They were not to see him in person for another seven years, when the following notice appeared in an Indiana newspaper1:
So just what had he been up to all those years he was missing? Apparently he joined a railroad company, worked on boats on the Great Lakes for a while, almost became a gold prospector, and finally went back to the railroad. By the beginning of the Civil War he had ended up in Texas, where he married into a French Creole family at Liberty, the Rachals, who had left their native Natchitoches to come to Texas in 1844. He joined a Texas regiment with his in-laws, and after the war moved to Nuecestown (located in part of what is now Corpus Christi), where he variously tried his hand at farming, ferrying, cotton ginning, and running a general store. He was successful in all of these endeavours, and an article published in his hometown paper gives the impression that he just couldn't sit still for too long at any one thing4. In fact, he only retired completely in 1906, 7 years before he died in 1913 at the age of 78.
Levi Bitterman Comes to Akron, Ohio, to See His Brother
Akron, O.. July 13 -- Forty-four years ago Levi Bitterman, then aged 16, ran away from home. He was never heard of and was long since considered dead. He returned to the home of his brother George in Cuyahoga Falls today. He is now a prosperous merchant in Newestown, Tex. Bitterman was in the rebel army, and after the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, after the Union forces were driven from the field, he found his brother Daniel, a Union solder, dying. They had not met for nineteen years, but recognized each other. The wounded man died in his arms.Born on the 4th of July, 1834, in Stark County, Ohio, Levi was christened in a Lutheran church2, though family tradition holds that just a few generations previous the family had been Jewish. His father, Joseph, was an immigrant, and according to Levi's older sister Mary Ann's branch of the family, he had come from Alsace and the original spelling of their name was Biedermann. A letter from one of Mary Ann's sons, Ezra, to his cousins in Texas, recounts some of the history of the family as far as he knew it and can be found in the pension file Levi's widow received from the state of Texas3. One of the things Ezra repeats in his letter is the story that Levi had run away from home as a teenager after a disagreement with his mother.
So just what had he been up to all those years he was missing? Apparently he joined a railroad company, worked on boats on the Great Lakes for a while, almost became a gold prospector, and finally went back to the railroad. By the beginning of the Civil War he had ended up in Texas, where he married into a French Creole family at Liberty, the Rachals, who had left their native Natchitoches to come to Texas in 1844. He joined a Texas regiment with his in-laws, and after the war moved to Nuecestown (located in part of what is now Corpus Christi), where he variously tried his hand at farming, ferrying, cotton ginning, and running a general store. He was successful in all of these endeavours, and an article published in his hometown paper gives the impression that he just couldn't sit still for too long at any one thing4. In fact, he only retired completely in 1906, 7 years before he died in 1913 at the age of 78.
1 "Turns Up After 44 Years." Goshen Times 18 July 1895.↩
2 Powell, Esther Weygandt. Stark County, Ohio: Early Church Records and Cemeteries. Akron, OH, 1973.↩
3 #49919, (Mrs) Levi Bitterman, Confederate pension applications, Texas Comptroller's Office claims records. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.↩
4 "Began Railroading at Age of 14 Years." Evening Independent [Massillon, Ohio] 14 Mar. 1912.↩
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