Valuable Civil War relic ... or not

Is this an ammunition pouch ... or something else?

You are looking at a ... err ... ahh, well, I don't know what the heck you're looking at. This was given to me more than 10 years ago by parents, who picked it up at an antiques store somewhere in the South. It might be Civil War .... and then again it might not. I collect hard images of Civil War soldiers, so this item doesn't fall under my area of expertise. It's made of leather with a thin brass plate and upraised buttons across the outside flap of the pouch. The belt, which includes a small metal buckle, also is made of leather.

Was it used to carry ammunition? Is it government issue? Or is this just something some backwoodsman crafted to use to go hunt squirrels?

Perhaps one of you can tell me.

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Civil War statue on Moodus Green near East Haddam, Conn.

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Letter to Mrs. Mansfield: 'Depths of Pandemonia'

 "It seemed as if the very depths of Pandemonia, had sent her furies, and such a tornado of deadly
missiles screaming through the air," a surgeon wrote to General Joseph Mansfield's wife about the
circumstances before her husband's death at Antietam.  Below, Mansfield's grave in Middletown, Conn.

In a neatly written five-page letter to Louisa Mansfield dated April 28, 1863, a surgeon in the 107th New York described in detail the circumstances before her husband's death and his last hours at a Union field hospital. General Joseph K Mansfield of Middletown, Conn. was mortally wounded by a shot to the chest near the East Woods during the Battle of Antietam.

General Joseph Mansfield lived in this house in
Middletown, Conn.,  during  the Civil War. 
It now houses the Middlesex County
 Historical Society.

"The wound was inflicted by a 'Minnie ball,' Dr. Patrick Flood wrote. "When I came up, some men were trying to carry him in a blanket, but the jolting motion, made him bleed so fast, they were afraid to move. I found the clothing around his chest saturated with blood, and upon opening them, found he was wounded in the right breast, the ball penetrating about two inches from the nipple, and passing out of the back, near the edge of the shoulder blade."  (Major hat tip to Randy Buchman's Enfilading Lines blog for first posting the contents of the letter.)

Mansfield died on Sept. 18, 1862, about 24 hours after he was wounded. He was 58 years old.

The original Flood letter to Mrs. Mansfield is now in the collection of the Middlesex County Historical Society at the general's Civil War home in Middletown. Middlesex County Historical Society director Deborah Shapiro kindly photocopied Flood's letter for me recently, and a good friend of the blog enhanced it to make it even more readable than the original. Not quite as exciting as, say, purchasing a bible of a soldier who served in the 8th Connecticut for $3 at a community yard sale, but it's close. Sort of. (CLICK HERE FOR .PDF OF ENTIRE LETTER. IT'S A LARGE FILE.)

General Mansfield was one of more than 100 soldiers from Middletown, about 18 miles south of Hartford, who died during the Civil War. The most impressive exhibit at the Middlesex County Historical Society is a wall of photos of some of those soldiers from the town who gave the last full measure, including Mansfield and Private Robert Hubbard of the 14th Connecticut. I'll write much more about some of these soldiers in the coming weeks.

A wall of Middletown's Civil War dead at the Middlesex County Historical Society
in the former home of General Joseph Mansfield, who was mortally wounded at Antietam.
(The gentleman  in the middle was not from Middletown, Conn.)

Faces of the Civil War: Robert Hubbard

"I feel I never could forgive myself if this government should be overthrown,"
Robert Hubbard, a private in the 14th Connecticut,  wrote his brother on Aug. 13, 1862.
Hubbard was killed at Antietam about a month later.  (Photo: Middlesex Historical Society)

Sifting through donated documents originally thought to be worthless, curators at the Middletown (Conn.) library more than a century ago discovered a letter from a young Civil War soldier to his brother.

On April 13, 1898, the Middletown (Conn.) Penny Press
reported the discovery of a moving letter
from a Civil War soldier to his brother.  The
current whereabouts of the letter are unknown.

The letter, a reporter for the Middletown Penny Press wrote on April 13, 1898, "should fire the hearts of the younger generation of today with patriotic fire."

Convinced that the cause of  his nation was just, the soldier in Company B of the 14th Connecticut Infantry explained why he enlisted in the Union army a week earlier.

"My mind was made up to take this step," the private wrote on Aug. 13, 1862, "after hearing the President's order for a draft of 300,000 soldiers. A company was nearly full in Middletown at the time and there were several of my acquaintances in it, and everyone says that it is the best, or one of the best, companies that has been raised."

"I don't know if I feel quite as belligerent as I did when the war first broke out, but the time seems to have arrived when everyone who can must leave the plow in the furrow as old Putnum did and go to the battlefield. The prospect is not a very pleasant one, all things considered. The swamps of the Chickahominy and the guerillas of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, not to mention the great Rebel army in the field, are ugly things to look at, and the hardships of a soldier's life I can imagine better than many.

"But necessity is laid upon the young men of the nation, and woe is them if they preserve not the inheritance of their fathers. I am becoming convinced that the secession leaders mean to conquer this nation if the nation does not conquer them, and Oh! Freedom, how can we give that up?"

Close-up of Private Robert Hubbard's marker at
New Farm Hill Cemetery in Middletown, Conn.

The man concluded his letter to his brother Josiah with these words:

"I feel as if I could not forgive myself if this government should be overthrown and I had no weapon in its defense."

A little more than a month later, letter writer Robert Hubbard, an adventurous spirit from Middletown, was killed at Antietam, one of many soldiers from the state who died on the bloodiest day in American history. Hubbard, who sought his fortune in California during the gold rush of the 1850s, died on William Roulette's farm, "shot by the careless handling of a rifle by a member of his own company" during the chaos of battle. (1)

Afterward, Hubbard apparently was buried near the corn crib by Roulette's barn, one of at least 700 soldiers from both sides buried on the farmer's property.

Weeks after his death, Hubbard's family back in Middletown contacted Roulette about arranging for the return of their loved one's body to Connecticut for re-burial. Roulette, whose property was ruined during the battle, suffered his own tragedy in the weeks after Antietam. His 20-month-old daughter Carrie May, who was just learning how to talk, died of typhoid fever, perhaps spread by the many wounded soldiers cared for in the Sharpsburg, Md., area.

Robert Hubbard, a private in the 14th Connecticut who was killed at Antietam, may
have been buried near the corn crib of the barn on  William Roulette's farm.

Longtime Civil War relic hunter Richard Clem of Hagerstown, Md. discovered a letter Roulette wrote the Hubbards on New Year's Eve 1862:

Dear Friends
I have received your draft of $70.00 and have forwarded the remains of your brother by express as you expressed by the dispatch. I did not buy the coffin from the undertaker as I wrote to you. I bought it from the cabinet maker at first cost which saved $15.00 for practically the same kind of coffin. The freight by express was $30.00, the dispatch was $1.15 for disinterring the body and delivering it to the depot at Hagerstown the distance of 13-miles making all the expense $55.00 and I enclose your $15.00 makes in all.

Hubbard, killed by friendly fire at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, was
re-buried in this cemetery in Middletown, Conn., on Jan. 6, 1863.

Added Roulette:

"Allow me to introduce to you my family, wife and 5 children, 2 girls and 3 boys of which the oldest Ann Elizabeth 13-years-old. Our youngest died since the battle -- a charming little girl 20-months-old Carrie May just beginning to talk. The battle caused considerable destruction of property here. My nearest neighbor [Samuel Mumma] lost his house and barn to fire. I lost valuable horses, some sheep and hogs. Please write as soon as you receive this and inform me whether all is right."

On Jan. 2, 1863, Hubbard's body arrived in Middletown and four days later, a funeral service was held at North Church at 10 a.m. After a scripture was read and "a beautiful piece was sung by the choir, Reverend Taylor spoke of "war as often a necessity." (2)

"The deceased left the peaceful avocations in which he had been engaged for the life of a soldier," the Middletown Constitution reported. "He went because he believed he ought to go, and he met his death as a brave man only can."

At 11:30 a.m., Hubbard's coffin was placed into a hearse and escorted by the Mansfield Guard, a local militia group, the short distance down Main Street to New Farm Hill Cemetery. The son of the late Josiah M. Hubbard was laid to rest in a family plot.

On the 12-foot brownstone marker below Hubbard's name are these still-legible words:

"For whoever will save his life shall lose it and whoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it."

Robert Hubbard was 31 years, 5 months old when he died.

(1) History of the 14th Regiment, Connecticut Vol. Infantry, Charles D. Page, 1906 , Page 44

(2) Middletown Constitution, Jan. 6, 1863

Robert Hubbard is buried in a family plot that includes his brother, Josiah,
who served in the 11th Kansas Cavalry. Josiah survived the war.

Crossed swords and a shield adorn Robert Hubbard's marker.

Art and letters: Soldiers write home

Top of a patriotic stationery from a letter Connecticut soldiers sent home.
(Connecticut Historical Society Civil Manuscripts Project)

In reading letters from Civil War soldiers to their families back home in Connecticut at the Connecticut Historical Society recently, I was struck by the beauty of some of the patriotic stationery. I shot this photo of the top of a letter three soldiers in the 8th Connecticut from Canton wrote to a woman back home to thank her for mittens and stockings she had sent. Love the quote at the bottom. All three of the soldiers were dead nine months after the letter was sent on Dec. 16, 1861. One of them, a private named Martin Wadhams, was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

Antietam: A visit to General Mansfield's house

"He lived about 24 hours after he was shot,"  Dr. Patrick Flood wrote about
General Joseph  Mansfield in this letter to his widow. The letter is in the archives at the
Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Conn.
.

Middlesex County Historical  Society director
 Deborah Shapiro holds a letter from the physician
who saw Joseph Mansfield die to his widow.

Suffering from a gunshot in the right breast, General Joseph K. Mansfield clearly was in dire condition at a field hospital at a farmhouse about a mile behind Union lines.

"He was very pallad (sic), almost as white as paper as I approached him -- his pulse was small and quick," an attending physician wrote in a five-page letter to Mansfield's widow seven months after her husband was mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam.

At first, the general was "very talkative,"  Patrick Flood, a surgeon in the 107th New York wrote, and he was lucid until around midnight. The old soldier from Middletown, Conn., was given a canteen filled with cool water and brandy, but the mixture didn't agree with him.

"On our way to the hospital," Flood wrote to Louisa Mansfield, "he repeated many times 'Oh my God, am I to die thus?' – 'Get me a horse.'  'Oh my poor family.' "

Given command of the XII Corps just two days before Antietam, the 58-year-old general went downhill fast.

Post-war painting of Mansfield at the
Middlesex County Historical Society.

"After I had dressed his wound," Flood continued in the letter to Mrs. Mansfield, "I left him in charge of the medical director, but called to see him often, and saw him one hour before he expired. ... He lived about 24 hours after he was shot. Had the very best of care and attention."

Connecticut suffered terrible losses at Antietam, but perhaps no death was as shocking as Mansfield's. On the day of his funeral in Middletown, about 18 miles south of Hartford, "emblems of sorrow appeared in all directions." (1) Most businesses were shut down, and stores and homes along the route of the funeral procession were draped in black.

Following an elaborate memorial service attended by Governor William Buckingham, U.S. Sen. James Dixon, the wife of General George McClellan and hundreds of others, Mansfield was buried in Middletown on Sept. 23, 1862.  As his coffin was lowered into the ground at Mortimer Cemetery, the Mansfield Guard, a local militia group head by Mansfield's friend Elihu Starr, fired three volleys. (Mansfield was reburied at Indian Hills Cemetery in Middletown in 1867.)

The circumstances of Mansfield's wounding at Antietam on the morning of Sept. 17, 1862 are well known to many Civil War buffs, but Flood's letter describing the general's last hours was news to me. Randy Buchman, an Antietam battlefield guide, discovered an old, typewritten copy of the surgeon's letter to Mansfield's widow in the basement of the Antietam National Park Visitor's Center and posted the complete contents on his terrific Enfilading Lines blog. Curious, he wondered if the original belonged to the Middlesex County Historical Society. I aimed to find out.

Order directing Mansfield to hold
 his command at Antietam. 
(Middlesex County Historical Society)

Fifty-two years ago, the house Mansfield lived in during the Civil War was set to be demolished and turned into a parking lot. Thankfully, the Middlesex County Historical Society bought the red-brick home on Main Street in Middletown from Mansfield's descendants and turned it into a museum.

An exhibit focused on Middletown soldiers who served during the Civil War takes up a good chunk of space in the small, well-kept building. The historical society also displays an extensive collection of Mansfield memorabilia, including a daguerreotype of a much younger Mansfield as a soldier, a pre-Civil War letter from Robert E. Lee and a pair of black-and-white striped pants Mansfield wore as a tot.

And in a manilla folder in the small research room, there's a five-page letter, yellowed with age and difficult to read, to a Middletown widow.

"I have endeavored to give you a faithful detail of all that transpired in my relations with your lamented husband," closed Dr. Patrick Flood's letter to Louisa Mansfield on April 28, 1863. "... The Country has suffered an irreparable loss in his death."

(1) Hartford Courant, Sept. 24, 1862

Joseph Mansfield lived in this house on Main Street in Middletown. It now houses
the Middlesex Historical Society, which operates a small museum here.

Collinsville's Village Cemetery: A girl named Hattie

The tiny grave of Hattie L. in Village Cemetery. She was 8 months old when she died.

While I climbed the steep, terraced slope of Village Cemetery in Collinsville, Conn., last weekend, the gravestone for a young girl named Hattie caught my eye. Only 8 months old, she died on Nov. 11, 1861, seven months after the Civil War started. But I didn't photograph Hattie's grave because of any connection to the war. Rather, I was struck by the carving of a small lamb, so whitened by the elements that it appeared to be snow, atop her tiny, well-worn gravestone. And because, well, little Hattie's marker looked kind of lonely among all the much larger gravestones, many of them broken, tilted or otherwise neglected in a cemetery that could use some tender loving care.

I doubt whether many people have visited Hattie's final resting place lately. The grass in the cemetery looked as if it had not been cut for weeks. And besides, who would venture to the out-of-the-way spot, halfway up the hill of an old cemetery? The graves of Hattie's parents appear to be just to the right of her marker, but I don't know that for sure.

So who was Hattie L.? And why did she die so young?

Someday I'd  like to find out.

Antietam: From death springs art

Part of the ornate, weather-worn iron fence around the grave of Wadsworth Washburn
in Denison Cemetery in Berlin, Conn. Washburn was killed at Antietam.

On a cold, late October day, I traveled 25 minutes from my house to visit the grave of Wadsworth A. Washburn, an orderly sergeant in Company G of  the 16th Connecticut who was killed at Antietam. Denison Cemetery isn't off the beaten path, but it's tricky to find nonetheless, tucked away in a residential area in Berlin, Conn. In October 1862, Wadsworth's father traveled to Sharpsburg, Md., to retrieve his son's body, a sad duty for many Connecticut families in the days and weeks after the terrible battle. The ornate iron fence surrounding the soldier's grave in the little cemetery caught my eye, so I shot the close-up above. Although worn by the elements. it remains nice piece of craftsmanship. Wadsworth's 17-year-old sister, Emma, is apparently buried in the same plot. Wadsworth, 26, served barely a month in the Union army before he was killed in farmer John Otto's field outside Sharpsburg.

The well-worn stone on the fence surrounding Washburn's gravesite (below).



---

MORE ON ANTIETAM: Read my extensive thread on the battle.

A gift from Connecticut before they died

Sophronia Barber received this thank-you note from three young Connecticut soldiers
in late 1861. (Connecticut Historical Society Civil War Manuscripts Project)

Grateful for a package from back home in Connecticut, three young soldiers sent a two-page thank-you note on patriotic stationery to their benefactor, Sophronia Barber.

'We have this day been the recipient of some mittens and stockings which we are informed you helped knit." read the letter, dated Dec. 16, 1861. "We thank you kindly for them, and as we are engaged in helping to maintain the government and wear these to keep our bodies warm, you may be assured that our hearts will warm toward those who have remembered the soldier in his need."

Signatures of privates Henry Sexton, Isaac Tuller and Martin Wadhams on
their thank-you letter home. They served in the 8th Connecticut.

Perhaps huddled in a tent to avoid the cold as they composed the letter in a camp in Annapolis, Md.,  the soldiers from Canton longed for an end to the war.

"May the richest of Heavens blessing rest upon the ladies who so kindly remember us," the letter continued, "and we hope that this war soon be over and none of the Stars that now are emblazoned on the Flag of our Country be effaced and we be returned to our homes again and see our friends again in a free & united country, under the same old flag the heroes of the revolution fought under."

The letter was signed by Henry D Sexton, Issac H Tuller and Martin L. Wadhams, privates in their early 20s in Company A who had mustered into the 8th Connecticut less than two months earlier.

Nine months later, each soldier was dead, the fate of at least 620,000 men during the Civil War.

Memorial in Canton (Conn.) Cemetery
for soldiers from Canton who died during the
Civil War. The names of Henry Sexton, Isaac Tuller
and Martin Wadhams appear on the reverse.

A teacher before the war, Sexton died, apparently of jaundice, three weeks after he and his Canton pals sent their thank-you note to Ms. Barber.

Oliver Case, a private in the 8th Connecticut, wrote movingly to his sister of his friend's death aboard a ship transporting Burnside's Expedition to North Carolina. (Check out this terrific post on Case's graphic letter at John Rogers' excellent blog on the soldier from Simsbury, Conn.)

"About three he had a spasm and rushed out of his bunk," Case wrote about Sexton. " I had no control of him as he could handle me like a child. ...It was very difficult to get anyone to take hold of him as they seemed to be afraid of him. It took five of us to hold him and keep him from tearing his face with his hands. He would bite at us and froth to the mouth, making a horrid noise all of the time. I stayed over him twenty four hours in succession before his death. I never saw anything so horrible in my life and if it had not been for the sailors I do not know what I should have done."

Tuller, a clerk, died on April 9, 1862 of typhoid fever in New Bern, N.C.. And Wadhams, a teamster, was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862 during the Union army's ill-fated attack on the extreme left  that Wednesday afternoon. Wadhams' body was identified two days after the battle, following the rebels' retreat into Virginia.

In a letter excerpted on this excellent 8th Connecticut Infantry site, Wolcott P. Marsh described the horrific scene where the Federals suffered hundreds of casualties.

"About 9 o'clock A.M. Friday we were ordered across the bridge and on to the field where the battle of Wednesday was,"  the captain in the 8th Connecticut wrote nine days after the battle. "The rebels having skedadled the night before and our forces were then following them up capturing many of their rear guard. We stacked arms and details were sent from different to pick up the dead so that could be buried together. I went up where our regit. was engaged and there what a sight. 30 men from our regit. alone lay dead in a little field and near by was 42 Zouaves (9th N. Y.) and many more from other regit.

"The first man I came to of my company was Charles E. Louis my acting orderly. (Blogger's note: probably Charles E. Lewis.) Then Corp. Truck my color corporal and close by them lay Dwight Carry, Herbert Nee, Horace Rouse and Mr. Sweet all of my company then passing on to Co. A. were the body's of Oliver Case, Orton Lord, Martin Wadhams and Lucius Wheeler then to Co. K. saw Jack Simons body the only one whose name remember had all body's brought from hill down by several straw stacks."

Perhaps like men of the 16th Connecticut killed at Antietam, the bodies of men in the 8th Connecticut were buried in well-marked, temporary graves so they could be more easily retrieved by family members. I could not find a record of Wadhams' burial in Connecticut, so maybe he's in an unmarked grave at Antietam National Cemetery.

The soldiers' names on the Canton Civil War memorial, which was dedicated in 1903.

As I read the letter from the three young men this morning at the Connecticut Historical Society, their story was brought full circle for me. Nine months ago, I wrote this short post about the Civil War memorial near the entrance of Canton Cemetery in Collinsville. On a large plaque on one side are the names of 39 soldiers from the area, including Sexton, Tuller and Wadhams, who died during the Civil War. Now I have a tangible connection to the three men from Canton, a short distance from my home.

Like Wadhams, the final resting places of Tuller and Sexton are unknown.

Henry D. Sexton's occupation was listed as teacher in the 1860 U.S. census.

Letters home: 'Your husband to death'

Many of John Holwell's Civil War letters to his wife are part of the 
Civil War Manuscripts Project at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Like thousands of other Civil War soldiers, John C. Holwell wrote letters home.

Lots of them.

Often colorful and sometimes eloquent, the letters to his wife and sons back home in Connecticut  mentioned preserving the Union, fishing, life in camps, the pleasure of receiving a family photo and even a pledge to stay away from "Demon Liquor."

"I have not got a drink of rum since I left Hartford or any other kind of spirits," the corporal in Company H of the 11th Connecticut wrote Rebecca Holwell on March 23, 1862, "but I should liked very much to had a good horn the day after battle as we needed it badly."

And, of course, he wrote of fighting the rebels.

Envelope for a letter John Holwell wrote to his wife, Rebecca, back in
Norwich, Conn.  (Connecticut Historical Society)

The 11th Connecticut's first major battle of the Civil War didn't come until March 14, 1862, nearly four months after the regiment was organized in Hartford. Attacking at New Bern, N.C., an important link in the Confederate supply chain, the Union army overwhelmed the outnumbered and ill-equipped  rebels. The 11th Connecticut suffered six killed, including the well-regarded Edwin. R. Lee, a captain of Company D from Barkhamsted.

Holwell, who also served in the Mexican War, evidently was a better soldier than he was at gathering intelligence on the enemy.

"It was a wander we were not cut to pieces as the rebels had three times our number and stood behind giant breast works," he wrote of the New Bern battle in the March 23 letter. "But thank God I have escaped unhurt."

From the manufacturing town of Norwich, Holwell enlisted in the Union army on Nov. 21, 1861 and was mustered into Company H as a private two days later. John, a ropemaker before the war, and Rebecca had two children, Henry and Edward. Listed as 5 years old in the 1860 U.S. census, Eddie apparently was the apple of his father's eye.

His last name misspelled "Howell," John Holwell was listed as a ropemaker in the
1860 U.S. census. Holwell was married and had two children. (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

In his letters home during the Civil War, Howell often mentioned his children.

"Kiss Edward and Henry for me and I hope they will be good boys," he wrote in one letter "...I will bring them a handsome present when I come home."

"Your dagerreotype and the children's look very natural and I was very glad to receive them. ..." he wrote in another. "I hope little Eddy will keep on going to school and be smart. The men down here all like his picture and praise it up highly."

TOP: The 11th Connecticut crossed this ground near Burnside Bridge
 in this image taken by Civil War photographer James Gibson after
the Battle of Antietam. (Library of Congress Collection) BOTTOM:
Holwell was among nine men in Company H of the 11th Connecticut
listed as killed in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 26, 1862.

Thankfully, many of  Holwell's letters home have survived, tucked away in a file in a box at the Connecticut Historical Society. I don't have a photo of John Holwell to accompany this post, but I think his letters to his family back in Connecticut, including the snippets below, help paint a picture of a hard-nosed patriot and a family man caught up in the swirl of a terrible war.

March 17, 1862 (from New Bern, N.C.) : "Rebecca, you wrote to know how we were living. We live a soldiers life. It is a hard life but what a soldier should expect. The day of the battle we had nothing at all to eat and had nothing till the next day. But I am pretty tough and can stand it pretty well. We have not received any money since January 1st. I hope you will get along and not want anything. Write and let me know if you need anything. We shall probably be paid in a short time.

"Please write soon and let me know all the children get along. Send Edward to school for I expect he will sometime endure all that I have gone through. Sing the "Red, White and Blue" till all the southern states have laid down their arms and our flag waves over every place in the Union. Do not get discouraged but keep up good courage. I want to come home but not till the whole south has laid down her arms. It will not be very long."

March 23, 1862 (from New Bern, N.C.):  "I want you to send me a small parcel by express. Send me three yards of braid. Blue about about one inch and three yards half-inch wide blue and three yards half-inch wide red. I want it for stripes as I have been promoted to Corporal. Send me some fish hooks and lines. This is a good place to fish if we get to stop here."

June 30, 1862 (from New Bern, N.C.):  "Do not at all be alarmed because we may go in a battle. That is what we came here for. We do not expect to run or shirk any duty."

July 14, 1862 (from Newport News, Va.):  "I am now enjoying first-rate health. I hope you and the children are well. All the things you sent me in the box came in first rate and were acceptable on board the boat when we had nothing else to eat. I have no more to write now. Give my best respects to the neighbors. Tell Eddie to keep on going to school and be a good boy. If we succeed in reaching Richmond I shall soon be home to see him."

Nearly six months after he concluded a letter with "your husband to death," the ropemaker from Norwich was killed during the 11th Connecticut's attack at a small, stone-arch bridge over Antietam Creek.

Corporal John C. Holwell was one of 36 11th Connecticut men who died at the Battle of Antietam.

He was 41 years old.

His final resting place is unknown.

John Holwell concluded his March 23, 1862 letter to his wife with these words. Nearly
six months later, he was killed at the Battle of Antietam. (Connecticut Historical Society)