I'm very grateful to Mary Jo Pattison of New York State for sending me a photographic copy of a discharge certificate which her family owns, for Phillip Ament of Company E, 189th New York Infantry. According to the certificate, Private Ament, who was born in Germany and had been working as a laborer, enlisted on September 8th, 1864, for one year, and his discharge was dated May 30th, 1865. During the final months of the War, the 189th New York, along with the 187th and 188th New York, formed the Second Brigade of the First Division, Fifth Corps, under Brevet Brigadier General Edgar M. Gregory (these regiments were described by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in The Passing of the Armies as "young in order of number, but veteran in experience and honor"). The relevancy of the document to Tom Chamberlain is that his signature appears on it, as Assistant Commissary of Musters for the Division ("T.D. Chamberlain, Bvt Maj and A.C.M., 1st Div. 5th A.C." - reproduced below), a position he held briefly after the end of the War.
January 29, 2004