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California Joe

The papers attributed practically every remarkable shot fired by the regiment to colorful California Joe. But he was far from the figure of a popular hero. Truman Head resembled pretty much the average modern target shooter, give or take a bit. “Entirely free from brag and bluster, an unassuming man, past the middle age, short in stature and light in weight, and a true gentleman in every sense of the word, he was always a special favorite with the entire command.”
Joe had never married. A Philadelphian, he apparently had loved a lass of one of the better families, and her father had disapproved of the marriage. So Joe left for California, and remained a bachelor. He had made a reasonable fortune, however, and upon enlisting he made a will leaving $50,000 to the Philadelphia Old Soldiers Home. But though he was looked on with affection as an “old gent” by his comrades in the U.S. Sharpshooters, Truman Head was a highly skilled rifleman and a professional killer—the deadliest kind, for he did not brag, was self-effacing, and did not like the whole business to begin with. This all made him more than ordinarily efficient.

The kind of stories he hated most were those circulated about him. That he ever “shot a man out of a tree two miles off, just at daybreak, first pop,” was not only untrue, but the story made him quite angry. His genuine skill with the single-trigger Sharps was quite good enough without the sort of embellishment which the gunmakers put in their catalogs.
Joe scored one down when he shot a Confederate cavalry officer, but the distance is unspecified.
“The officer in command fell—it was claimed he received the contents of the Sharps rifle—his white bosom presenting a blood stained mark as he tumbled from his horse, which was reported as plainly discernible through one of the strong rifle telescopes brought into use.”
Once the report circulated that “Joe is killed.” The camp was aroused and ready to take on the whole Army of Northern Virginia, but they quieted down when it turned out that Joe had only been slightly wounded, with his own gun. A Rebel bullet had struck the Sharps, and broken one of the bands, which flew off and struck Joe in the nose.
California Joe Head’s service as a Sharpshooter ended with the Peninsular campaign, because of ill health and failing eyesight. Honorably discharged in the fall of , he returned to California, where he died in . The California papers made much of the passing of a famous and heroic citizen, and in San Francisco a monument was erected to his memory— California Joe, the only man in Berdan’s Sharpshooters who was originally armed with a Sharps.
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Location: California, USA

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