Civil War for the day

Courtesy of the ladyfriend, this local history:
Death was a familiar intruder in American lives in the Nineteenth Century. Infant mortality was commonplace, as were deaths from childbirth, infections, and an array of diseases. The need for a consecrated burial site loomed large over the members of Adath Jeshurun synagogue in Philadelphia, whose numbers would grow to 127 by the mid-1860s.
After Adath Jeshurun's founding members had rented a meeting place, and secured the services of a hazzan to lead them in prayer and to teach in a school for their children, land was purchased for a cemetery at Bridge and Walker streets, in the semi-rural town of Frankford which had only recently been incorporated into the city of Philadelphia.
It was 1861, just in time for the blood bath that was the Civil War.
During the next four years, 481 Jews from Philadelphia served in the Union Army. In total, of the three million soldiers (both North and South) who fought in the Civil War, some 8,000 were Jews, many recent German immigrants with little knowledge of English. Three are known to have been buried in Adath Jeshurun cemetery, but there are probably more.
Drummer boys were not permitted to carry guns, but their role in the infantry was critical. On an officer's command, the drummer signaled when to march, when to shoot, and when to retreat.
Private Solomon Aarons was a drummer boy, enlisting at age fifteen in Company B of the Pennsylvania 69th Regiment, known as the Philadelphia Brigade; he served from October of 1861 to July of 1865. His regiment was all Irish, except for one Quaker and two Jews. Unarmed, he took part in twelve battles. His brigade, entrenched on Cemetery Ridge, was the focus of the infamous suicidal Confederate attack known as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Aarons survived the war, and died in 1902. He and his wife Rachel are buried at Adath Jeshurun cemetery.
Private Asher Asher (a member of Keneseth Israel synagogue) was the other Jew in the 69th Pennsylvania; shot while on guard duty, he died of his wounds in 1862.