On February 5, 1885, the following notice appeared in the [Washington DC] National Tribune.
Ten months later, this plaintive notice appeared in the Fort Scott (Kansas) Monitor:
Mrs. Mary Ann Riker of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, then eighty-five years old, was searching for her son, Joseph who had disappeared years before somewhere in the West. Joseph served in the Union army in the Civil War and Mary, who had been widowed for decades, sought confirmation of Joseph's death to support her application for a military pension available to her as her son's financial dependent.
The Riker family (sometimes spelled Ryker) lived in Greenburgh dating back at least to 1840. That year, Peter and an unnamed adult female headed a household the included four young males and three young females. The 1850 census listed Peter (60 years old) and Mary Ann (49) with children Golden (19), Oman (16), Mary (13), Joseph (11) and Sidney (9). All are listed as "black" by the census taker and Peter, Golden and Oman are described as laborers. Significantly, Peter was a property owner. In light of their ages, it is quite possible, although unknown, if Peter and Mary were born into slavery, which was abolished in New York through a gradual process ending finally in 1827. Peter died on Jan. 19, 1851 at the age of 68; Mary Ann never remarried. After Peter's death, the family stayed intact in Greenburgh (post office Tarrytown). In 1860, an oldest son, Alexander (32) was listed in the Riker household and described as a sailor. Golden, now aged 25, remained with the family, along with Mary (20), Joseph (19) and Sidney (17). Indeed, the ages do not match up among the various censuses, but military records consistently show that Joseph was born in 1839.
As the secession crisis of 1860 escalated, Westchester County showed the same tendency toward Southern sympathies as New York City. In the November 1860 presidential election,the county voted for Stephen Douglas and the Democrat-Fusion ticket (54%) over Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln (46%). The county's newspapers, led by Edmund Sutherland of White Plains' Eastern State Journal remained stridently anti-Lincoln, and supported the South and slavery. While Greenburgh and other towns did fulfill their military service quotas, anti-war agitation persisted as seen in the July 1863 Draft Riots which spread to Westchester County through attacks on military draft offices, including in Tarrytown, and threats against government officials in White Plains, although the county did not see violence against Black residents as in New York City.
Many Northern Blacks were initially skeptical about the war effort as they were not eager to defend a union that preserved slavery. That reluctance, however, rapidly changed after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which explicitly made freedom for the enslaved a fundamental war goal along with restoration of the Union. With Black recruitment into the United States army authorized beginning in January 1863, Massachusetts led the way in forming Black regiments, first organizing the famous 54th (immortalized in the movie Glory) and 55th Massachusetts Infantry regiments, followed by the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. Rhode Island and Connecticut recruited Black regiments of their own with the 29th Connecticut Infantry and the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. New York, however, with a Democratic governor, dragged its feet and it was not until late in 1863 when the Union League club sponsored the 20th United States Colored Troops that the first New York Black regiment formed. Two more New York USCT regiments- the 26th and 31st - would follow. In the fall and winter of 1863, however, many young Black New York men, impatient to serve, traveled to New England to enlist in the first Black regiments. In her study of Black soliders from The Hills neighborhood of the West Harrison/ White Plains, Dr Edythe Quinn wrote that these men volunteered to fight to "destory slavery; to demonstrate their manhood; and to secure their civil rights, especially the right to vote." Most men from The Hills joined the 29th Connecticut and 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. [Quinn, Freedom Journey, pp. 29; 70-71]. So far, I've found only five or six Black men from the Town of Greenburgh who enlisted in the Civil War army and Joseph Riker is the only soldier I've identified from the village of Hastings.
Joseph A. Riker was one of these young men eager to fight against the Confederate enslavers and secure rights for his family and people. Mary A. Riker's pension application and newspaper ads state that Joseph first served in the Harris Light Cavalry (2nd New York Cavalry, regiment, named for New York's Senator Ira Harris) as early as 1862. I cannot verify Riker's service in this regiment. He may have had some affiliation with this unit although almost certainly not as an enlisted trooper. His enlistment and subsequent service in the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, however, is well documented.
Joseph traveled to Newton, Massachusetts where he enlisted on January 6, 1864, in Company B of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry regiment for a three year term. His enlistment papers describe him as 5' 5.5" tall with black hair and black eyes and the occupation of "horseman." The 5th Mass Cavalry was a "colored" regiment although the commissioned officers were entirely white. The regiment's first companies (each "company" within a regiment was typically 100 men) assembled late in January and Riker must have impressed the officers as he was given the rank of quarter master sergeant and then promoted to first sergeant for Company B on March 31, 1864. [Note: much of this account of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry is drawn from Steven M. Labarre, The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War (2016) and also, Massachusetts in the Civil War.] The regiment trained for several months near Boston as volunteers filled out its twelve companies. The colonel of the 5th Mass Cavalry, Henry Sturgis Russell, was a cousin and Harvard classmate of Robert Gould Shaw, who had fallen the previous July leading the 54th Mass in the charge featured in Glory. Riker's comrades in Company B included Sergeant Charles Douglass, the son of Frederick Douglass, who had previously joined the 54th Mass but left that unit because of illness before enlisting in the 5th Mass Cavalry.
Another Company B soldier, Franklin Jennings, was the son of Paul Jennings who, as a boy, was a personal servant to President James Madison in the White House, and later wrote a memoir of his experiences. [Labarre, p. 62]. The 5th Mass. Cav. found another presidential connection when Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson of Pres. John Quincy Adams (and great-grandson of Pres. John Adams), joined the regiment as an officer and later replaced Col. Russell as the unit's commander. Finally, filling its roster with 37 officers and 893 troopers divided into twelve companies, the 5th Mass Cavalry departed Boston for Washington DC in May 1864.
Joseph Riker's military record is uneventful as he was present at all roll calls, and never recorded as wounded or absent on sick leave. He must have been an ideal solider and respected non-commissioned officer. We must rely on the chronicle of the movements and campaigns of the 5th Mass Cavalry to tell the story of Riker's Civil War experience in which, as first sergeant, he was, in rank, the senior Black enlisted man in Company B.
To the extreme dissatisfaction of all the men, the regiment had been "dismounted" from their horses after leaving Boston and were then trained briefly as infantry. After a stop in Washington DC, the regiment was sent to the Union army transit hud at City Point, Virginia on the James River and assigned to picket and guard duty which required extreme vigilence. On June 15, 1864, the 5th Mass Cav engaged in its first and most significant combat when the 18th Corps - comprised of Union colored troops - attacked a Confederate position blocking the road to Petersburg, Virgina. After intial confusion, the Black Union soldiers triumphed by seizing the Confederate position and sending their foes in retreat.
Baylor Farm was a minor clash and Union troops subsequently failed to capitalize on the Black soldiers' achievement but the battle proved significant as the first offensive carried out by Black soldiers in the Civil War's eastern theater. The performance of the 5th Mass Cavalry at Baylor Farm was debated then and now. The cavalry regiment was insufficiently trained as infantry and, consequently, 18th Corps commanders were hesitant to rely on the 5th in combat. The 5th was placed in reserve initially but then did engage in fighting, before being returned to a reserve position after the Baylor Farm defenses were captured. The 5th Mass Cavalry. suffered 3 men killed and 19 wounded at Baylor Farm.
At the end of June, the regiment was assigned to guard Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Maryland, where it was stationed for the remaining six months of 1864. To the regiment's great joy, they received horses and were returned to cavalry service during this time. The regiment was sent back to the Petersburg front in late March 1865 in time for the last onslaught on Petersburg. On April 3, 1865, the 5th Mass Cavalry took part in perhaps the most triumphant moment in American history when they joined the first Union troops to enter and capture Richmond. Riker and his comrades would always remember the jubilation of their newly emancipated brethren who shouted "God bless you: We have been waiting for you and looking for you a long time," and cheered the Black troopers as they rode through the liberated capital. The next day, April 4, the regiment had the privilege of escorting and guarding President Lincoln when he came to tour the fallen city and received a liberator's welcome from the city's Black residents. As first sergeant of Company B, Joseph Riker would have had a significant role in all these historic events. [Labarre, p. 130-5].
Even as the war ended, the 5th Mass Cavalry remained in service. As tensions rose with Mexico, the regiment was sent to Texas in June 1865 along with several other regiments, mostly Black, to guard the border. The conditions were appalling and all the regiments suffered greatly with many more men succumbing to illness on the border than had fallen in battle during the war. Finally, at the end of October, the regiment, along with Riker, boarded ships for Boston where the men were paid and discharged from the army. Some men stayed in Boston long enough to enjoy a triumphant parade in December and deliver their regimental flag to the Massachusetts state house where it remains to this day.
It is unclear what happened to Joseph A. Riker after his discharge from service. His mother wrote that the family lost contact with him after 1868. Mary Ann Riker believed that her son had migrated to Kansas, Perhaps like other veterans, including comrades from the 5th Mass. Cav., Joseph sought to claim homestead act land out West. Like many settlers in the West, however, he disappeared, with his mother never learning of his fate or the location of his grave to mourn him.
Joseph's mother, Mary Ann, never remarried after becoming a widow in 1851. Beginning in 1885, Mary Riker, then 85 years old, began applying to the federal government for a pension. Mary's application claimed that Joseph was wounded in the head, and contracted dyspepsia and pleurisy during his service at Richmond in 1864. Mary asserted that Joseph's death in Kansas in 1884 to 1885 resulted from illnesses contracted during military service. The War Department, however, responded that Joseph's military records showed no record of any wounds or diseases during his time in the army. Certainly, Joseph's complied service record show him present for duty at all recorded roll calls. The much needed pension was never awarded.
Source: National Archives, Joseph A. Riker Pension File.
The Riker family continued to own property in Hastings for several decades. In 1893, the Rikers lost a home and lot near the corner of Ravensdale and Farragut to a tax foreclosure. The Riker family appeared to have held property in Hastings, primarily in the Ravensdale Road neighborhood, until at least 1940 when the the Riker landholdings were subject to tax foreclosures by the Town of Greenburgh and Village of Hastings-on-Hudson.
Background:
For the story of the families of Black Civil War soldiers in the North and their fight for justice during and after the Civil War, see, Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. The Families Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice (2022)
For the story of the Westchester County Black experience during the Civil War with a focus on The Hills community, see. Edythe Ann Quinn, Freedom Journey: Black Civil War Soldiers and The Hills Community, Westchester County, New York (2015)
For an excellent book-length account of the career of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry along with profiles of many of its officers and troopers, see: Steven M. LaBarre The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War (2016)
