Beginnings
Henry Menge was born in 1848. When he was seven, a New York State census recorded that the Menge family resided in Brooklyn, that Henry's father was a baker, and that (according to his parents) everyone in the family had been born in Germany. Not long after that date, Henry's father died. The 1860 U.S. census listed his mother as a single parent, supporting herself and her four children by making garments. Life could not have been easy for the family.
When the Civil War erupted, Henry was a boy of thirteen. Only three years later, however, he seized an opportunity to ease his mother's financial burden. President Lincoln asked that New York supply 12,000 troops as soon as possible for short-term service (one hundred days), so that the regular Army troops who were protecting Baltimore and Washington D.C. could be redeployed for battle. Governor Seymour agreed, immediately dispatching 3,000 men in existing National Guard (then a brand-new term for state militia) regiments. The remainder would come from new temporary Guard regiments. Henry joined one of the latter, a Brooklyn-based regiment led by Col. Frederick A. Conkling, who had led a similar unit earlier in the war.
Young Menge likely had to misstate his age in order to enlist.
Colonel, and once Congressmen, Frederick Conkling,
who led the 84th New York National Guard Infantry
Matthew Brady photograph, via the Library of Congress
The new regiment was sent to Baltimore. Although it fought no true battles, it did fight a few skirmishes with small bands of Confederates, in which it suffered some casualties. When its time was up, Pvt. Menge and his comrades returned to Brooklyn. He was unharmed, he had seen that there was more to the world than Brooklyn, and he probably was feeling ready to start leading his own life. In part, that was because his one hundred days of active service had automatically granted him deferment from being drafted into the regular army, which remained at war.
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