Civil War memorial marker.
The son of Phillip & Margaret (Hassinger) Wax, in 1860 he was an orphan living with and/or working for carpenter Jacob Wolf in Saville Township, Perry County, Pennsylvania. By 1865, he stood 5' 6" tall and had brown hair and gray eyes. The 1850 census lists him as a two-year-old, and the 1860 census claims he was twelve, giving doubt to the veracity of his alleged 1849 birth year.
A Civil War veteran, he enlisted in Chambersburg March 7, 1865, audaciously overstating his age by six years, and mustered into federal service there presumably on March 11 - the company register claims February 11, an impossibility if the enlistment date is correct - as a private with Co. I, 79th Pennsylvania Pennsylvania. Despite the fact that his company would discharge the service on July 12, 1865, he deserted to date June 28, 1865, and on June 24 enlisted in Harrisburg with the regular army. Assigned to Co. I, 3rd U.S. Cavalry, he saw service in the Southwest and honorably discharged at term's end June 24, 1867, at Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, a private. Surprisingly, he listed the service with the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry when he applied for a pension years later.
Following his military service, he briefly returned to Pennsylvania before heading west to Mason County, Illinois. He married Elmina Heslet February 3, 1880, in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, and fathered Joseph Valentine (b. 12/29/78), Maude Ada (b. 10/04/81 - married a Reichman), Clinton Clarence (b. 04/27/85), Mary I. (b. 08/??/87 - married Arthur Irving Van Vleck), Anna Cordelia (b. 07/08/89 - married a Lemon and Thomas B. Cotton) and Bertha Margaret (b. 08/07/95 - married Ross Wilson Myers). He was a farmer by trade.
