Thomas Hubler was born in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, October 9th, 1851. When two years of age, the family removed to Warsaw, Indiana. On the outbreak of the war, his father, who had been a German soldier of the truest type, raised a company of men, in response to President Lincoln's first call for seventy-five thousand troops. Little Tommy was among the first to enlist in his father's company, the date of enrolment being April 19th, 1861. He was then nine years and six months old.
The regiment to which the company was assigned was with the Army of the Potomac throughout all its campaigns in Maryland and Virginia. At the expiration of its term of service in August, 1862, Little Tommy re-enlisted, and served to the end of the war, having been present in some twenty-six battles in all. He was greatly beloved by all the men of his regiment, and was a constant favorite amongst them. It is thought that he beat the first "long roll" of the great Civil War. He is still living in Warsaw, Indiana, and bids fair to be the latest survivor of the great and grand army of which he was the youngest member. With the swift advancing years the ranks of the soldiers of the late war are being rapidly thinned out, and those who yet remain are showing signs of age. The "Boys in Blue" are thus, as the years go by, almost imperceptibly turning into the "Boys in Gray;" and as Little Tommy, the youngest of them all, sounded their first reveille, so may he yet live to beat their last tattoo.
What glorious camp-fires we used to have in the fall of the year 1863! It makes one rub his hands together yet, just to think of them. The nights were getting cold and frosty, so that it was impossible to sleep under our little shelters with comfort; and so half the night was spent around the blazing fires at the ends of the company streets.
I always took care that there should be a blazing good fire for our little company, anyhow. My duties were light, and left me time, which I found I could spend with pleasure in swinging an axe. Hickory and white-oak saplings were my favorites; and with these cut into lengths of ten feet, and piled up as high as my head on wooden fire-dogs, what a glorious crackle we would have by midnight! Go out there what time of night you might please,--and you were pretty sure to go out to the fire three or four times a night, for it was too bitterly cold to sleep in the tent more than an hour at a stretch,--you would always find a half-dozen of the boys sitting about the fire on logs, smoking their pipes, telling yarns, or singing odd catches of song. As I recall those weird night-scenes of army life,--the blazing fire, the groups of swarthy men gathered about, the thick darkness of the forest, where the lights and shadows danced and played all night long, and the rows of little white tents covered with frost--it looks quite poetical in the retrospect; but I fear it was sometimes prosy enough in the reality.