Of the 262 Minnesotans who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg as part of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1863, only forty-seven survived. One of them was Alonzo Pickle, a Canadian-born teenager who’d enlisted a year earlier in Winona. Pickle received the US Medal of Honor for his action at the Battle of Deep Bottom and lived out the rest of his life as a farmer, laborer, and salesman in Minnesota.
Alonzo Huntingdon Pickle was born in 1843 in Farnham, Quebec, a town fifty miles to the east of Montreal. He was the son of Simon and Sarah Taylor Pickle, whose families had emigrated from Boston to Quebec. When Alonzo was fifteen, the family moved to Wisconsin, and then to Dover, Minnesota, outside of Rochester, where they bought a farm.
In 1862, nineteen years old and still a Canadian citizen, Pickle responded to Governor Alexander Ramsey’s call for volunteers to fight in the Civil War by enlisting in the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment. After enlisting at Winona on August 14, 1862, he was sent to Fort Snelling with other volunteers to be mustered in and begin training.
Private Pickle was assigned to Company K of the First Minnesota and marched south. He participated in pivotal battles at Fredericksburg (1862) and Gettysburg (1863), where he was wounded in the leg during Pickett’s Charge, which fell on his twentieth birthday. He was promoted to the rank of corporal on February 1, 1864, and sent back to Fort Snelling for recruiting service. On July 22, after a promotion to the rank of sergeant, he transferred to Company B of the First Infantry Battalion to finish out his three-year enlistment.
On August 14, 1864, while serving with Company B, Pickle was engaged in battle at Deep Bottom, Virginia. The battalion attacked the enemy’s lines but was unable to carry on. When Lieutenant Henry O’Brien was shot in the shoulder and lung, Pickle carried him to safety at great personal risk. He was promoted again—this time to first sergeant. He mustered out of service at Munson’s Hill, Virginia, in 1865, and was present at Appomattox when General Robert E. Lee surrendered.
After the war, Pickle came back to Minnesota to work on his father’s farm in Olmsted County. He married Rhoda Jane Smith in Rochester on October 24, 1867, and the couple moved to Winona. There, Alonzo found two jobs: first, working for a horse dealer named W. S. Nevins, and second, hauling bricks for the construction of Winona’s Normal School. By 1869, he had moved back to Olmsted County and rented a farm. He and Rhoda raised their family of six children there for the next fifteen years.
In the fall of 1888, Pickle bought a parcel of land in the southwest corner of Home Township, a few miles from Sleepy Eye, and made it his new home. After only four years, however, Pickle gave up farming and moved to Sleepy Eye, where he sold real estate and insurance.
In civilian life, Pickle remained loyal to the men with whom he’d served. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a national fraternal organization of veterans. He was a charter member of the Wesley Green GAR Post #71 in Sleepy Eye and, at the time of his death, its only surviving member. On June 5, 1897, he received the US Medal of Honor for rescuing Lieutenant O’Brien.
Pickle was an active participant in the GAR and attended reunions, called encampments, around the country. When St. Paul hosted the thirtieth encampment in 1896, nearly 150,000 members (including Pickle) attended the event, and 200,000 visitors came out to watch the parade through the city streets. Pickle also attended encampments held in Minneapolis in 1906 and 1933, as well as a gathering to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913.
Pickle died on May 24, 1925. Days later, the mayor of Sleepy Eye declared all businesses in town closed from 1:30 until 3:00 pm so that people could attend the funeral. Pickle was buried in Home Cemetery in Home Township.