Civil War Service

Civil War Service

At the beginning of the American Civil War, Miles Rock enlisted in the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps. On June 4, 1861, he mustered into Company B of the Thirtieth Regiment, First Reserve, for three years’ service. As a headquarters clerk, Miles Rock was responsible for copying out the orders and correspondence of his commanding officers. Later in the war he ran a regimental printing shop and produced an abundance of printed materials including Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, letterheads, and court-martial records. Miles Rock and his regiment saw heavy fighting in the Seven Days’ Battles in Virginia in 1862. John Rock, his younger brother, would be killed in action in Virginia in 1864. Before the war’s end, Miles Rock transferred to the Signal Corps. As a signalman, Rock was assigned temporarily to the command of the notorious federal cavalry general Judson Hugh Kilpatrick, who earned the nom-de-guerre “kill-cavalry” for his daring and ruthless raids into Confederate territory. Miles Rock participated in one of Kilpatrick’s famous raids in 1864, and his memoir of the operation was published in a Lancaster newspaper. At the war’s end, Miles Rock mustered out of federal service as a private first class. He later sought an officer’s commission with the post-war signal corps, but this posting never materialized.