Mount Union borough

Michael Hiney, soldier and squire

Born in Lancaster County on October 27, 1829, Michael Hiney came to Mifflin County with his parents in 1839. He went to school there and then learned shoemaking, the trade he would come back to after the war.

He enlisted in September 1861. On October 9 the Lewistown Gazette printed the members of Capt. Bigelow's company of Belleville, and his name is on the list. That was Company C of the 45th Pennsylvania Volunteers, recruited in Mifflin County. The state roster has him mustered in on September 6, 1861, and marks him a veteran. His two biographies say he re-enlisted, in 1864 according to the 1897 Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia and in December 1863 according to Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union.

The roster records one wound, on July 30, 1864. Both biographies place it at the mine explosion at Petersburg, Virginia, and the 1897 book says it kept him in the hospital about eight months. They do not agree on the count. The 1897 book gives him two wounds, the second from a ball that struck him in the breast in the last fight at Petersburg. Welch gives him three, with the first at Cold Harbor. His wife died while he was in the army.

The roster has him promoted from sergeant to second lieutenant on May 12, 1865, and mustered out with his company on July 17, 1865. The biographies put the lieutenant's rank in March 1865 and his discharge in July, on the 25th in the 1897 book and on the 5th in Welch.

Back in Mifflin County he was elected register and recorder. A county list has him commissioned on November 30, 1865, and the next man on November 23, 1868, and his notices as register were in the Lewistown Gazette by March 1866. On April 3, 1867, the Gazette reported his marriage at Mount Joy on March 26 to Mary A. Kreiner, and added that "our Register and Recorder, to whom be long life and happiness, has taken an assistant." When the Grand Army post at Lewistown organized on December 10, 1868, the officers elected included a Sergeant-Major Michael Hiney.

Both biographies say he worked in the doorkeeper's department of the United States House of Representatives in 1870 and 1871. In April 1871 he moved to Mount Union and took up his trade again, and that July Harvey Bennett of Belleville came to town and learned shoemaking with him.

In February 1892 he was elected justice of the peace, and both biographies, the later one dated 1909, say he still held the office. Welch calls him Squire Hiney and one of the oldest men of Mount Union. The state death index for 1916 lists a Michael Hiney at Huntingdon on November 8. Find a Grave gives that death date with his birth date and a grave in Mount Union Cemetery, inscribed Co. C 45th PVI.

Checked against the record. We read the page images of his two biographies, the 1897 Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of the Juniata Valley and Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union. For his regiment we used the roster in Bates's History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, the company and county lists in Ellis's 1886 history, and the register list in Jordan's 1913 history. We also read the Lewistown Gazette and Huntingdon Journal items in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive and the 1916 state death index. Welch appears to follow the 1897 biography closely, and Ellis's roster appears to follow Bates's, so agreement between those pairs is not independent confirmation. The Gazette items were printed at the time and stand on their own for the company and the register's office. The Gazette spells the captain's name Bigelow where the roster has Biglow, and we treat the two lists as one company because many names appear on both, which is our reading. Welch spells his second wife's name Kriner where the 1867 notice has Kreiner. Still open: his National Archives service file and pension file, which would settle the wounds, the promotion and the discharge dates. The roster notes Cold Harbor wounds for other men of the company and none for him, which does not prove he had none. The House job rests on the two biographies alone. We did not find the February 1892 election return or an obituary, and the Grand Army officer and the 1916 death entry are matched to him by name and place, not by a record that says so.

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