Peter D. Boyer is a great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather to most of us. At the start of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln requested that Pennsylvania form three cavalry units. Peter Boyer, just a teenager, enlisted in the 17th Pennsylvania Cavalry, which was one of the units Lincoln requested.
One night during the war, Peter stood guard at a tent in the battlefield. He described seeing President Lincoln pass in and out of the tent, “wearing his stovepipe hat, a shawl, and a sad worried look on his face.”
Peter Boyer and his unit were encamped in Washington D.C. at the end of the war with other Union soldiers. He was in Washington when John Wilkes Booth shot and killed President Lincoln.
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