Antietam visit: David Reel Farm

This barn on the David Reel farm took a direct hit from Federal artillery during the
Battle of Antietam, killing many of the Confederate soldiers who were being treated there.
 (Top photo: Library of Congress Collection)

I have long been fascinated by Alexander Gardner's photo of the ruins of the barn on the David Reel Farm at Antietam. Located off Mondell Landing Road midway between Sharpsburg and the West Woods, the farm today is in private hands and is usually inaccessible to battlefield tourists. (Ranger-led walks are sometimes held near the farm in the spring.) I first read about the terrible story of what happened at the farm in William Frassanito's excellent, ground-breaking book "Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day" about 30 years ago.

Located just behind Confederate lines, the barn -- which was used as a field hospital -- took a direct hit from Federal artillery and caught fire, killing many of the wounded inside.  In a search of the barn after the battle, local boys found human bones and lumps of melted lead, perhaps from bullets those soldiers were carrying. (1). Being careful not to trespass, I took the present-day shot of the barn from my car.  I hope to learn more about what happened there during a visit to Antietam in the spring.

(1) The Battlefield of Antietam, Oliver T. Reilly, 1906, Page 26.

---

My top 10 Civil War posts of 2011

Van Buren Towle, a private in the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, died shortly after
being paroled from a Confederate POW camp. He was buried at sea.

Because the end of the year isn't complete without a top-10 list, I compiled my own. Here are the 10 most-trafficked posts on John Banks' Civil War blog in 2011:

1. Faces of the Civil War: Van Buren Towle (May 26): It took some digging in the National Archives to tell the story of Towle, a private in the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery who was captured in Virginia in 1864 and sent to the notorious Rebel prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Ga. Amazingly, his brother also was in Andersonville. A document in the Archives confirmed the circumstances of Towle's death after he was paroled from prison. "On board U.S. Transport 'Northern Light," a War Department casualty sheet reads, "and was buried at sea."

Earl Roulette's great-grandfather, William, owned this farmhouse at
Antietam. Many wounded soldiers were treated at the farm.

2. Gettysburg hidden history (May 6): If you know where to look, you'll discover a Gettysburg few ever see. Park volunteer Dick Kolmar helped me find a rock carving in the Spangler Spring meadow made by a North Carolina soldier.

3. Battle of Antietam memories: The Roulettes (May 14): Several years ago, I got to know Earl Roulette, who farmed in Sharpsburg, Md., for decades and whose great-grandfather owned a farm that bordered Bloody Lane at Antietam. Earl, who died in 2008, had a wealth of the knowledge about the battlefield. Many of the relics he and his ancestors collected over the years were donated to the Park Service at Antietam after Earl's death. Hopefully, they will be displayed there someday.

4. Faces of the Civil War: Justus Wellington: (June 5): A private in the 15th Massachusetts, Wellington was killed in the West Woods at Antietam. He's probably buried under a gravestone marked "Unknown" at Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md. The shoemaker from West Brookfield, Mass., was only 24 years old.

5. Faces of the Civil War: George Bronson (June 15): Special thanks to Mary Lou Pavlik of the Torrington (Conn.) Civil War Roundtable who supplied the photo and stories of her great-great grandfather, who was a hospital steward in the 11th Connecticut. His description of the 11th Connecticut's fight across Antietam Creek at Burnside Bridge sticks with me: "I do not know the name of the creek, but I have named it the creek of death," he wrote his wife.

The ornate front of John Griswold's gravestone in
Old Lyme, Conn. The captain in the 11th Connecticut
was mortally wounded at Antietam.

6. Faces of the Civil War; Share your photos, stories (Dec. 10): Care to share a photo of one of your Civil War ancestors? I'd love to tell their story. I enjoyed making the collage of soldier photos.

7. Brothers: Connecticut's Civil War sacrifice (Nov. 30): I have found eight sets of brothers from the state who died during the war, an incredible tragedy. An ancestor of three brothers from Litchfield who were killed during the Civil War e-mailed that their deaths still affect her family today.

8. Faces of the Civil War: John D. Griswold (Nov. 16): A captain in the 11th Connecicut, John Griswold was mortally wounded while attempting to cross Antietam Creek during the Battle of Antietam. Thanks to a descendant, I got into the small, private cemetery to view Griswold's beautiful grave marker.

9. Faces of the Civil War: The Bingham brothers (Nov. 26): A New England antiques dealer supplied much of the information for the story on these brothers from East Haddam, Conn. John Bingham of the 16th Connecticut was only 18 years old when he was killed at Antietam. He served in the 16th with his brother, Wells, who was physically unharmed but no doubt never got over the carnage he witnessed there. Friends of Wells gave him a special gift in memory of his brother 14 years after the 1862 battle.

10. Faces of the Civil War: The Hincks Family (July 31): An ancestor of the Hincks brothers supplied the stories of Elisha, Edward and William Hincks. William won the Medal of Honor for valor at Gettysburg. Brothers Elisha and Edward were wounded at Antietam.

Lt. Perkins Bartholomew: Bloody, alone, dying

In a four-page letter to his mother six days before his death, Perkins Bartholomew wrote of the
dangers of war, picking cotton for his Aunt Sarah and his interest in having his photo taken.
Connecticut Historical Society Civil War Manuscript Project.  (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

In probably his last letter home, 23-year-old Perkins Bartholomew wrote his mother in Connecticut from a camp near Petersburg, Va.

"Dear Mother, your letter dated Oct. 17, 64 arrived at hand last night and I was muched pleased to here from you and to here that you was well ..."

As Bartholomew sat in his tent near a roaring campfire, he could hear the booming of cannon and the firing of Union pickets less than a mile away.

The dangers of war always seemed near.

Bartholomew's impressive signature at the bottom of a letter to his mother.
(Connecticut Historical Society)  CLICK TO ENLARGE.

"It is nothing unusual for a man to get wounded in his tent," the first lieutenant in the 14th Connecticut wrote on the morning of Oct. 22, "and yesterday morning about 4 o'clock there was a man in the 10th New York that was at the privy and there was a ball [that] struck him in the head and wounded him and he fell in and was there for hours ..."

In the neatly written, four-page letter to his mother, Bartholomew also mentioned plans to have his photo taken in nearby City Point to send back home to "let you see how I look as an officer" and picking cotton for Aunt Sarah and perhaps being home in a month or two.

"I will close," he wrote, "hoping to hear from you soon. Give my love to all."

Five days later, the young soldier lay in the rain in a muddy trench, bloodied and alone in enemy territory, after being shot late in the afternoon during the Battle of Boydton Plank Road. A bullet tore through his haversack and ripped through his side. It was impossible for the nearly surrounded Union troops to carry Bartholomew from the field for more than an hour, according to one account (1), and the wounded soldier was a hopeless case anyway.

A brittle fragment of the 14th Connecticut regimental flag in a file with
letters  about Perkins Bartholomew at the Connecticut Historical Society.

The next morning, Perkins Bartholomew, a carpenter before the war, died behind Confederate lines. Because Union troops were greatly outnumbered in rebel-held territory, his body was left behind for the enemy to bury by the plank road. The remains of the young soldier from New London were never returned home, the terrible fate of many soldiers during the war -- including this 20-year-old man from Connecticut whose story is also told on this blog.

On the brink of becoming a captain (2), Bartholomew was hailed in  resolutions adopted by officers of the 14th Connecticut as a "generous and noble comrade, a gallant and faithful officer and self-sacrificing patriot who fell at the head of his command, fighting in defense of the flag he loved."

I chanced upon a file on Bartholomew at the Connecticut Historical Society last Saturday afternoon while doing research on John and James Willard, brothers from Avon, Conn., who also died during the Civil War.

Three pieces of history, yellowed and brittle with age, stood out in the file: the letter from Bartholomew to his mother; a letter from a comrade to the dead soldier's sister; and a hauntingly sad letter from an officer in 14th Connecticut to Caroline Bartholomew explaining the circumstances of her son's death and why he was left behind enemy lines. (Amazingly, the file also included an extremely fragile 6 x 4-inch fragment of the 14th Connecticut regimental flag.)

In the 1860 U.S. Census, Bartholomew's occupation  was listed as a carpenter. He had two
siblings: Carrie and John. His mother, Caroline, was 40 years old in 1860. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

The letters offer a fascinating glimpse into a soldier's final hours and a war that caused so much heartache, especially in Connecticut, which lost more than 5,000 men during the rebellion.

Horace Brown, a private in the 14th Connecticut from New Haven, was well-acquainted with "Perk," as he was known to many in the regiment. Sometime after his friend was wounded, Brown and several volunteers carried Bartholomew to a house about a mile away. Alone for a period of time after he was shot, the dying man asked Brown to stay with him after the other soldiers were forced to flee.

"He was all the time talking about his mother and how he would like to sea her," Brown wrote in a four-page letter to Carrie O'Neal about her brother's final hours a month earlier.  "I saw the sergeant and asked what he thought of his wound and he told me he couldn't live but not to tell him for it would make him worce so I tryed cheer him all that I could ..."

In a letter to Bartholomew's sister, Private Horace Brown of the
14th Connecticut wrote of  "Perk" wanting to see his mother
after he was wounded. (Connecticut Historical Society)
CLICK TO ENLARGE.

But the letter to Caroline Bartholomew is the most poignant. I imagine it was like one of thousands of such letters sent to relatives of soldiers -- North and South -- who died during a Civil War that claimed the lives of at least 620,000 men.

William B. Hincks, who earned a  Medal of Honor for valor at Gettysburg, was the adjutant for the 14th Connecticut. Although he wasn't present at the Battle of Boydton Plank Road, he wrote a detailed account of Bartholomew's death to his mother. The soldier from Bridgeport, Conn., had plenty of experience with the grim duty of informing relatives of the deaths of their loved ones.

"I know that it ... is very hard that he was not brought in and that we had to leave his burial to the enemy," he wrote in a letter dated Nov. 13, 1864, "but remember that we were in the enemy's country miles away from our own lines, the enemy upon almost every side of us in greatly superior numbers."

Trying to soften the blow, Hincks seemed to take pains to explain to Mrs. Bartholomew that her son did not suffer.

In a letter to Perkins Bartholomew's mother,
14th Connecticut adjutant William B. Hincks
wrote that her dying son "suffered no
pain except from the cold and wet."
(Mollus collection)

"He vomited occasionally," he wrote. "He had his senses perfectly and remained conscious of his condition. We had but two or three officers but one of them detailed a number of men to carry him away. The ambulances had all gone back with wounded men before. The lieutenant of the ambulance train agreed to send back an ambulance for him and did so. But it was an uncommonly dark night and rainy and the ambulance got lost in the woods and never found him."

Hincks wrote of how a soldier retrieved Bartholomew's shoulder straps and memo book and noted the lieutenant's last words. ("Tell my mother I die like a man fighting for my country.") The officer explained that her son had "the love and respect of us all," and "we sympathize with you in your grief."

And he also made a vow.

"...I think I can promise you in the name of the few officers who are left in the 14th," Hincks wrote, "that if it ever lies in our power we will have his remains sent home to Connecticut."

Sadly, that never came true.

(1) Letter from 14th Connecticut adjutant William B. Hincks to Mrs. Caroline Bartholomew, Nov, 13, 1864
(2) Memorial of Deceased Officers of the 14th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, Henry P. Goddard, 1872, Page 25

History up close: In Willard brothers' footsteps

Civil War soldiers John and James Willard lived in this house in Avon, Conn.

I told the story last week of a woman from Avon, Conn., who honored Civil War soldier John Willard by putting a scoop of Connecticut dirt on his grave at the national cemetery in New Bern, N.C.

The Willard house dates to 1760.  Middle: The well-worn
front step  may be original to the house.  Bottom: 
Revolutionary War-era  buttons recently  discovered
 on the property by a local relic hunter.

Thanks to the generous current owners, I spent time this afternoon in the beautiful Avon house where John and his brother, James -- who also died during the Civil War -- lived with their mother. Jim and Maureen Dowse, who have lived in the 251-year-old house the past 10 years, also helped fill in gaps in the lives of both brothers and their family.

Damaris Williard, the matriarch of the family, endured her share of tragedy before and during the Civil War. Her husband Julius, a physician, died in September 1854, seven years before the start of the rebellion. Her youngest son, James, was only 20 when he was killed during the 7th Connecticut's rare nightime attack on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, S.C., on July 11, 1863.  James, a private in Company A, was originally reported to have been missing and taken prisoner, but his body was never recovered. (1)

Fifteen months later, Damaris lost her eldest son.

Thirty-two-year-old John Willard was a wagoner in the 11th Connecticut, transporting ammunition, medicine, food and other supplies to help keep the Union army running. In late September and early October 1864, a yellow fever epidemic ripped through the Union army in New Bern, N.C., killing many soldiers -- including John. A farmer before the war, he died on Oct. 3, 1864, and was buried in New Bern. Sadly, his mother probably didn't have the means to return his body to Connecticut.

Maureen Dowse obtained copies of some of the trove of documents on the Willard brothers at the Avon Free Public Library. They reveal a family probably not atypical of most during the Civil War.

1860 census: Widow Damaris Willard lived with her sons, John (top) and James Willard (bottom).
(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Fifty-four-year-old Widow Willard was dependent on John and James, so the enlistment of two sons in the army in 1861 undoubtedly was a hardship for her. But like any good sons, the brothers endeavored to help their mother while they were away at war. In notes to Damaris during the war, James wrote about sending money home and thoughts of not surviving the conflict: (2)

• Jan. 14, 1862: "When we were at Hilton Island I sent fifteen dollars thinking you might need it."
• June 10. 1862: "If I never get home, I wish you to have what property I have, and use what you need of that I send."
• "I wish you to use what you want of the money that I send, and have sent, and if I never get home I wish you to have this, and what I have sent."
• April 21, 1863: "I will send sixty dollars. Do what you think best with the money."

In the spring of 1863, John Willard, a wagoner
in the 11th Connecticut, sought a furlough to return home.
(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

John, whose 3-year-old son Frank died five months before the war, also longed for home and his wife, Cordelia. In fact, in the spring of 1863 while he was in New Bern, he requested a furlough because "he was anxious to return home."  (3) There is no record in the file I examined whether the furlough was granted.

Because James left no widow or children, Damaris Willard applied for a Mother's Pension after his death, and Uncle Sam evidently provided her with an $8-a-month-pension for many years. Widow Willard was 89 years old when she died June 5, 1890. She is buried in West Avon Cemetery near her husband Julius and the memorial markers for her sons, whose remains were never returned to their native soil.

(1) Hartford Courant, Oct. 20, 1864
(2) Mother's Application for Pension document, Jan. 8, 1869.
(3) Furlough document, April 19, 1863

Damaris Willard's husband, Julius, died seven years before the start of the Civil War. Her sons,
John and James, died during the conflict. Widow Willard lived in this house for many years.

Happy holidays from Connecticut

Using my Blackberry, I photographed this Civil War memorial on Moodus green,
near East Haddam, Conn. Happy holidays!

A 'special bond' with a Connecticut soldier

Anita Marcotte is not related to Civil War soldier John Willard, but she feels a
special bond with him. She stands by his memorial marker in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery.

Although the last shots of the Civil War were fired 146 years ago, the most traumatic event in our nation's history still tugs at us.

Anita Marcotte, a 40-year resident of Avon, Conn., knows that feeling.

Close-up of John Willard's memorial in
 Avon, Conn.   He died of yellow fever in
 New Bern, N.C. on Oct. 3, 1864. 
He is buried in a national cemetery 
in New Bern.

A little more than three decades ago, Marcotte wandered through West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery after dropping off her young son at daycare at a church nearby. While there, she discovered the well-worn headstones of two brothers from Avon who served -- and died -- during the Civil War: James and John Willard.

Curious, she intently examined these beautifully  carved words on John's marker:

Died
In the service of his Country
in Newbern, N.C.
Oct. 3, 1864
Aged 32
He is buried in that City.

"John's struck me as I am from Cherry Point, N.C.," said Marcotte, whose father served in the Marines during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  "... I never had heard of any battles fought there, and I could not figure out how he died there.

"I tried to find his grave on one visit to New Bern, but the town hall had burned down and no records were available to me. They sent me to the town cemetery where Civil War soldiers were buried. A nice sexton showed us to the area where these graves were, but I had no luck. I finally told him that John Willard was a Northerner, to which he replied: 'We don't bury any Yankees here!'

Although she's not related to the Willards, Marcotte decided to do some digging -- and thus plunged into a search that wasn't completed until more than a decade after she first found the brothers' granite markers.

This document shows John Willard was 
discharged for physical disability on 
Feb. 9, 1864. The period from February to his
 death merits further research.
(Conn. Historical Society)
CLICK TO ENLARGE.

John Willard, a 28-year-old farmer, enlisted in the Union army on Oct. 23, 1861, six months after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C. The oldest son of Julius and Damaris Willard was mustered into Company D of the 11th Connecticut Infantry a month later in Hartford. John, who stood 5-10 and had blue eyes, brown hair and a dark complexion, was a wagoner in the 11th Connecticut, transporting ammunition, medicine, food and other supplies to help keep the massive Union army running. (1)

With the 11th Connecticut, John saw his share of the horrors of the Civil War during battles at Antietam and Fredericksburg. But nearly a year before the war started, John and his wife, Cordelia, faced a personal tragedy. Their 3-year-old son, Frank, died. (2)

Like his brother, James was probably caught up in the patriotic fervor of the day. He enlisted on Aug. 20, 1861, and nearly a month later was mustered into Company A of the 7th Connecticut Infantry as a private. From October 1861 to July 1863, the 7th Connecticut fought in small engagements against Confederates in fortifications along the South Carolina coast.

On July 11, 1863, the 7th Connecticut was part of a rare night attack against Fort Wagner, near Charleston.  (A week later, in an attack made famous in the movie Glory, the black troops of the 54th Massachusetts were defeated after a fierce battle at Fort Wagner.) Greatly outnumbered, the Connecticut regiment suffered 105 killed, including the 20-year-old son of a physician from Avon. James' body, perhaps thrown into a burial trench by the rebels afterward, was never recovered.

"He sleeps where he fell," the memorial marker in West Avon Cemetery notes.

John Willard's occupation was listed as a farmer in the 1860 U.S. census. His
17-year-old brother James' occupation was listed a laborer.  John's 3-year-old
son,  Frank, died later that year. He is buried to the left of John's marker.

A little more than a year later, the Willards lost another son.

Yellow fever swept through the Union army in New Bern, N.C., in the late summer and early fall of 1864, killing many soldiers. "In the history of this rebellion, no city which has been captured and occupied by our forces, situated as far North as New Berne, North Carolina, has been visited by a sweeping pestilence so completely decimating as the late terrible scourge of yellow fever," wrote a Union doctor in a book on the epidemic published in 1865. (3)

Among the victims was John Willard, who had transferred to North Carolina in late winter 1864. Likely contracting the disease in late September, the farmer from Avon died Oct.  3, 1864. His body was not returned to Connecticut, perhaps because his family didn't have the means.

"After the epidemic had passed, there remained two trunks of gold and silver watches, and a safe containing thirty thousand dollars left by these poor victims, " according to a post-war history of Connecticut's Civil War service, (4)

Markers for the Willard brothers are adjacent to each other in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery.
Neither brother, however, is buried in Connecticut.

Nearly 130 years later, Anita Marcotte finally discovered John Willard's final resting place in North Carolina. "I felt like he wanted to come home," said Marcotte, who sensed from her research that John was very homesick.

Before her visit to the tidy national cemetery in New Bern, Marcotte went back to West Avon Cemetery, grabbed a handful of dirt from near John Willard's marker and stored it away for a visit South.

After arriving at the national cemetery, Marcotte asked a caretaker for permission to honor the young man who died nearly 700 miles from home.

"The man at the cemetery said it was OK to put it on his grave," Marcotte said, "so I dug a little hole and placed the dirt there.

"I feel a special bond with him."

(1) John Willard's pay voucher certificate, Feb. 9, 1864, Connecticut Historical Society Civil War Manuscripts Collection.
(2) Letter from Virginia Willard, a descendant of the brothers, to Anita Marcotte.
(3) The Great Epidemic in New Berne and Vicinity, W.S. Benjamin, 1865, Page 3
(4) The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-65, William Augustus Croffut, John Moses Morrism, 1869, Page 711

Several members of the Congregational Church of Avon who served in the Union army died
during the Civil War, including  John Willard of the 11th Connecticut and James Willard
of the 7th Connecticut. West Avon Cemetery is out of the photo to the right.

Best of my 2011 Civil War photos



Factory complex in Collinsville, Conn. Collinsville Co. supplied axes and more to the Union army.
CLICK TO ENLARGE ALL PHOTOS.

Another view of the old Collinsville Company.

Spring sunrise at Antietam National Battlefield.

Springhouse at Roulette Farm at Antietam is bathed in warm morning light in this shot
taken in October. This photo is not quite tack sharp, but I just have a Blackberry to shoot with!

This broken gravestone of "Darling Allie," in Center Cemetery in Rocky Hill, Conn., is
next to the grave of Jarvis Blinn, who was killed at Antietam.

Using special effects on picnik.com, the photo of West Avon (Conn.) Congregational Church is
turned into a "painting." Civil War soldiers are buried in the cemetery next to the
church, including many from the congregation.

The 16th Connecticut monument at Antietam.

Ornate gravestone of John McCall of the 8th Connecticut in Yantic Cemetery in
Norwich, Conn. McCall, wounded at Antietam, was killed at Drewry's Bluff.

A ghostly salute, Blackberry in my hand,  at the graves of Sergeant Charles Lewis and his
fiancee, Sarah Hyde, at Carey Cemetery in Canterbury, Conn. Lewis was killed at Antietam.

Faces of the Civil War: Private Charles H. Walker

Charles Walker of  the 8th Connecticut Infantry posed for this image
 in a photographic studio on Main Street in Norwich, Conn., his hometown. 
Walker survived Antietam physically unharmed.  
(Photo: Matthew R. Isenburg collection)

As the 8th Connecticut Infantry came under intense artillery and musket fire from its front and both flanks during the latter stages of the Battle of Antietam, one of its color-bearers was shot.

Another man picked up the flag and he, too, was wounded.

And then another man grabbed the flag with the same result.

And then another.

And another.

Charles Walker's signature appears on the reverse
 of his CDV image.
(Matthew R. Isenburg collection)

Finally, Charles H. Walker, a  20-year-old private from Norwich,  courageously grabbed the fallen national colors and "seized them in a storm of death." In a singular act of defiance, he planted the flag and shook it out before the rebels as the enemy advanced.  (1) Flag-bearers were prime targets for soldiers on both sides of the war.

"Twenty men are falling every minute," a history of Connecticut's service in the war published in 1869 noted about that part of the battle. "Col. (Hiram) Appelman is borne to the rear. John McCall falls bleeding. (Jacob) Eaton totters, wounded, down the hill. (Marvin) Wait, bullet-riddled, staggers a few rods, and sinks. (Eleazur) Ripley stands with a shattered arm. (James) Russell lies white and still. (Henry) Morgan and (Edwin) Maine have fallen. Whitney Wilcox is dead.

"Men grow frantic. The wounded prop themselves behind the rude stone fence, and hurl leaden vengeance at the foe. Even the chaplain snatches the rifle and cartridge-box of a dead man, and fights for life." (2)

Ordered to fall back, Walker, clutching the flag, and the hundred or so remaining members of the 8th Connecticut retreated from the field. Although whipped by the rebels, no regiment of the Ninth Corps advanced farther on the left flank, a fact trumpeted in post-war accounts. "By their stubborn fight they have saved many others from death or capture," the post-war history noted, "and by their orderly retreat they save themselves."

A C.H. Walker from Norwich, aged 18, is recorded in the 1860 census. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

Incredibly, Walker survived physically unharmed but no doubt shocked by the carnage. The 8th Connecticut suffered 34 killed, 139 wounded and 21 missing that Wednesday afternoon just outside Sharpsburg, Md.

For his courage on Sept. 17, 1862, Walker earned a prominent mention in an after-action report written by Major John Ward  two days later. "I will notice particularly the conduct of Private Charles Walker, of Company D," Ward wrote, "who brought the national colors off the field after the sergeant and every corporal of the color-guard were either killed or wounded." Walker's action probably was the reason for his promotion to ordnance sergeant of Company C one month after the great battle.

As an anonymous reader of this blog
pointed out, the star denotes Charles Walker
was promoted to an ordnance sergeant.

On a trip back to Connecticut after his promotion, Walker plunked down a couple bucks at a Norwich photographic studio at 103 Main Street, where he proudly posed wearing his uniform with sergeant's stripes for a carte de visite image. On a break from the war, Charles may have been in Norwich visiting his parents, Francis and Mary, who had three other younger children, Worthington, Abby and Henrietta. The Walkers lived on Cliff Street, and Francis was employed as a cabinetmaker; Mary was a housekeeper. (3)

Walker, who had originally enlisted in the Union army in September 1861, re-enlisted on Christmas Eve 1863. He apparently fell out of favor with superiors early the next year, as he was demoted to private on Feb. 22, 1864. Walker was mustered out of the Union army on Dec. 12, 1865, eight months after Lee surrendered to Grant in Appomatox, Va.

(1) The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-65, William Augustus Croffut, John Moses Morris 1869, Page 272-73
(2) Ibid
(3) 1860 U.S. Census

Faces of the Civil War: Share your story, photos

Holding a kick-butt Bowie knife,  Wiley S. Boon is the only Confederate soldier in this collage.
A private in the 35th North Carolina, he was killed at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.
I told his story here. Stories of the other soldiers featured are on my Faces of the Civil War thread.

From Captain John McCall of the 8th Connecticut (killed at Drewry's Bluff)  to Private Justus Wellington of the 15th Massachusetts (killed at Antietam) to Private Van Buren Towle of the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery (POW, died after he was paroled), the stories of nearly 30 Civil War soldiers are told on the Faces of the Civil War thread on my blog. Some of the photos that accompany the stories are from my collection of hard images; others are supplied by readers. If you have a photo and story of a Civil War soldier you would like to share, please e-mail me here. I'll feature reader contributions in the coming weeks.

Faces of the Civil War: Lieutenant Marvin Wait

Left, Marvin Wait as a private after he enlisted in Union army on Oct. 3, 1861. Right, Wait
shown as a lieutenant in Company A of the 8th Connecticut. He was promoted on Dec. 24, 1861.
Wait, 19, was killed at Antietam. (Photos: Matthew R. Isenburg collection)

As bodies poured back into Connecticut in the terrible aftermath of Antietam in late September and early October 1862, funerals for soldiers were held in towns all over the state.

Marvin Wait's gravestone in Yantic Cemetery in
Norwich, Conn., about 50 miles south of Hartford.

"It is seldom that we are called upon to bury so many braves in so short a space of time," the Hartford Courant reported nearly a month after the battle.

In Norwich, about 40 miles southeast of Hartford, one of the more impressive services was held for a teen-age lieutenant in the 8th Connecticut Infantry named Marvin Wait. Even the governor of Connecticut attended the funeral.

Described as a "brave, noble-hearted man and highly esteemed by all who knew him," Wait was killed late in the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862 as the Ninth Corps made an ill-fated push toward the small Maryland farming community of Sharpsburg. (1)

As he urged on his men of Company A, Wait, sword in hand, was struck by a bullet in the right arm and later in the left arm, leg and abdomen. Helped to the rear by a private and the chaplain of the 8th Connecticut, Wait was wounded yet again by a shot that went through his side and pierced his lungs as he lay near a low stone wall. (2)

Wait's refusal to leave the battlefield after initially being wounded may have cost him his life.

"If Lieutenant Wait had left the battle of his own accord when first hit in the arm, all would have been well," Captain Charles Coit, also of Norwich, wrote after the battle, "but he bravely stood to encourage his men still further by his own example, and at last nobly fell pierced by bullet after bullet."  Wait's last words to a private who helped carry him to the rear were: "Are we whipping them?" (3)



Just 19 years old, the son of a prominent Norwich lawyer and state politician was one of 194 men in the 8th Connecticut killed and wounded that Wednesday during the Battle of Antietam.  Wait's body, "plundered by the rebels," was buried on the battlefield, the spot marked so it could be found. (4) Because he was an officer and from an influential family, the army likely sent Wait's body back to Connecticut, where his father, John, and mother, Elizabeth, grieved with his younger sisters Ann, 16, and Mary, 9.

A wartime image of William Buckingham.
The Connecticut governor gave a speech at
Marvin Wait's graveside service.
(Photo: Matthew R. Isenburg collection)

When word of Wait's death reached Norwich, the town passed resolutions of regret and the Norwich Daily Bulletin printed a long, glowing article. "His death brings a peculiar and poignant sorrow," the newspaper wrote of the first commissioned officer from the town who was killed during the Civil War.

On Wednesday, Oct. 1, 1862, the young man who planned to become a lawyer, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, was finally laid to rest. A private service was held late that morning in the house of Wait's parents in Norwich, and mourners later gathered at 2:30 p.m. at the white-washed First Congregational Church, just off the town green. Wait's sword and cap, as well as flowers, were placed atop his flag-draped coffin in the small church vestibule. After a reading of scripture by two local reverends and the singing of a hymn by the church choir, prominent local attorney George Pratt, who once worked in John Wait's law office, eulogized the young soldier.

"What words can add beauty to such life, or what praise enoble such a death?" Pratt said of Wait. "When we think of those who fell on on that field, we count them all heroes -- we name them all among the brave." (5)

Following the church service, a long procession of carriages, escorted by the Norwich Light Infantry, accompanied the teenager's coffin to Yantic Cemetery, about a mile and a half away. In a graveside speech before a large crowd that included the mayor, Norwich city council and line officers of the 26th Connecticut, Governor William Buckingham spoke of the "glory of dying for such a cause."

On Oct. 1, 1862, a service for Wait was held at First Congregational Church in Norwich, Conn.
Above right, the church  in the 1860s. Wait's coffin was placed in the church vestibule (middle right).
The sanctuary is shown at bottom right. (Old church photo: Matthew R. Isenburg collection)

As Wait's coffin was lowered into the grave, the Norwich Light Infantry fired three volleys.

Nearly eight months after Wait was buried, a "beautiful monument" was crafted by Norwich's C.D. Corbett in his workroom on Water Street. (6) Made of Italian marble and seated on a three-foot block of granite, it is adorned with the carving of a shield and crossed swords and muskets on one side; two flags and an outstretched arm holding a signal officer's glass are carved on the opposite side. The names of four battles in which Wait participated appear in raised letters near the bottom of each side of the monument.

Although the impressive, 7-foot white marker for Marvin Wait is worn by the elements over the past 149 years, these words can still be read near the bottom:

ANTIETAM.

 "He died with his young fame about him for a shroud."

(1) Memorial of Marvin Wait, Jacob Eaton, 1863
(2) Ibid
(3) Ibid
(4) Norwich Morning Bulletin, Sept. 29, 1862, Page 2
(5) Ibid
(6) Norwich Morning Bulletin, May 14, 1863, Page 2

A close-up of Wait's gravestone in Yantic Cemetery in Norwich, Conn.

Close-ups of Marvin Wait's gravestone reveal the craftsmanship of a stonemason long ago.

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Book review: 'Strange And Obscure Stories'

Suggested list price $14.95, but cheaper here.

Full disclosure: I attended college with the author of "Strange And Obscure Stories of the Civil War"  (Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.) In fact, if memory serves me correctly, Tim Rowland and I snoozed through at least a couple Journalism 101 classes at West Virginia University back in the days immediately after the Civil War ended. The good news: One of us turned out OK.

Rowland, a humorist and a columnist for several newspapers, has turned out a gem of a book on the Civil War. It's not focused on blood and guts (although there's some of that), Lee's tactics at Gettysburg, why the Emancipation Proclamation was a really good thing or who turned whose right flank when. Instead, Rowland has mined the dusty archives of the Internet (and a library or two) for tales that have been overlooked by the Shelby Footes, Bruce Cattons and James McPhersons.

Weird, bizarre, obscure -- it's all packed into this 203-page stocking stuffer for the Civil War buff. But this book, as Rowland notes, isn't just a bunch of  "fun facts." With a good dose of humor and wittiness, Rowland weaves together tales that we can relate to today.

Tim Rowland

"My first fear was that there wouldn't be enough material for a book on irony and wit," the author writes. "A couple months into the project, my fear was that that there was no room for it all. So many aspects of this war were so damn strange."

Rowland uncovered a whole bunch of strangeness. And so here's my chance to write two words that I've never used before ...

To wit:

• The story of Sarah Emma Edmonds, one of perhaps 1,000 women who disguised herself as a man and served during the war. 'Dropping one's pants," Rowland writes, "was not a part of army entrance exams in a war that needed every warm body it could get." Edmonds -- a "complicated girl, according to the author -- made a major contribution to the Union effort. (And, yes, there's a photo of Edmonds in the book.)
• It was not a good war to be a horse, the backbone of the armies. The average Civil War horse lived from four to eight months, Rowland writes, and more of these animals died (1 million) than men (618,000) during the rebellion.  Horses were often popular targets during battle, and the sight of these dead and dying animals, their entrails hanging out, had a profound effect on some soldiers.



It was not a good war to be a horse.
(Library of Congress collection)

• Joe Blow Civil War buff knows all about how Dan Sickles screwed up royally at Gettysburg, where the colorful and incompetent Union general had part of his leg blown off. (By the way, you can visit it here.) But I had no clue Sickles once introduced a hooker to English royalty. He was one wacky man. Yes, you'll enjoy Chapter 9.
• Only recently did I come across accounts of  Confederate artillery men stuffing railroad iron into cannons and firing away at Antietam. (Imagine being the target of one of those flying chunks of metal.) Rowland included that nugget  in an 11-page chapter on weapons technology. An aficionado of all things that go bang, I could have read 10 more pages. But that's just a quibble.

For 15 bucks (or cheaper here and here), you'll get a book you can digest in one sitting or skim and not feel guilty. Unlike that long-ago J-school class, this book is no snoozer.

Antietam death: Private John Bingham's grave

The Bingham brothers: Wells and John
served in Company H in the 16th Connecticut.
John, only 18 when he was killed at Antietam,
 is probably the one on the right. (Photos courtesy
 of Military and Historical Image Bank)

A farmer from East Haddam, Conn., Elisha Bingham undoubtedly had high hopes for his nine sons. Perhaps he planned to turn over running the family farm to one of them after he and his second wife, Martha, were incapable of handling those arduous duties.

Like most parents, the Binghams surely didn't want to outlive their children, who ranged in age from 1 to 22 when the Civil War erupted on April 12, 1861. (1) But the plans of many Connecticut families were altered by the war. Six of the Bingham's sons -- Alonzo, Charles, William, Eliphalet, John and Wells -- eventually joined the Union army. Tragically, two of them died during the conflict: 17-year-old John at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862 and 21-year-old Eliphalet in Virginia on May 1, 1864.

John and Eliphalet are buried side-by-side in East Haddam's Little Church Cemetery, a short distance from the beautiful First Church of Christ. Perhaps that's where both of the Bingham brothers' funeral services were held nearly 150 years ago. (This morning I visited the church and cemetery, where I shot the video above.)

Close-up of a flag on John Bingham's
well-worn gravestone.

Last Saturday, I told the story of John and his brother, Wells, who was barely 16 years old when he enlisted. The brothers were mustered into Company H of the 16th Connecticut on Aug. 24 1862. Less than a month later, they found themselves in farmer John Otto's 40-acre cornfield at Antietam, undoubtedly scared out of their minds. Company H was employed as videttes to look out for the enemy. (2) But John, Wells and the rest of their rookie regiment were overwhelmed by A.P. Hill's veteran soldiers, who smacked into their left flank unobserved that afternoon after marching 17 miles from Harper's Ferry. John was killed sometime during the fight.

Two days after the battle, soldiers of the 16th Connecticut were assigned to gather and bury the dead. John Bingham's broken body might have been among them. "This was a very unpleasant duty, making many of the men sick," according to a post-war history of the 16th Connecticut. (3) "Forty of the men were buried that afternoon side by side, under a large tree, near the stonewall, where the hardest of the battle was fought."

Because John was only a private, the Binghams probably had to arrange for the return of their son's remains to East Haddam, a small town about 30 miles south of Hartford. Twenty-one months later, the Binghams probably went through that awful duty again after Eliphalet died in Virginia from a cause I have not been able to establish.

Outliving John and Eliphalet by nearly 20 years, Elisha Bingham died on June 19, 1882 at age 67. He's buried to the left of his sons in Little Church Cemetery.

(1) Some Account Of The Cone Family in America: Principally Of The Descendants, William Whitney Cone, 1903, Page 111
(2) History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, 1875
(3) Ibid.

The grave of Private John Bingham of the 16th Connecticut (center)  in First Church
Cemetery in East Haddam, Conn.  John's brother, Eliphalet, is buried at right. The
grave of his mother, Martha, is at left. Eliphalet served in the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery.

Another view of John Bingham's gravestone. The beautiful First Church of Christ, perhaps
the site of the funeral services for John and brother Eliphalet, is in the background.

The names of John and Eliphalet Bingham appear on this Civil War memorial on the Moodus Green
in East Haddam, about three miles from the graves of the brothers. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.)