Birth and Childhood
Septimus J. Hanna was born at Spring Mills, Pennsylvania, on July 29, 1845. Until the Civil War broke out, the boy lived the wholesome outdoor life of the country. As an adult, he often looked back regretfully to the peaceful freedom of those rural days spent beside the spring-house and in the quiet fields. He remembered the pent-up feelings of that boy during his first experience at indoor work. His older brother was postmaster at the town of Morris, Ill., during the war, and when his assistants all left to enter the army, he called upon his younger brother to help him in work at the post office. The boy chafed under the restraint this placed upon him, but he endured it until he was old enough to enlist, when he, too, marched away to be a soldier.
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