TWINS, 90, MEET TO RECALL CIVIL WAR
(The following was taken from the Defiance, Ohio, Crescent News---)
Paul and Henry Berlin, twin brothers now in the ninetieth year, have just re-fought the battle of the Civil War in which they and three other brothers among the 20 children in their family took part.
Henry Berlin returned to Findlay Monday after visiting his brother Paul at his home, 424 East Second street, here. Of the 20 brothers and sisters in the Berlin family, natives of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, nine are still living, Mr. Berlin said today. Three of the five boys who fought for Lincoln are hale and hearty. The third brother lives at Warsaw, Ind.
'If my knees were a bet steadier, I could get out and husk corn yet,' Mr. Berlin declared. 'Maybe I wore them out running so much in the army, for I was with the boys at Bull Run, took part in the battle of Chancellorsville, marched with Sherman to Atlanta and the sea, and was in the great review down Potomac Avenue in '65.
"Every one of my brothers went through the war without being wounded.
Mr. Berlin has seen two sections of the Middle West change from virgin forest, swamp and prairie to fine farms. His father was a weaver and migrated to Wyandot county, Ohio, in 1852.
'In those days we cleared and plowed, and mowed and cradled between spells of the ague. The country was swamp and the chills and fever took more folks than there was well ones to nurse them. In the morning you'd hug a red hot stove and eat quinine and in the afternoon you'd drink fever tea and burn up.
'Two winters I worked for a farmer in Marion county. I fed 100 cattle and 600 sheep, pulled the corn for them and hauled them prairie hay and cut wood for two fire places. There were no alarm clocks in those days, but that farmer never failed to thump the head of my bed up in the loft where it was colder than all outdoors at 4:30 in the morning.
'When I came back from the war, I went to Hillsdale county, Michigan, and took up a farm that had just five acres cleared and fenced and without any buildings on it. That was my home for 60 years.'
A year ago Mr. Berlin moved to Defiance with his daughter, Mrs. Charles Gish and her family. His brother is more active than he, Mr. Berlin acknowledges. He has been a farmer too, moving to Findlay about the time oil was discovered there, 30 years ago."
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