Faces of the Civil War: John Manross

Brothers Eli and John Manross of Bristol, Conn. Their older brother, Newton,
  also served during the Civil War.  (Photo courtesy Bristol Public Library)

John Manross' brother, Newton, was killed at Antietam, a cannonball tearing off his left arm and exposing the beating heart of the 16th Connecticut captain to a private who never forgot the gruesome sight.

Another brother, Eli, a sergeant in the 5th Connecticut, suffered a wound during the Union army's disastrous defeat at Chancellorsville in May 1863 but survived the war.

For the youngest of eight brothers in the prominent family from Bristol, Conn., however, the Civil War was a different kind of hell.

Thirty-seven-year-old  Newton Manross, a captain in
 the 16th Connecticut, was killed at Antietam on
Sept. 17, 1862.

The rebellion apparently drove John Manross insane, finally killing him nearly seven months after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

If you want to research Civil War soldiers, pension records are invaluable. Often a trove of legal documents and letters that can piece together a soldier's life and death, they are available at the National Archives in Washington and through web sites such as fold.com.

In the pension records for 15th Massachusetts private Justus Wellington, I discovered an affidavit from his sister noting that the young soldier lost all the money he intended to send home to his financially-strapped family when he swam the Potomac River under fire from rebels during the Battle of Ball's Bluff. A shoemaker from West Brookfield, Mass., Wellington was killed at Antietam.

In pension records for 16th Connecticut private Henry Aldrich, also killed at Antietam, I found the heart-rending letter his wife wrote to the pension board requesting that her oldest son be discharged from the army to support her and three young children back home in Bristol. "Relieve a Mothers hart and yo shall have a Mothers blessing," Sarah Aldrich pleaded.

The 48-page widow's pension file for John Manross -- a man once described as a "noted hunter" and a "famous ball player" (1) -- tells a similar, sad tale.

John was the son of  Maria and Elisha Manross, a War of 1812 veteran and a well-known clockmaker in Bristol, a manufacturing town about 20 miles southwest of Hartford. Employed in his father's clock-making business before the Civil War, John married a Maine woman, 21-year-old Lena Gale, on Nov. 12, 1860 in Farmington, Conn. The couple had one child, a girl named Juanita, who was born on Jan. 29, 1862.

John Manross' army disability discharge from Knight Hospital in New Haven, Conn. He was 
unfit for the Veterans Reserve Corps because of "insanity, disease contracted while in line of duty."

John, who stood 5-9 and had a dark complexion, blue eyes and dark hair, enlisted in the Union army on Jan. 28, 1864, mustering into Company B of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery as a private the same day. (Eli and Newton enlisted in the summer of 1861 and 1862, respectively.)

Army life was a lousy experience for John almost from the start of his service. Sometime in early February 1864, he suffered in the barracks instead of on the battlefield when the top berth of a bunk and several soldiers fell on him, causing a severe head injury. Later that year, perhaps about the time of the momentous Battle of Cold Harbor near the Confederate capital of Richmond in June, Manross was a very sick man. The frequent marching of the Army of the Potomac and exposure to the elements wore down the young soldier.

Eli Manross' grave in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, Conn.

"By reason of exposure and fatigue consequent upon the discharge of his duties he contracted a cold and fever which confined him in hospital for a long time," noted Captain William Lewis of Manross' Company B. "...he attempted to return to duty but was prevented by the state of his health and in my opinion his constitution was broken down and he (was) rendered unfit for any sort of labor." (2)

Manross eventually was sent to Knight Hospital in New Haven, Conn., a facility set up soon after the Civil War began to handle the massive number of war casualties. He was treated there for consumption, known  as tuberculosis today, and for "insanity," thought by doctors of the time to have been caused by fever.

On Jan. 31, 1865, Manross, a shell of the man who entered the service about a year earlier, was discharged from the hospital and the army because of "insanity and disease contracted while in the line of duty."

"Not fit for V.R. (Veterans Reserve) Corps," the discharge for disability document matter-of-factly noted. "Disability total. His friends are able and willing to take charge of him." How John's condition affected his marriage is unknown, but it undoubtedly did not make life easy for the couple. Lena's name is not mentioned in the discharge for disability document.

In a John Banks' blog tradition, I placed this penny on Newton Manross' grave today.

Nearly seven months after the Civil War ended, John Manross, a "faithful soldier" with "good habits," died in his hometown of Bristol. The physician who treated him had no doubt about the cause of death. "Have been acquainted with him for some fourteen years," Dr. Frank Whittemore noted, "and had no symptoms of insanity until he returned from the army (and) consider cause of disease fatigue consequent with army life." (3)

John Manross was only 28 years old.

Soon after her husband died, Lena Manross applied for a widow's pension, and in late 1865, she was granted $8 a month; an additional $2 a month was added for Juanita. Lena, who never remarried, lived out her days in Rhode Island. By the time she died at age 87 in 1926, her Civil War widow's pension paid her $50 a month.

John Manross is buried under a plain, gray marker in Bristol's Forestville Cemetery, not far from the shop where he and his brothers worked on their father's clocks and the house where the family once lived. Several paces to the left of John's marker are the final resting places for Newton and Eli.

(1) Commemorative Biographical Record of Hartford County, J.H. Beers & Co., 1901, Page 355
(2) Widow's pension file affidavit, Oct. 16, 1865.
(3) Widow's pension file affidavit, May 30, 1867

John Manross is buried in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, a few steps from his brother, Newton,
who was killed at Antietam.

10 young Connecticut soldiers to remember

Marked by flags for Memorial Day, these headstones in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery
 honor soldiers who died during the Civil War.  No soldiers are buried under these
 markers, known as effigy graves.

None older than 20, they were just kids when they left Connecticut to fight in the Civil War.

George Chamberlain of Middletown needed his mother's permission before he could enlist when he was 18 in August 1862.

Nineteen-year-old Marvin Wait of Norwich hoped to become a lawyer, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

Leaving his widowed mother behind, 20-year-old James Willard of Avon enlisted two months before his older brother, who set the stage for a double family tragedy.

A 19-year student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, George Crosby was praised by one of his former teachers for the "enthusiasm and spirit of perseverance with which he pursued his studies."

Although they came from different backgrounds, all 10 young men featured in this post have a common link:  Each died during the Civil War.

During his terrific Connecticut Day speech on April 21 honoring those who fought at Antietam, Rev. John Schildt mentioned Newton Manross, a 37-year-old captain of Company K of  the 16th Connecticut, who was killed in farmer John Otto's cornfield. A brilliant man from Bristol, Manross traveled the world before the Civil War and was acting professor of philosophy and chemistry at Amherst (Mass.) College when he enlisted in the Union army.

What great things, Schildt wondered, could Manross have achieved had he lived?

I often wonder what these 10 young soldiers could have achieved had they lived. Each is worth remembering this Memorial Day weekend.

Left: Daniel Tarbox Jr., probably shortly after he enlisted. Right top: Tarbox as a boy.
Bottom right: Tarbox (right), with his father, Daniel Sr., and brother, Louis.
Left photo: Courtesy Scott Hann. Family photos: Courtesy Tarbox family descendant.

Private Daniel Tarbox, 18 years old, 11th  Connecticut

In his many letters to his father back home in Brooklyn, Conn., Tarbox advised on how to take care of his favorite colt on the family farm, wrote of the poor state of his finances and, like most soldiers throughout history, complained about army life.

May 3, 1861: "Take care of the colt don’t put any load on her back, turn her out with Frank’s. Take good care of the horses.  The roll is beating, I must close."

Tarbox's gravestone in South Cemetery in Brooklyn, Conn.

Jan. 5, 1862: "I shall send 13 $ …to you & you can use it as you see fit, but if I should ever return I shall expect you to know an account of your stewardship for at the end of 3 years you will see a poor ragged  pitiful cripple with one eye & one leg and poor as a church mouse. A little money would come handy,  as well as my colt which I want taken the best of care taken until I return."

Jan. 21, 1862: "We left Annapolis Wednesday Jan 8th and Saturday night we cast anchor in Hampton Roads about a mile from Fortress Monroe and took on some water.  Sunday morning we set sail again, about 2 O Clock there was a false alarm of fire.  On Monday all hands sea sick which continued 3 days when we began to grow better. On Wednesday night a man in Co. D died & Thursday they buried him in the sea."

March 6, 1862: "Please excuse bad writing, for I have a very bad pen and I have been called out a dozen times or more while I have been writing and I am half mad, so good bye."

But in his letter to his father on Sept. 6, 1862, Daniel Jr. had a sense of impending doom.

"I expect we are going into it now for good," he wrote from Washington. "Right where grape & shrapnel and chain shot fly thick. And whole company’s and Reg’ts are mowed down at one volley. If we go in, we can’t think of coming out. If I do fall, you take what money I have sent home and get my bounty and appropriate it to yourself as a present. But I hope for the best."

Eleven days after he wrote that letter home, Daniel Tarbox Jr. was mortally wounded near Burnside Bridge during the Battle of Antietam. He died a day later.

Private Dwight Carey, 16,  8th Connecticut

Dwight Carey is buried with his parents, Mary and James, 
in Carey Cemetery in Canterbury, Conn.

The son of James and Mary Carey of Canterbury, Dwight was only 15 when he enlisted in the Union army,  apparently lying about his age. (Soldiers had to be 18 to enlist, a rule often overlooked.)

Nonetheless, Carey distinguished himself during his short military career in  battles at New Bern, Roanoke Island and Fort Macon in North Carolina.

"In these engagements he exhibited the qualities of a brave soldier in a manner worthy a veteran of riper years, never for one moment regretting his choice in the past, or shrinking from the future," the Wilimantic (Conn.) Journal reported on Oct. 24, 1862, more than a month after Carey was killed at Antietam.

"As a boy he was upright in principle, correct in habit," The Journal reported. " As a soldier he was bold and firm; as a comrade he was loved by all who knew him."

Lieutenant Marvin Wait, 19, 8th Connecticut

When word of Wait's death at Antietam 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 from a prominent Norwich family was finally laid to rest. A private service was held late that morning in the house of Wait's parents, 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 the law office of Wait's father, eulogized the young soldier.

Wait's funeral in Norwich was attended by many dignitaries, including Gov. William Buckingham, "who spoke of the glory of dying for such a cause" during the graveside ceremony at Yantic Cemetery in Norwich.

Wait is buried under a beautiful white marker that includes the word "Antietam" in raised letters on the front.

Lieutenant George Crosby, 19, 14th Connecticut

Antietam was the first fight for the 14th Connecticut, but unlike the  16th Connecticut, the regiment fought well. As the 14th Connecticut closed in on the Sunken Road bordering the William Roulette farm, Crosby was struck by a bullet that sliced into his side, just missing his spine, and through his lungs.

The son of ship captain, Crosby died thirty-seven days later at his parent's home in Middle Haddam.

"From the beginning of the battle till he received his death wound, he fought nobly, encouraging his men and leading them on," the Middletown Constitution reported on Oct. 29, 1862. "And for a half hour after he was wounded, while he lay helpless on the ground, without regarding his own condition, he kept constantly exhorting his comrades to do their duty."

His funeral service at Middle Haddam's Episcopal Church was described as "one of the largest funerals ever attended in that place."

Pvt. John Bingham, 18, 16^th Connecticut

A farmer from East Haddam, Elisha Bingham undoubtedly had high hopes for his nine sons, including John, who was only 17 when he enlisted in the Union army in August 1862. Perhaps he planned to eventually turn over running the family farm to John.

He never got a chance.

John Bingham was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. Younger brother Wells, also a private in Company H of the 16th Connecticut, apparently survived Antietam physically unscathed, but the memory of that terrible day was probably seared into the 16-year-old boy soldier's brain the rest of his life.

Three other Bingham brothers served during the Civil War, including Eliphalet, who died May 1, 1864 at Arlington Heights, Va. John and Eliphalet are buried at First Church Cemetery in East Haddam, about 35 miles southeast of Hartford. Apparently upset over a failing business, Wells committed suicide in 1904.

Private James Willard, 20, 7^th Connecticut

Damaris Williard's husband, Julius, died in 1854, so it undoubtedly was unsettling when her youngest son enlisted in the Union army in August 1861.

James Willard's body was not recovered and returned
to Avon, Conn., where his family placed this 
marker to honor him in West Avon Cemetery.

In notes to his mother during the war, James, a private in Company A of the 7th Connecticut,  wrote about sending money home and thoughts of not surviving the conflict:

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."

On July 11, 1863, the 7th Connecticut was part of a rare night attack against Fort Wagner, near Charleston.  Greatly outnumbered, the Connecticut regiment suffered 105 killed, including James Willard of 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.

Fifteen months later, John Williard, James' brother, died of yellow fever in New Bern, N.C. A teamster in the 11th Connecticut, he was 32 years old.

Private Alvin Flint, 18, 11th Connecticut

After Alvin Flint was killed at Antietam, near Burnside Bridge, his father futilely searched for the body of his teen-aged son. Fifty-three-year-old Alvin Flint Sr. was serving as a private in the 21st Connecticut at the time.

A little more than a month after Antietam, Flint's father wrote a letter to the Hartford Courant, lamenting the loss of his oldest boy.

"You doubtless are aware that I have come to the land of Dixie, to engage in this killing business," he wrote. "Three weeks ago last Sunday night, at 12 o'clock, we were called up by the beat of the drum, to receive orders. We were sent to Frederick City, where we remained two days and thence marched to Sharpsburg.. We arrived Saturday night, near what I call "Antie-Dam," where my boy was brutally murdered by a band of midnight assassins. Oh that I could revenge on them, as Sampson did upon the Philistines! I was leaning upon that dear boy, as a prop in my declining years; but if my life is spared, I shall knock out some of the props that hold up this uncalled for, and worse than hellish, wicked rebellion."

The loss was excruciating for Alvin Flint Sr., whose wife and daughter had died of consumption in the winter if 1861-62 in East Hartford.  Incredibly, tragedy struck the Flint family again when Alvin Flint Sr., 53, and his remaining son, 13-year-old George, died of typhoid fever in January 1863.

Private George Chamberlain, 19, 16th Connecticut

Wounded in the knee in Farmer Otto's cornfield during the Battle of Antietam, George Chamberlain was eventually taken to the German Reformed Church on Main Street in Sharpsburg for treatment. Like most churches in the area after the battle, it was used as a field hospital.

Chamberlain's mother, Mary Ann, traveled from Connecticut to Sharpsburg to help nurse her son back to health.

"Present condition: Wound from the entrance of a musket ball a little below the bend of the right knee," a surgeon noted about Chamberlain in his case book " ... he keeps the leg flexed at a right angle and is careful not to move the joint for reason of pain."

Chamberlain was discharged from the army because of disability on April 1, 1863, but the wound suffered at Antietam plagued him for the rest of his life. He died in Ohio on May 11, 1865.

Private Francis Hollister, 20, 14th Connecticut
Private Frederick Hollister, 18, 14th Connecticut

The Hollister brothers are buried in
 Union Hill Cemetery in
East Hampton, Conn.

One paragraph in the regimental history of the 14th Connecticut detailed the demise of the Hollister brothers.

"A sad incident during the encampment at Falmouth was the death of two brothers, Francis and Frederick J. Hoillister, of Chatham, Company K., who died within a half an hour of each other and were buried together," the history noted. "They lost their blankets at Antietam and for three months had to sleep out of doors or crouch scantily clad all night long over a smoky camp-fire, from which exposure they died." (2)

The cause of death was typhoid fever. Why the Hollisters could not obtain a blanket is baffling.

The brothers' bodies were returned to Connecticut, where the Hollisters were buried in Union Hill Cemetery on Jan. 11, 1863.

Austin Fuller: 'Expired suddenly ... expectedly'

Austin Fuller, a private in Company C in the 16th Connecticut, died at home in 
Farmington, Conn. on Jan. 8, 1865. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in nearby Avon, Conn.

On a late December day in 1864, 23-year-old Austin Fuller, a private in the 16th Connecticut Infantry, received what should have been a welcome gift: a 30-day furlough.

On a typical army furlough, Fuller probably would have enjoyed a visit with his wife, Martha Jane, whom he married in September 1859 when the couple were in their late teens. If it were Fuller's first visit back to Farmington since the Battle of Antietam more than two years earlier, he could have recounted the awful details of a fight that cost his regiment 43 dead and 161 wounded.

After he was exchanged along with other sick and injured 
soldiers,  Austin Fuller received a 30-day furlough in late 
December 1864.  According to this furlough document, he was 
expected to return to his regiment on Jan. 25, 1865, 
"or be considered a deserter."

Perhaps Fuller, a wood turner before the Civil War, could have reconnected with family and friends who worked at his trade in Farmington, a manufacturing town of nearly 3,200 about 10 miles southwest of  Hartford.

Or maybe he could have simply relaxed in his home state until he was expected to report back to his regiment on Jan. 25, 1865 -- "or be considered a deserter," according to the furlough document.

But Fuller's return to Connecticut was anything but a normal army furlough.

On April 20, 1864, the 5-foot-8 soldier with a light complexion, blue eyes and brown hair was among hundreds of soldiers in the 16th Connecticut who were captured at Plymouth, N.C., and sent to prisoner-of-war camps in the South. Fuller eventually arrived at Andersonville, the Civil War's most notorious POW camp, where Wallace Woodford of nearby Avon and scores of other Union men from Connecticut suffered from starvation and disease. Henry Way of Bristol, a 19-year-old private in Company K of the 16th Connecticut, was one of 13,000 Union soldiers who died in the squalid camp in southwestern Georgia.

In his excellent book on his imprisonment published in 1865, Robert H. Kellogg, a private in Company A in the 16th Connecticut, described the camp's terrible, crowded conditions.

Martha Jane Fuller received an $8-a-month
widow's pension commencing Jan. 8, 1865.

"I ... wished that the President, under whose banner we had fought, could look in upon our sufferings, for surely the sight would move him to help us, if anything could be done," Kellogg wrote. "Live worms crawled upon the bacon that was given us to eat. 'It is all right,' we said; 'we are nothing but Yankee prisoners, or, as the rebels usually speak of us, 'damned Yankees.' " (1)

When Fuller left Andersonville and was exchanged along with other sick and wounded soldiers in December 1864, he was a shell of the man who enlisted in the Union army on Aug. 7, 1862. In fact, after he finally arrived in Farmington the day after Christmas 1864, he "was taken immediately to his bed, which he never left." (2).

"I was called to attend him professionally and found him greatly emaciated with very severe cough and diarrhea, attended with fever and great prostration," Dr. William Sage recounted. (3)

Never regaining his health, Fuller, his wife likely by his side, died on Jan. 8, 1865. He "expired very suddenly and expectedly," Sage recalled in February 1865, "very much as I am told many of the men died at Andersonville during the last summer." (4)

After her husband was buried, a grieving Martha Jane Fuller filled out the paperwork necessary to obtain a widow's pension. After some wrangling with government bureacracy over such petty issues as her middle name, she was granted an $8-a-month pension, retroactive to the date of her husband's death.

Austin Fuller's final resting place is in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, just off a busy Route 177 that once was a rural farm road. Near the bottom of his weathered, gray tombstone are these words:

The strife is ended

And he is at rest

(1) "Life And Death In Rebel Prisons," Robert H. Kellogg, 1865, Page 166 

(2) Widow's pension document, Feb. 20, 1865

(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.

Weathered U.S. flag at top of Austin Fuller's gravestone.

Close-up of plastic Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) marker next to Fuller's gravestone.

Death at New Bern: 'You have lost a noble brother'

On a Civil War memorial in Collinsville, Conn., Private Isaac Tuller's name appears next
 to two other comrades in Company A of the 8th Connecticut who died during the Civil War.

On a spring day in 1862, a captain in the 8th Connecticut wrote a letter like thousands of other letters sent home to loved ones of soldiers during the Civil War.

Civil War memorial at Village Cemetery in Collinsville, Conn., 
honoring soldiers "whose bodies were never brought home."

"Your brother died at 2 o'clock on the morning of April 9th of typhoid fever," Henry Hoyt wrote to Isaac Tuller's sister, Hattie, on May 12, 1862. "...You have lost a noble brother. I have lost a man whose loss we all deeply feel. He was noble hearted and generous to a fault." (See complete letter below from mother s pension file.)

Tuller's death in an army hospital in New Bern, N.C., was especially poignant.

Only four months earlier, the former clerk and two other comrades in the 8th Connecticut penned a letter home from their camp near Annapolis, Md., thanking a woman for sending mittens and socks to the soldiers to protect them during a harsh winter. (The letter may be found today among the Civil War manuscript holdings at the Connecticut Historical Society.)

"We have this day been the recipient of some mittens and stockings which we are informed you helped knit." read that letter to Sophronia Barber of Canton Center, 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."

Close-up of memorial, erected in 1903.

"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 Tuller, Henry D Sexton and Martin L. Wadhams, all privates in Company A. The young men in their early 20s were probably good friends.

Nine months later, each was dead.

Like Tuller, Sexton died of disease, losing an agonizing battle with jaundice on Jan. 7 aboard a hospital ship in Annapolis harbor. "It took five of us to hold him and keep him from tearing his face with his hands," a friend in the 8th Connecticut wrote of Sexton. Wadhams was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. Sadly, the remains of all three soldiers were not brought home. The final resting places of Wadhams and Sexton are unknown, and Tuller is buried somewhere in New Bern, N.C., perhaps in the national cemetery.

Along with the names of 36 other Connecticut soldiers, Tuller, Sexton and Wadhams are honored on a bronze plaque on the north side of a seldom-visited Canton memorial at the bottom of a hillside cemetery in Collinsville. On the reverse of the memorial, etched in granite, are these words:

"In memory of the men of Canton who offered up their lives a sacrifice in the Civil War 1861-65 and whose bodies were never returned home."

Camp near Newbern, N.C. May 12th 1862


Miss Tuller

"Your kind letter of the 30th was rec'd on the 8th. Your brother died at 2 o'clock on the morning of April 9th of typhoid fever. He was in the General Hospital at Newbern. The last time I saw him was a Slocum's Creek (March 18th) where I had to leave him on board the Gunboat Chapman -- the regiment being ordered to lay siege to Fort Macon about 40 miles from Newbern. Your brother was then taken from the steamer to the Hospital. He was at that time now sick, but the surgeon informed me that he did not consider him dangerous. I heard from him occasionally and that he was getting better. About the 15th we were startled by the news of his death. The reg. returned to Newbern on the 4th of this month where I found two letters for Isaac. I ..."  (Continued on Page 2.)

" ...opened them in order to find the address of his friends so as to send his effects home. These letters you will find with the other things. I have made enquiries at the Hospital about his last moments. He was deranged for a number of days before his death. The steward informed me that he called often for his mother and sister. You have lost a noble brother. I have lost a man whose loss we all deeply feel. He was noble hearted and generous to a fault. Dr. Leathry (since died) was very much attached to him. He had been assisting the Dr. for a few weeks in putting up medicines. He was buried in the Newbern Cemtery with his uniform on. I found his overcoat, 1 pr. of boots and 2 pouches monies containing $100 and postage stamps. The boots and cap I have sold for $5.50. There is owing to him by members of the Co. $13.00 and the Lieut. has $4.00 of his money. There are other ... " (Continued on Page 3.)

"...articles of clothing which I send by express. The money that is owing I will collect on next pay day to send to you by express. There is due from the U.S. from 31st Dec. to the time of his death. Enclosed find an inventory of effects. By presenting these docs to the Pay Master Genl. at Washington you will get the amount due. There are persons in most places who make it their business to procure the pay of deceased soldiers. I by placing the papers in the hands of an agent of this kind you will get the money without trouble. His boots and cap were somewhat worn and I thought it was better to dispose of them than to send them home. I shall be pleased to hear from you to know if you have rec'd the package. I hope to be able to send the money in a few days. Hoping that my transactions will meet your approval. I remain your friend.

Henry M. Hoyt
Capt. Co. A 8th Reg C.V.

Faces of the Civil War: Corporal William Secor

Corporal William Heath Secor was the only soldier in the 2nd Vermont killed at Antietam.
(Photo courtesy of Richard Clem)

During my terrific visit to Antietam three weeks ago, Richard Clem shared relic hunting tales with a group of Connecticut Civil War roundtable members and blogger John Rogers outside the Visitors' Center.

Like a charismatic Southern preacher ministering to his flock, the longtime Hagerstown, Md. resident kept us entranced.

Front and reverse of  brass soldier identification
 tag that belonged to Corporal William Secor of the
 2nd Vermont. Longtime relic hunter Richard Clem 
found it on Oct. 18, 1991, north of the Antietam battlefield on
what once was the O.J. Smith farm.
(Photos courtesy Richard Clem)

In four decades of relic hunting in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, Clem and his brother have dug 30,000 bullets -- or approximately 29,999 more than I have -- and enough other Civil War treasure to fill a small museum or two. (Clem sold 15,000 of those bullets for a buck apiece to a New York man, who may have had a lot of explaining to do to his wife.)

Clem's greatest find is this thin silver identification badge, a little bigger than a quarter, that belonged to Consider Heath Willett. A sergeant in the 44th New York, Willett helped rescue Confederate soldiers caught in a crossfire near Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. Clem uncovered the once-in-a-lifetime find while relic hunting near Lappans Crossroads, several miles from the Antietam battlefield, the day after Thanksgiving 1986.

Many of Clem's finds have come at Antietam or the immediate vicinity, before much of the battlefield became National Park Service property. He once eyeballed a Union eagle button and unearthed 90 bullets in "The Cornfield" and found shoulder scales near the Philip Pry Farm, which was General George McClellan's headquarters. ("I heard the officers took them off because they made good targets for sharpshooters," Clem told me.)  Most of the bigger items, Clem said, were dug up from the battlefield in the 1920s.

Part historian,  part detective and part bulldog, Clem documents many of his finds and writes about some of them for newspapers, magazines or whatever publication is interested in a really good Civil War story.

And Clem, a 72-year-old retired woodworker, certainly knows how to craft a good tale. (Check out his Antietam stories on a "hospital of horrors" and farmer William Roulette.)

Five years after the Willett discovery, Clem found another identification badge while relic hunting -- this one with a direct connection to the Battle of Antietam. The brass tag, about the size and thickness of a quarter, belonged to a 21-year-old soldier from New York who served in the 2nd Vermont. That young soldier, William Heath Secor,  became a research project-turned-obsession for Clem for nearly a year.

In an excellent article he wrote for the Washington Times in 2006, Clem recounted the day of discovery:

"On a beautiful autumn afternoon -- Oct. 18, 1991-- my brother Don and I were pushing our metal detectors over a cedar-covered ridge just north of the Antietam Battlefield. In the shadow of a huge tree, the detector sounded the first good signal of the day. Digging to a depth of 5 inches, I removed a small round piece of brass about the size of a quarter. Rubbing off some of the dirt, I saw a hole on the edge of the token.

Richard Clem

"After the new find soaked all night in a strong solution of household cleaner to remove some of the corrosion, faint gold letters slowly came into focus: “Corp. Wm Secor / Halfmoon, N.Y. / Co. A / 2nd Reg. / Vt. Vol.” The reverse bore an eagle emblem with the legend: “War of 1861 / United States.

"During the Civil War years, before official Army dog tags, these patriotic keepsakes were sold to soldiers by enterprising sutlers. The sutler, using a small hammer and a series of lettered dies, would stamp the soldier’s name, regiment, hometown, etc., into the gold-plated brass disc. Normally paying about 25 cents per pair, the soldier would retain one tag and send the other home to family or a loved one. As any veteran relic hunter will confirm, when it comes to metal-detecting for Civil War artifacts, anything personally ID’d is the ultimate discovery."

Secor was mortally wounded during the Second Corps' attack near Bloody Lane and transported about two miles north of the battlefield, to the O.J. Smith farm. Barns and houses on many farms in the area were used as field hospitals during and after the battle. According to a letter Clem discovered, Secor died the day after the battle and was buried on Smith's property, near the barn.

"It becomes my painful duty to inform you of the death of Corporal William Secor, Co. A. Vt. Vols," Lieutenant E.O. Cole wrote to Secor's stepfather in a letter dated Sept. 28, 1862. "He was wounded in the battle of Antietam on the 17th and died on the 18th day of September. He was buried on the Smith farm near Sharpsburg. At the time he was wounded he was carrying the Colors of his Regt. Which position he had occupied for some time. He had many friends in his Regt. I saw the Chaplain that was with him in his last hours, and he said that it might be of consolation to his friends to know that he lived with a hope in Christ and was resigned to his fate.

"As a soldier, there was none better."

Sometime after the battle, Secor's body was disinterred and shipped back to New York, where his remains were laid to rest in Baptist Church Cemetery in Halfmoon. Nearly 130 years later, a relic hunter discovered his brass ID near the site of what once was an old barn and amazingly pieced together his tale.

TOP: O.J. Smith barn in photo taken by famed Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner after
the Battle of Antietam. William Secor died in or near the barn. BELOW: Union surgeon
Anson Hurd (standing) tends to Confederate wounded on the Smith farm.
(Photos: Library of Congress collection.)

---

Antietam: Connecticut cemetery photo journal

Buttercups in front of the grave of William Sweet, a private in the 8th Connecticut, who
was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

Per the John Banks' Civil War blog tradition, I placed a penny on Sweet's grave to honor him.

Sweet was not quite 21 years old when he was killed at Antietam.

One of the more telling quotes on the tragic toll the Battle of Antietam took on Connecticut is found in the Hartford Courant on Oct. 13, 1862:

8th Connecticut soldiers Charles Lewis, Dwight Casey
 (actually Carey) and William Sweet were listed as killed 
at Antietam in the  Hartford Courant on Sept. 26, 1862.

"It is seldom that we are called upon to bury so many braves in so short a space of time."

A flood of bodies returned to the state in the days and weeks after Sept. 17, 1862, the bloodiest day in American history. Even in rural Canterbury, where four funerals were held in late September and early October, the battle hit home hard. I unexpectedly discovered two graves of Connecticut men killed at Antietam during a walk through Canterbury's Carey Cemetery this beautiful spring afternoon.

William Sweet, a 20-year-old private from Canterbury, served in Company F of the 8th Connecticut. Ten paces away from Sweet's grave, Charles Morse, a 31-year-old private in the 11th Connecticut from nearby Putnam, lies buried. They are joined in the old burying ground by two other soldiers in Company F of the 8th Connecticut who were killed at Antietam: Charles Lewis, a sergeant, and Dwight Carey, a 16-year-old private.

These words appear near the bottom of Morse's weathered gravestone:

On thy country's field of battle

thou wast numbered with the slain

But we trust thy home is Heaven

That our loss to thee is gain.

Charles Morse, from Putnam, Conn., was only 31 years old when he died.

Bottom of Morse's grave: "But we trust thy home is Heaven."

A weathered Grand Army of the Republic marker by the grave of Charles Morse,
 a private in the 11th Connecticut, who was killed at Antietam.

Antietam: Last days of two Connecticut soldiers

Mortally wounded at Antietam, Private Henry Talcott of the 14th Connecticut died Nov. 10, 1862.
His brother, Samuel, also was mortally wounded at Antietam and is buried next to his brother
at Center Cemetery in Coventry, Conn.

Hundreds of soldiers wounded at Antietam, including many from Connecticut, were treated at makeshift hospitals in barns, stables, churches and private homes throughout the Sharpsburg, Md., area. Often suffering from gruesome wounds, many of these men died agonizing deaths, sometimes weeks and months after the battle.

In early October, a surgeon treating James Brooks of the 16th Connecticut described the young soldier as "emaciated but has an appetite and there is hope." Wounded six times, the private in Company I died on Oct. 11, 1862 at the German Reform Church on Main Street in Sharpsburg. After his right leg was amputated at the hip in a Ninth Corps field hospital in a barn, Captain Frederick Barber of the 16th Connecticut died two days later, on Sept 20. Such amputations were later criticized by medical people as "invariably proving fatal, and being mostly abandoned by the English and French surgeons, as well as the best American.”  (1)

In reviewing affidavits in Civil War widows' pension records recently, I discovered accounts of the last days of two other Connecticut soldiers mortally wounded at Antietam.

Death must have been a release.

Private Henry Talcott's  disability discharge notes he was "wounded by the 
explosion of a shell in the battle of Antietam." 

A farmer before the war, Henry Talcott was a 26-year-old private in Company D of the 14th Connecticut from Coventry, a small town about 25 miles east of Hartford. Talcott was wounded in the left leg at Antietam when an artillery shell burst near a wall in the lane leading up to William Roulette's farmhouse, killing three men and wounding three others in his company. (2) After receiving treatment in Sharpsburg, he  was sent to an army hospital in nearby Frederick, Md., which was flooded with casualties after the battle.

On Oct. 17, Talcott -- who stood 5-7 and had blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion, according to his disability discharge -- was sent home to Coventry to recuperate at his father's house. Just three days earlier, his brother, Samuel, had died from a wound suffered at Antietam. While in Coventry, Henry was treated by a local doctor named Henry Dean, who noted that after the battle his patient "was exposed night and day in the open air without greatly needed protection and proper surgical aid."


Dean attended to Henry until his death on Nov. 10. In an affidavit supporting 22-year-old Nellie Talcott's claim for a widow's pension, the doctor described Henry's awful condition.

"All the time he was my patient he suffered from a dangerous wound in the inner side of the lower extremity of the left thigh," the doctor noted. "A few small pieces of bone detached from the injured femur were found in the wound.

"In connection with the wound there were fever, much functional derangement, especially of the liver and kidneys, and steadily increasing physical debility," Dean continued. "The wound instead of healing discharged continually an increasing quantity of pus." (3)

Henry Talcott -- "a victim of that blood-red field, Antietam," -- was laid to rest on Nov. 12 in Coventry's Center Cemetery, next to his brother Samuel. (See video above.)

"He reached home only to breath his last, while near and dear friends tenderly watched beside him, and last Wednesday he was laid by the companions of his early days, beside his brother in the 'city of the dead,' " the Hartford Courant reported on Nov. 18, 1862.

In this affidavit, Dr. T.W. Camp of Bristol noted Gideon Barnes' wound: "a rifle ball 
through the thick portion of the thigh." 

Like Henry Talcott, Gideon S. Barnes, a private in the 16th Connecticut, returned to his home state after he was wounded at Antietam, probably in farmer John Otto's 40-acre cornfield. Timothy Robinson, a captain in Company K of the 16th Connecticut, recalled that Barnes, a laborer before the war, was shot "through the leg above the knee, which disabled him from service, and he went home on a furlough."(4)

By Oct. 9, Barnes had arrived in Connecticut, along with four other solders wounded at Antietam, to continue his recuperation at his father's house in Burlington, where he was treated by T.W. Camp, a Bristol physician. Exactly two months after the battle, however, the 32-year-old soldier died. In an affidavit supporting the widow's pension claim of Barnes' wife, 24-year-old Lydia Ann, Camp noted a grisly combination of factors that caused Gideon's demise.

"Wounds and injuries received in the battle of Antietam by rifle ball through the thick portion of the thigh causing explosive separation with sloughing," the doctor noted. "This in connection with an uncontrollable camp diarrhea accompanied with delirium and typhoid fever were more than sufficient to cause death." (5)

Today, Gideon Barnes lies buried under a plain gray marker in Bristol's Forestville Cemetery, several paces  from the gravestone of Captain Newton Manross, the beloved captain of Company K of the 16th Connecticut, who was killed at Antietam.

(1)  Indiana (Pa.) Messenger, Oct. 1, 1862, Page 2
(2) History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Charles Davis Page, Page 44, 1906
(3) Widows' pension affidavit, Dr. Henry Dean, June 25, 1863
(4) Widow's pension affidavit, Timothy Robinson, Aug. 14, 1863
(5) Widow's pension affidavit, Dr. T.W. Camp, Oct. 3, 1863

Gideon Barnes, a private in the 16th Connecticut, is buried in Forestville Cemetery
 in Bristol, Conn., near the grave for his captain in Company K.

Road trip! Harwinton, Connecticut museum

Dane Deleppo is president of the T.A. Hungerford Memorial Museum in Harwinton, Conn.

When we lived in the suburban sprawl of Plano, Texas, I had a a running joke with a friend that the oldest thing in town was the skinny pear tree, circa 1989, next to the swing set by the pool in my back yard. It wasn't true, of course, but we always got a chuckle out of that.

Ahh, good times.

But I digress.

In Connecticut, where we live now, everything is old.

Originally built to house the Harwinton (Conn.) library, this building now
is home to the T.A. Hungerford Memorial Museum.

The house down the road from ours in Avon was built in 1840.

Farmington, the town next door, was settled in 1640, which according to my West Virginia University math is only 142 ... err, 148... years after Columbus discovered America.

Simsbury, 12 miles away, was incorporated in 1673.

Bristol, home of ESPN, was founded in 1833.

And each little town in Connecticut (see Bristol) seems to have a small historical society or museum stuffed with old stuff, including seldom-seen Civil War treasures that many larger museums would love to get their hands on.

Think grandma's attic on steroids.

This afternoon I spent nearly two hours rummaging through nooks and crannies of  T.A. Hungerford Memorial Museum in Harwinton, a tiny town of about 5,000, approximately 25 miles west of Hartford. The small museum is almost hidden away on a hill along Route 4, just up the road from The Liquor Lady and a cemetery that includes gravestones that date to the late 1700s. The museum building, once the Harwinton Library, dates to 1909.

Civil War muskets in the Hungerford Museum collection.

Dane Deleppo, a genial 63-year old former AT&T building maintenance mechanic, is president of the museum, making order out of what once was chaos. It's an ongoing effort. When he first visited the museum years ago, Civil War muskets were stored in the damp, dingy basement. Aghast, he eventually had the weapons moved to a more suitable home on the first floor.

These initials are carved into the stock of a musket shown at
bottom of the above photo,  perhaps by its original rebel owner.

Deleppo and his wife Carol, the museum treasurer, as well as a dedicated group of other folks, have catalogued some of the Civil War collection, which includes a small Confederate flag picked up by a soldier at Cold Harbor, a kepi worn by a musician in the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery and muster rolls of the 13th U.S. Colored Heavy Artlillery. (In a sad commentary on the era, the rolls include the listing of the former "owners" of the men in the 13th, who were freed or escaped slaves.)

Much of the Hungerford Civil War collection was donated by ancestors of soldiers from Harwinton, Deleppo said. A local woman recently gave the museum an army drum that may date to the Revolutionary War. Where did some of the other stuff, including an unused World War I gas mask, come from? Well, your guess is as good as Dane's.

My favorites in the Civil War collection are the gem tintypes of 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery soldiers and the Confederate musket captured at Harpers Ferry and apparently picked up off a battlefield by a Union soldier. The initials J.R.S. are carved into the stock of the musket, perhaps by the original rebel owner, and the side plate denotes the weapon was converted in Richmond.

A rare War of 1812 lieutenant's uniform.

But my absolute favorites in the museum holdings have nothing to do with the Civil War.

"Check this out," Deleppo said as he slid a 4-foot-long, gray box from under an old, brown bench. As we removed the top of the box, an ancient red and blue coat with silver epaulets and worn metallic buttons and off-white knickers were revealed.

"This," Deleppo said, "is a War of 1812 lieutenant's uniform."

Despite its age, the rare uniform, donated by a local man, is still in decent shape, with just a few holes near the cuffs. "A guy last wore this in the 1970s during a Fourth of July celebration," Deleppo said with chuckle.

As we made our way up the narrow steps to the cramped attic, Deleppo uncovered a small, brown box and pulled out a tiny, spiked helmet that must have been worn by a soldier with an extremely small noggin.

"It's called a pickelhaube," Deleppo said of the World War I German helmet that was undoubtedly another long-ago battlefield pickup, probably by a Harwinton man.

There are other curiosities at the museum: an intricately weaved basket made by a local Indian long ago, a very heavy 18th-century target rifle and a bugle that may be Civil War era. And in a touch of mystery, the tomb of the building's namesake, T.A. Hungerford, is somewhere near the building. But the Civil War collection is easily the highlight.

This little gem of a museum is open every other Saturday from 1-3 p.m. or by appointment by calling Deleppo at 860-485-0517. Go check it out.

Dane Deleppo with a pickelhaube, a World War I German army helmet.