Christian Saalmann was baptized in the Lutheran Evangelical Reformed church as Reinhard Gottfried Christian Saalmann in Hoym, Sachsen-Anhalt (Saxony), northeastern Germany.

As Christian came of age in the late 1840's, much of Europe was embroiled in revolution.  In Northern Germany, battles were fought for religious, nationalistic and political reasons between German duchies, Prussia, the German Confederation and Denmark.  Crop failures and epidemics led to further turmoil and death. See the Wikipedia articles, The Revolutions of 1848 in the German States and the The May Uprising in Dresden, for additional background information.

Family tradition hold that he was to become a weaver, and he was also expected to take up the part-time 'Tenther' duties of his ancestors. (A 'Tenther' was a tax collector, collecting 10% of a peasant's production for the local authorities.)  But Christian Saalmann didn't want to be a 'Tenther' nor to be conscripted into the Prussian Army, then dominating the region.

At age 24, Christian married a local girl named Dorothea Rühling; their first child, a son named Carl, died in infancy. By the time they had their second child in November, 1853, Christian and Dorothea must have been planning their future, for they named their new son Christopher Columbus. Many Germans were leaving their homelands to go to America for economic opportunities, but Christian, whose economic future in feudal Saxony would have seemed assured were he to assume his hereditary role, instead sought political freedom and perhaps social freedom as well. He intended to flee his occupied homeland.

On April 1, 1854 they were in the port city of Hamburg with their four month old son, where they boarded a sailing ship for the crossing to America. Christian's widower father, Christian Sr., came with them, but they left the rest of their families behind. The day they left Hamburg 13 ships sailed from the port, 11 were headed for America.

They arrived in New York on May 16, 1854, after 45 days on the open sea. They took a small boat, which was pulled by two horses walking along the riverbank, up the Hudson River, and made their way to Detroit. They stayed in Detroit a little more than a year, and Christian supported his family there by working as a weaver. In late 1855 they moved to Indianapolis where, in November of that year, their daughter Hermiena Dorothea was born. At some time early after their arrival in America they dropped the typical German "nn" ending to their name; Saalmann became Saalman.

Life in Branchville, Indiana
They stayed in Indianapolis three years, living in a house on Elm Street. They had another daughter, Anna Amenda,  and Christian supported his family by cutting cord wood and clearing land. He had saved enough money by 1858 for them to move to the small town of Branchville, in Oil Township, Perry County, Indiana, in what is now the Hoosier National Forest. There he bought a 40 acre farm from a man named Green Lynch a couple of miles out of town. In Branchville they had their fifth and last child, Joseph Christian.  Christian's father died less than four months later.

Two years after the family had arrived in Branchville, Abraham Lincoln, who had spent his boyhood years just 30 miles from Christian's new farm, was elected President of the United States. Concerned about Lincoln's views on the issue of slavery, thirteen southern states, one after another, seceded from the Union. It was not long before Perry County found itself near the front lines in an American Civil War.

A local farmer named App Miller lived near Apalona, five miles from Christian's farm. Miller was obligated for Army service. The nature of that obligation is unknown now, since there was not yet a draft which would have compelled military service, but perhaps Miller had been a member of the state militia and was being called to duty. Miller didn't want to go, and it was perfectly acceptable in those days for a man with a military obligation to get someone to voluntarily substitute for him. The practice was so common there were standardized fees involved. Miller offered Christian 500 dollars, a very large sum in those days, to substitute for him, and Christian agreed.

Why he agreed is uncertain. He may have seen the 500 dollars as an opportunity to buy additional land or necessary farming equipment, or to pay off a mortgage on the land he already had. More than financial considerations were probably involved, since he had rejected the lifetime financial security of his life in Hoym. He agreed when no law required him to serve, and he left a young wife and four small children behind when he left. It must have made a difference to him what the war was about. He was under no illusions about the risks involved, since his agreement with Miller required Miller to look after and help Dorothea and the children if Christian didn't make it back from the war.

The American Civil War
The Civil War was to become the greatest disaster ever to befall America in its history. Both armies used military tactics essentially unchanged since the Napoleonic Wars in Europe a half century before. Unfortunately, the technology of weapons had changed dramatically in that time, they were much more efficient killing machines. Ultimately more than 3,000,000 men from both sides fought in that war, more than 600,000, one of every five, were killed. Another 600,000 men were wounded, often grievously. Very few families, North or South, escaped the war's terrible effects. Nothing, before or since, can compare.

Christian enlisted on September 29, 1861, a week after Confederate forces invaded Kentucky and occupied the city of Bowling Green, less than a hundred miles from his home in Branchville. He joined Company "D" of the 35th Indiana Infantry Regiment, which was mustered in for federal service at Camp Morton, Indiana on October 8, 1861. Commanded by an Irishman named Mullen, the regiment contained so many men of Irish heritage that it was unofficially called the "1st Irish Regiment".

At the time of his enlistment Christian was six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds. He had short black hair, dark eyes, and wore a neatly trimmed moustache which covered the full length of his upper lip. He wore a small chin beard, without sideburns, which he kept trimmed to about an inch in length.

After being mustered in, his regiment was ordered to Bardstown, Kentucky, where it received its initial training. At the same time it assisted in the defense of Kentucky by blocking a possible Confederate attack towards Louisville. When their training was completed the regiment was assigned to occupy the Confederate city of Nashville, Tennessee, which had just been captured by Union forces. While stationed at Nashville, in June of 1862, Christian was promoted to the rank of Sergeant.

This is a typical pattern. In those days, when a regiment was formed the enlisted men elected their Corporals, Sergeants and junior officers by popular vote. After the organization had been together long enough for the officers to get to know their men, they replaced inadequate personnel with other individuals who had demonstrated competence for the jobs. The German Christian must have shown considerable ability to be selected as Sergeant in an almost solidly Irish regiment.

In the summer of 1862 a Confederate Army, commanded by General Braxton Bragg, again invaded Kentucky. The Union Army to which the 35th Indiana regiment was assigned was ordered in pursuit, fighting several skirmishes with isolated Confederate units until Bragg was finally caught on October 8, 1862, near Perryville, Kentucky. Although Christian and his regiment participated in the Battle of Perryville, which forced Bragg's retreat from Kentucky, they arrived on the field late in the battle and saw only minor action.

During the Civil War it was common for one soldier, upon meeting another, to ask "have you seen the elephant?" This slang expression, and reference to an animal then considered rare, wondrous and exotic, meant "have you actually experienced combat?". While Christian may have participated in earlier skirmishes, including a sharp little fight his regiment was involved in at La Vergne, in Tennessee, he certainly "saw the elephant" in late 1862, when Bragg attempted yet another invasion. This time Bragg was trying to regain control of Nashville and all of central Tennessee. The Union Army, including the 35th Indiana, met Bragg's army near the town of Murfreesboro, on Stone's River, southeast of Nashville.

The Battle of Stones River
The great Battle of Stones River, called Murfreesboro in the south, was fought between December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863, in a cold drenching rain which turned the ground to soft mud. 56,000 Federals and 51,000 Confederates fought what one of Christian's Generals later called "one of the most fiercely contested and bloody conflicts of the war". Each side sustained about 15,000 casualties.

The 35th Indiana was in the thick of the fighting, defending a hill on the Union extreme left flank against a desperate Confederate charge which, if successful, would have won the battle. His regiment fought well and bravely, and defeated the attack, doing more than its share to secure the victory. The cost was high, and more than a third of his regiment was lost. Bragg was forced to retreat again and, licking its wounds, the Union Army pursued. Bragg was driven from Tennessee and was forced to abandon the city of Chattanooga, which was captured by the Federals.

When Bragg's army retreated into Georgia, the Union Army continued in pursuit, but now in the deep south Bragg was able to quickly gather strong reinforcements. The Union general, Rosecrans, recklessly blundered ahead, and allowed large gaps to develop between his units. They ran into a stronger and better positioned Confederate force defending Chickamauga Creek, just north and west of Atlanta. There, on September 19 and 20, 1863, amid heavily wooded terrain which hampered movement and visibility, the two armies fought a great battle, one of the most significant of the war.

The Battle of Chickamauga
At the Battle of Chickamauga the Union Army of 57,000 was defeated by 71,000 rebels, who were able to penetrate those gaps and attack Union units from three sides at once. As shattered Federal forces broke and ran a Union General, George Thomas, massed a force to block the Confederate advance and prevent a disaster. Sometimes finding themselves surrounded, Thomas and his force, which included the 35th Indiana, held firmly. They somehow stopped the rebel advance in its tracks, prevented a Union rout, and earned a place in history for Thomas that day, along with the nickname "The Rock of Chickamauga". Union losses of 17,000, actually less than the Confederate loss of over 18,000, were a tribute to their tenacious defense.

Already depleted at Stone's River, the 35th Indiana was virtually destroyed at Chickamauga. After the battle the regiment had to be pulled out of the Federal line and reconstituted by combining it with the remnants of other Indiana units.

A remarkably high proportion of the Union losses, about 6,500, were soldiers who were captured by the Confederates. Christian was one of that number. According to an affidavit submitted by his company commander, Christian was captured the day after the battle, while he was engaged in removing and bringing to safety some of his wounded comrades.

He was taken to Richmond, Virginia, to a large and dingy brick warehouse building which, before the war, had been the home of "Libby & Son, Ship Chandlers and Grocers". The Confederate government had converted this building into the prisoner-of-war camp known as Libby Prison, removing all the window glazing and replacing the glass with iron bars. Locked in tiny cells, exposed to the night cold and inadequately fed, any prisoner who looked out of a window was shot by guards constantly stationed outside the building.

So many thousands of union prisoners accumulated in Libby Prison, and on a nearby island which contained another prisoner-of-war camp known as Belle Isle, that the Confederate authorities became concerned about a possible revolt, which they feared might take over the Confederate capital. They quickly had a new prisoner-of-war camp constructed far away from Richmond.

Andersonville
Probably in February, 1864, and probably by train in a locked box car or cattle car, Christian was sent to this new camp. The Confederates at the time called it Camp Sumter, but it has become infamous in American history under the name of the little town closest to the camp site, Andersonville, Georgia.

Now, almost 130 years after its construction, some American historians believe Andersonville was not built with the intention of killing prisoners. They say a combination of human blundering, fear, the bewildering problems facing the Confederate leadership, and their hasty and ill-considered actions, were what was responsible. There was no doubt at the time however, among many on both sides of the war, that Andersonville was an extermination center. The guards were untrained Georgia militia, poorly educated, most either physically or emotionally unfit for front line service. The helpless Yankee prisoners were the only hated enemies these men ever expected to see. Whether intentionally so or not, Andersonville was appallingly lethal.

It was the most inhumane of all the locations where Confederates housed Union prisoners of war. It was not much of a camp, just an open field of about 20 acres, worthless for growing crops, through which flowed a shallow stream called Sweetwater Creek, about 24 inches wide. Around that field Confederate laborers built a plank wall, anchored by upright tree trunks imbedded in the ground. Five feet inside the wall they stretched a rope. That rope was a "dead line", and any prisoner who crossed the dead line, for whatever reason, was shot to death.

Inside this enclosure tens of thousands of captured Union soldiers were kept. They were given virtually no food, perhaps an average of 200 calories a day. Their standard daily ration, when they were able to get it, was one teaspoon of salt, three tablespoons of beans, and a handful of corn meal. Their only water for drinking and washing came from the little stream. There were no sanitary facilities, and human wastes, which were never removed, accumulated and quickly fouled the stream. No competent medical treatment was provided and no measures were taken to protect the prisoners from disease-carrying insects, which swarmed all over the site.

No shelter was provided, no blankets, and no wood for fires. Some prisoners retained their blankets after being captured, and these fortunate few were able to fashion tent shelters, until their blankets wore away. Prisoners were exposed continually to the sun and heat in summer, cold in winter, and sometimes violent rainstorms, with only the remnants of their uniforms for protection. Escape was prevented by aiming several cannons, each loaded with thousands of iron bails like giant shotguns, at the gates. Such measures were probably unnecessary, since prisoners quickly became so weak they were incapable of exertion.

Welfare packages of food, clothing, blankets and medicines were sent by Northern families to their family members who were prisoners, but these were confiscated and kept by the guards. Prisoners were supposed to receive the same rations as the guards, but the guards controlled this distribution. Every day large numbers of prisoners died, on some days more than a hundred. Some of them survived their experience, but many did not.

Opened in February, 1864, word of the conditions at Andersonville quickly reached the North. In August, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, General Sherman sent a strong cavalry force toward Andersonville, to try and save the prisoners there. The raid was unsuccessful and never reached the prison, but the Confederates, fearing another raid, began to remove the prisoners. They moved the survivors to other prisons further away from Federal forces. Although the prisoners weren't freed these new camps were run much more humanely, and as a result some prisoners survived and eventually recovered.

This respite came too late for Christian. He died at Andersonville some time between late July and mid-August, 1864. During the brief time Andersonville was in operation, somewhere between 13,000 and 16,000 prisoners died there. More Union soldiers lost their lives from the inhumane treatment of Andersonville than were killed during the three most costly battles fought during the war.

Eugene Devillez, an immigrant from Belgium, lived in Leopold, about two miles down the road from Christian's farm near Branchville. Both men had known each other well before the war. On June 10, 1864 Devillez, by then a Private in the 93rd Indiana Infantry, was captured by the Confederates in Mississippi. He arrived at Andersonville on June 21, and found Christian there, "lying sick with the Scurvy", dying of thirst, appearing more like a skeleton than a man.

Christian smoked a pipe, and during the war he had carved a pipe for himself from a block of apple wood. The pipe was not stolen by his Confederate captors, probably because he had carved into it an American eagle and the word "Union". After his capture he kept a $5 gold piece, the size of a modern dime, hidden in the bowl of his pipe, concealed beneath some burnt tobacco. He intended to use the money, if he survived his captivity, to get home on after his release. When Devillez found him he was sick, and he knew that his chances for survival were slim. He gave his pipe to Devillez, telling him about the gold piece. He told Devillez that he could use the gold piece to get home with, but if he didn't need the money for that purpose, to give it to Dorothea.

Devillez was with Christian later for an event which many of the dying prisoners took to be a miracle. In the intolerable summer heat, with nothing to drink but the foul water from the creek, a spring of clear, fresh water suddenly broke the surface of the ground inside the stockade, near where Christian lay. Devillez helped Christian to the spring so he could drink, shortly thereafter Christian died. He was 37 years of age, and Devillez' affidavit to the War Department is the only record of his death. He had been in America just ten years.

There is now a monument to that "Providence Spring" at the site. Subsequent investigation determined that the subterranean spring had been blocked during construction of the stockade, and had eventually worked its way to the surface.

Christian was originally buried in a mass trench grave at the prison site. When the war ended Clara Barton, the founder of the American nursing profession, went to Andersonville and organized a National Cemetery there to provide decent burial for the dead. He is now buried in section "F", grave number 4229, at what is now the Andersonville National Historic Site. His apple wood pipe is on display in their museum there, thanks to the efforts of Otis Saalman, his great-grandson, who was also instrumental in correcting a spelling error on the original marker.

Devillez survived his captivity, lived to reach his home, and gave Dorothea Christian's $5 gold piece. Miller also turned out to be as good as his word, he helped support Dorothea and the children as he had agreed. Devillez was moved by his prison experiences. He and two other Andersonville survivors, at their own expense, purchased in Belgium a carved wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. They gave the statue to the Saint Augustine Catholic Church, near Branchville, as a memorial to the Andersonville dead. Until his death he rarely discussed his experiences.

Captain Henry Wirz, the Commandant at Andersonville, was the only Confederate soldier put on trial after the war by US federal authorities. He was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was convicted and hanged, his defenders claimed he was insane. Historians now acknowledge that two factors were responsible for the hatred and crushing hardships inflicted on the South by northerners during Reconstruction. The first factor was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the second was the terrible stories of Andersonville brought home by surviving prisoners.

Dorothea was left a widow with four children. She made her living as a midwife, delivering babies for the women in the area, and she apparently was quite well thought of for her skills. She also did spinning for her neighbors, and she had many friends. She received a widow's pension of $8 a month from the government, plus $2 a month for each child under 16. She lost this pension on March 7, 1873, when she married Franz Thiele.

Theile took Dorothea and her two youngest children to his home in East St. Louis, Illinois. Columbus remained on the Saalman farm, and Hermiena had married George Vaupel several months earlier. Dorothea's marriage to Thiele didn't work out, and after six months, in September, 1873, she left him and returned with her children to the family home in Branchville. In an affidavit she later submitted during their divorce hearing, Dorothea said Thiele "was cruel and cross" with her and her children, being physically and verbally abusive and not providing them with the basic necessities of life.

She didn't have enough money to divorce him, and so they remained separated until Thiele filed to divorce her, charging desertion. A court hearing was scheduled in February, 1875, but she couldn't be present for the hearing, which was in East St. Louis, 375 miles by a roundabout route from Branchville. Later affidavits described her problems. She was sick with chills and fever, had no money to pay her fares, and could not physically make the trip. She would have had to take a horse and buggy to Alton, on the Ohio River, from there take a steamboat 90 miles to Louisville, Kentucky, then catch a train 250 miles to East St. Louis. The trip would have taken at least two days in good weather, but the Ohio River was blocked with ice and was impassable, even if she had been well enough to go.

She also couldn't notify the court of her inability to appear. In those days mail was delivered only once a week routinely, but with the river frozen, no steamboats carried the mail. Her inability to be present at the hearing resulted in a divorce judgment against her. Perhaps she was naive about the intricacies of American laws, perhaps she couldn't afford the expense involved, but she did not appeal this judgment. The marriage was dissolved as she desired, but the circumstances of the divorce were later to cause her considerable difficulty.

She married again at age 58 on August 8, 1885, this time to a Branchville man named Hiram Esarey. Esarey was descended from the first white man to explore and settle northern Perry County. This marriage was much more satisfactory, lasting until Hiram's death on January 22, 1891.

After he died she found herself at age 64 without an income. She applied for reinstatement of her widow's pension, but the fact that Thiele had divorced her with a judgment in his favor blocked reinstatement. The pension laws at the time required that widows divorced from subsequent husbands be blameless in those divorces. The court record stood against her.  She lived on in a tiny house in Branchville, with a small garden, spinning yarn for her neighbors and performing her services as a midwife.

Dorothea actively sought reinstatement over the years. The paperwork involved in the process of applications and appeals must have been daunting. She obtained many affidavits supporting her cause, including one from Thiele's own daughter by an earlier marriage, which confirmed his physical and verbal abuse of Dorothea. In 1909 she appealed directly to President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter written in German.

In 1910, Indiana Senator Albert J. Beveridge intervened on her behalf, as did Federal Congressmen from Indiana and Illinois. In 1911 the Secretary of the Interior personally reviewed her appeal. She pressed her cause until at least 1917, but her pension was never reinstated.

In her later years, Dorothea lived in Grayville, Illinois with her daughter Hermiena and son-in-law George Vaupel. After the death of George Vaupel, she lived with her daughter Anna Esarey, in Keenesburg, Illinois. She died there at the age of 92 on February 20, 1920, and was returned to the Walker Cemetery in Branchville where she is buried.