Vintage This Is My Lucky Bingo shirt
He enlisted in the Union Army, go figure! I have to wonder if he had already served in the Prussian Army at age 21, and had just had his fill of it. Alas, we can’t find any specific info about his Union Army experience because (1) there were about 25 other Heinrich Beckmanns running around the Midwest in that time period, and (2) he left a trail of misinformation so that the Prussians would have difficulty tracking him down and make him come back to serve that military service, which he was said to be very concerned about that until the day he died in 1920, even though he became a naturalized citizen in 1882.