (The surname Keever would be pronounced by Germans as Keefer.) A woman named Nancy (age 19) is recorded in his household—she was Nancy Grover, Isadore’s wife, and with them are two children (Mary, 8, and John, 6) and two elderly individuals surnamed Isaac (ages 77 and 80) who may have been Nancy’s relatives. This multi-generational household hints at the era’s living arrangements, where extended family or boarders often lived under one roof, pooling resources.

When the Civil War broke out, Isadore answered the call. In October 1861, at approximately 30 years of age, he enlisted in the Union Army. He joined Company D of the 76th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry – a regiment nicknamed the “Keystone Zouaves.” Muster rolls show Isadore (recorded as “Isadore Keever”) enlisted in Hanover on October 14, 1861 and mustered into service at Harrisburg two days later as a private. Thus began three grueling years of military duty that would take him far from his shoemaker’s bench and into some of the war’s fiercest engagements.

Serving in the Department of the South and later the Virginia theater, the 76th Pennsylvania saw hard combat – the kind that could leave lasting trauma on any soldier. In June 1862, Isadore’s regiment fought at Secessionville, South Carolina, and later that fall in an expedition to Pocotaligo. But it was in July 1863, on Morris Island outside Charleston, that the Keystone Zouaves faced one of their deadliest trials. On July 11 and again on July 18, 1863, Union forces assaulted the Confederate bastion of Fort Wagner. In the first attack, the 76th Pennsylvania helped lead the charge; the regiment lost two lieutenants and 64 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, with 170 more wounded in a single desperate assault. The second attack saw additional losses, and although the 54th Massachusetts (an African-American unit) is most famous for that battle, the 76th PA’s heavy sacrifice underscored the ferocity of the fighting.

In 1864, the regiment was transferred to Virginia as part of General Butler’s forces. There, they took part in the Bermuda Hundred campaign and the bloody struggles around Petersburg and Richmond. At the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff (May 1864), the 76th Pennsylvania suffered 21 men killed or mortally wounded and 43 missing or wounded, a harrowing toll that speaks to the intensity of that engagement. Days later, at Cold Harbor in early June, they lost another nine men killed and many wounded in the infamous failed assault. The regiment then endured the long Siege of Petersburg, manning trenches through shellfire and even witnessing the cataclysmic Crater explosion in July (where a mine blown under Confederate lines resulted in carnage). By late 1864, the original three-year enlistments were expiring. Isadore Keefer mustered out on November 28, 1864, honorably discharged just weeks before his regiment would go on to fight at Fort Fisher in early 1865. He had survived a punishing itinerary of battles. It is not hard to imagine that the cumulative stress of combat – the close-range grappling at Fort Wagner, the slaughter at Cold Harbor, the grinding siege duty – might have left Isadore with invisible wounds in an era that knew nothing of terms like “PTSD.”

Homecoming and Scandal

Returning home to Pennsylvania after three years of war, Isadore tried to resume civilian life – but evidence suggests he struggled. Within a few years, his name became entangled in the public records of Adams County for unhappy reasons. The most notorious incident came in 1869, when Isadore Keefer was hauled before the court on charges of “adultery” and “fornication and bastardy” – an old-fashioned legal term meaning fathering a child out of wedlock. The complainant was Caroline Shenabrook, a local woman nearly 10 years his junior.

At the April 1869 term of the Adams County Court of Quarter Sessions, a jury heard testimony of Isadore’s liaison with Caroline. The outcome: he was acquitted of adultery but found guilty of fornication and bastardy (much like Captain James Wade, father of Jennie Wade) with Caroline. In effect, the jury decided he had indeed fathered an illegitimate child with her (triggering legal responsibility), though for whatever reason they did not convict him of adultery (perhaps because Caroline was unmarried – meaning her act was “fornication,” while his would be “adultery” only if he had a legal wife at the time, which he certainly did).

The court imposed the usual sentence, which in such cases was not imprisonment but a financial bond or maintenance order to support the child. Nineteenth-century Pennsylvania treated fornication/bastardy as a crime largely to ensure fathers provided for children so they would not become charges of the county poor authorities. Isadore’s conviction thus required him to pay for the child’s upkeep – a public acknowledgement of paternity that surely damaged his reputation. (Notably, if Isadore was still married to Nancy in 1869, this affair would have been an even greater disgrace – suggesting he betrayed his own wife. Surviving records list Nancy as his wife in 1860 and again in the 1870s, so it appears he was married during his involvement with Caroline, making the “adultery” charge quite literal.)

The troubles did not end there. A few years later, Isadore and his wife Nancy had a violent falling-out. On August 21, 1876, Nancy swore out a complaint of assault and battery against her husband in Adams County court. In the docket he is listed under the variant name “Isadore Kever,” but the identity is clear. A summons for witnesses was issued, suggesting the case was bound for trial. The specifics of the incident are lost to us – perhaps a domestic fight that turned physical. In an era when the concept of “domestic abuse” received scant public attention, it is telling that Nancy sought legal protection. The local justice system in the 1870s did prosecute such cases when brought forward, but typically the outcomes were mild by modern standards (fines, peace bonds, or short jail terms) unless severe injury was inflicted. We do not know the verdict of Nancy’s complaint; however, the mere fact it reached court implies a serious rupture in the Keefer household.

By this time, Isadore Keefer’s life was unraveling. Whether due to war trauma, alcoholism, poverty, or all of the above, the former soldier found himself unable to maintain stability. Sometime in the late 1870s, he became an inmate of the Adams County Almshouse – essentially the poorhouse – on the Harrisburg Road north of Gettysburg. The almshouse offered rudimentary shelter for the county’s destitute, sick, and insane. On August 20, 1879, Isadore died there, only 46 or 47 years old. His occupation was still listed as “shoemaker” and his cause of death is not recorded in the surviving register, but one imagines his final years were haunted by ill health or despair (perhaps compounded by the breakdown of his marriage and his estrangement from family). Isadore was buried on the almshouse grounds, in the Old Almshouse Cemetery (also called the County Home Cemetery) in Cumberland Township. This was a potter’s field on the far fringes of the Gettysburg battlefield where the unclaimed poor were interred. No headstone marked his grave (though it does now). It was a sad end for a man who had marched off to war in 1861 full of purpose.

The trajectory of Isadore Keefer’s life – honorable service followed by personal downfall – was not unique in the postwar era. Many Civil War veterans struggled upon returning home, facing economic hardship, disability, or psychological scars (“soldier’s heart,” as they called it). Adams County’s almshouse records show multiple one-time soldiers ending up there in old age or infirmity. Isadore’s case also highlights 19th-century social attitudes: how moral transgressions like adultery or fathering a child out of wedlock were made criminal matters to be handled in court, reflecting the community’s concern with public order and the support of innocent children. The usual sentence for maintenance in his bastardy case demonstrates the period’s approach – less about punishing sin and more about preventing burden on the taxpayers. And the assault charge by his wife points to the limited but emerging recourse women had against abusive husbands through surety of the peace or assault prosecutions. In short, Isadore’s postwar saga was shaped by the local criminal justice system and welfare institutions every bit as much as by his own choices.