Casper Shirk
Casper Shirk served in Company E of the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment. He was born around 1836, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, the middle of nine siblings, to parents Harriet and Casper Shirk. He was about 14 years old and attending school when the 1850 Federal Census was taken.1 He enlisted as a private with Company E on January 29, 1864, and his Company Descriptive Book lists him as twenty-eight years old, 5 feet and 4 inches tall, with black hair, eyes, and complexion.