Hugh was an old soldier, a veteran of the…
source date: 1890
availability: public-domain

g the month of May, 1881, Hugh Love had one of the most thrilling and desperate en- counters with a bear that ever man had and live to narrate it. It is one instant where facts are stranger than fiction. There are many liv- ing witnesses to the truth of the circumstances. Hugh was an old soldier, a veteran of the celebrated Pennsylvania Roundhead regiment, the 100th Pennsylvania Volunteers, participat- ing in the Burnside campaign in North Carolina in 1861 and 1862, in the campaign in Virginia in the fall of 1864 which ended so disastrously at Fredericksburg. In 1863 with the 9th corps he went to Vicksburg and from there to Ten- nessee and was in the seige at Knoxville. In 1864 he returned with the 9th corps to Virginia and participated in the campaign of Grant in 1863 and 1865. He distinguished himself at the battle of the Wilderness on the 6th day of May 1864, and for this Edwin M. Stanton, the great war secretary, offered him a lieutenancy in a colored regiment, but which he declined, preferring to stay with the Roundheads. Hugh was a perfect specimen of physical manhood standing 6 ft. 2 inches in his stocking feet. He had served several years on the police ( 21 )force in St. Louis and patrolled one of the hardest beats in the city. He was prospecting in the upper part of the range west of Chloride on the side of a mountain.