They came from as far away as Oklahoma and Michigan to Wickham Park in Manchester, Conn., this weekend, some wearing patchwork Rebel uniforms and others donning woolen Yankee blue. Not even a hard rain and an overnight's stay in their small, white tents could spoil Saturday's event for many of these reenactors, who have a unique passion for the Civil War.
Steve DelSignore of Middleboro, Mass., who portrays a Union chaplain, had a Civil War-themed wedding.
Tim Perkins of Boxford, Mass., masterfully stayed in character -- in Saturday's case as a Southern captain -- and refused to call the Battle of Antietam by its Northern name. "It's the Battle of Sharpsburg, sir." he told me.
REBEL: Greg Frank of South Windsor, Conn. He is a member of Company H of the 1st Maryland.
Another New Englander, Paul Szafik of Troy, N.H.., also portrayed a Rebel, something I found odd. "Well," he quipped, "I originally was from southern New Hampshire."
And Nathan Porteus, a boy-soldier from Bolton, Conn., also stayed in character, snapping to attention as an officer quizzed him as I approached the muddy Rebel camp. "Is everything OK here, trooper?" he asked. "Yes, sir," barked Porteus, who portrays a 35th Virginia soldier.
Yes, Civil War reenactors are a different breed. A little nutty, perhaps, but in a very good sort of way.
On Saturday afternoon, more than 200 of them re-fought the Battle of Antietam at Wickham Park. Flour was stuffed in cannons to make the smoke a little more dense when they were fired. Two Rebels who skedaddled for the rear were shot in the back by comrades, much to the delight of many in the crowd of about 1,000 people. And in a safety-first measure, most re-enactors aimed their blank rounds extraordinarily high, something most of their counterparts 150 years ago never would have considered with their live rounds.
Unlike the real thing, the casualties thankfully were quite low, although one Union soldier had a very nasty head wound covered by a faux bloody patch. (Nice job there, soldier.) Predictably, the men and boys in blue once again chased the Rebels from Bloody Lane after enfilading their line.
Afterward, a Union reenactor and I discussed the battle and today's fascination with the Civil War.
"I wonder what soldiers from 150 years ago would think of all this today," he said as he gestured toward a row of posters planted in the grass of Connecticut troops who fought at Antietam.
I think they would be honored.
Clockwise from left: REBEL: Charlie Zelck of Ludlow, Mass.; YANKEE: Chaplain Steve DelSignore of Middleboro, Mass.; YANKEES: Carolyn Ivanoff and Joe Adileito of Seymour, Conn.
He's buried under a weather-worn, slate-gray tombstone, No. 1,084, just to the left of Private Henry Aldrich of Bristol, on the peaceful, beautiful grounds of Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md. Like many soldiers in the 16th Connecticut, 21-year-old Henry D. Evans was killed in the infamous 40-acre cornfield during the Battle of Antietam on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862. For nearly 150 years, the young corporal has largely been anonymous, just another name on a long list of Connecticut dead from the bloodiest day in American history.
Corporal Henry Evans' gravestone in Antietam National Cemetery.
But thanks to a lifelong resident of Avon, Conn., a previously unpublished image of the soldier who marched off to war in the summer of 1862 is now available. And thanks to information gleaned from widow's pension records, the 1860 census and other sources, we can shine a light on Evans' short life.
A laborer from Avon, a small farming community near the Farmington River, Henry married 23-year-old Mary Ann Richards of nearby Wethersfield on Aug. 21, 1861, about four months after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter. Their union produced a daughter, Florence, on Jan. 31, 1862. As talk of war swirled in New England that summer, Henry pondered an agonizing question: Should he fight to help save the Union or remain with his family?
Evans chose war, joining at least a dozen other men from his town in the 16th Connecticut. No doubt the offer of a $50 bounty from Avon, equivalent to 40 times the average man's daily wage, was a huge enticement.
A memorial marker for Henry Evans in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery is an effigy grave. Henry is actually buried at the national cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md.
For Evans and the men in his regiment, late summer 1862 was a blur.
After organizing and basic training in a camp near Hartford, the 16th Connecticut received a rousing send-off in the city on Aug. 29 on its way to New York, the first leg of a journey that would take them to the front lines. For Henry and his comrades, the trip down the Connecticut River aboard the steamers City of Hartford and George C Collins must have been thrilling.
"...at every village and hamlet the people line the banks, waving their flags and cheering us on the voyage," Private William Relyea of Company D noted. "The boys forgot their disciplinary troubles in flirting with the girls and answering the greetings of grey-haired sires on the banks, but darkness put the end to this sport, and preparations began to pass the night in quiet sleep. There were a few youngsters who kept up a wild roistering far into the night." (1)
On Aug. 30, the regiment arrived in New York and then traveled by steamer to Elizabeth, N.J. Henry and his comrades took a circuitous route to Washington via train, traveling through Reading, Harrisburg and York in Pennsylvania and to Baltimore before finally arriving in the capital. "We were a very dirty lot when we arrived in Washington, " Relyea noted. (2)
During a short stay in Washington, perhaps Henry visited the White House grounds or the still-under-construction Washington Monument and Capitol building, as many soldiers in the regiment did. On Sept. 7, the 16th Connecticut was again on the move, leaving Fort Ward outside Washington and joining the Army of the Potomac that was marching into Maryland to stop Robert E. Lee.
On the morning of Sept. 17, Evans and the 16th Connecticut were positioned in a farm field near Antietam Creek, a couple miles from the village of Sharpsburg. Elements of the Ninth Corps finally fought their way across a small stone-arch bridge, later famously called Burnside Bridge, and the 16th Connecticut crossed the creek upstream by early afternoon.
"We were marched into a piece of woods and formed a line of battle," Private Wells Bingham of Company H wrote to his father after the battle. "From there we were marched up onto a high hill. All this time the battle was going on only a short distance from us. We had a chance to witness some of the most splendid firing with artillery. We could see the shells and shot strike around the rebbel battery. It took but a short time for our battery to silence theirs." (3)
In a letter published in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 30, 1862,16th Connecticut adjutant John Burnham noted the location of the regiment's dead at Antietam. Henry Evans was buried with other soldiers from Company I.
As the 16th Connecticut marched into a field of tall corn late that Wednesday afternoon, the untested regiment was smashed on two sides by veterans of A.P. Hill's division. Company I suffered terribly, with Captain John Drake of Hartford and two sergeants killed. Privates Wallace Woodford, Frank Alford, Charles Parker, Robert Hawley and Newton Evans -- all from Avon -- were wounded. Corporal Henry D. Evans, the father of an 8 1/2-month-old daughter, was killed.
Because of the remarkable efforts of regiment adjutant John Burnham, an unsung hero of Antietam, the dead of the 16th Connecticut were buried in marked graves on the Otto farm two days after the battle, each soldier's name carved in a wooden headboard. Evans was buried with his comrades from Company I: privates Stephen Twiss, Augustus Truesdell, Stephen Himes, James Grugan and sergeants Orville Campbell and Thomas McCarty. "The collection of the bodies was conducted under my own personal supervision," Burnham noted, "and after the men had reported them all picked up I examined the whole field myself, so that I am confident none were left on the ground." (4)
More than 400 miles away in Avon, Mary Ann Evans soon received word of her husband's death. Although Henry was buried in a well-marked grave, she did not or could not arrange for the return of his remains to Avon, perhaps because she did not have the financial means. In the years after the battle, Henry's body was disinterred from the field and re-buried in the national cemetery in Sharpsburg.
Six days after Mary Ann Evans' death, her daughter wrote this note to the Board of Pensions. Florence Post's mother never remarried after her father was killed at the Battle of Antietam 57 years earlier.
On Christmas Eve 1863, more than a year after her husband was killed, Mary Ann applied for a widow's pension from the government. Her application approved, she soon received $8 a month (and $2 a month for Florence) from Uncle Sam. Mary Ann received that widow's pension until Dec. 6, 1919, when she died at 2:30 p.m. in Colorado Springs, Colo. The cause of death was apoplexy and old age. She was 81. (5)
She had never remarried.
(1) "16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Sergeant William H. Relyea," John Michael Priest Editor-in-Chief, Burd Street Press, 2002, Page 8.
(2) Ibid, Page 9.
(3) 16th Connecticut private Wells Bingham letter to his father, Elisha, Sept. 20, 1862, Antietam National Battlefield research library
(4) Hartford Courant, Sept. 30, 1862, Page 7
(5) Widow's pension documents, Henry Evans and Mary Ann Evans
In an undated photo, Henry Evans' wife, Mary Ann, holds their only child, Florence.
Sergeant Wadsworth Washburn of the 16th Connecticut was killed at the Battle of Antietam. His father retreived his remains from the battlefield. (Photo: Connecticut State Library archives)
Nearly two months after his son was killed at the Battle of Antietam, Asahel C. Washburn wrote a long letter to the Hartford Courant about the best way to transport a soldier's body home.
By November 1862, the reverend from Berlin, Conn., had plenty of experience at that grim task, a fact he revealed in the missive published in the newspaper. Not only had he traveled 800-plus miles to Sharpsburg and back home with the remains of his only son, 26-year-old sergeant Wadsworth Washburn of the 16th Connecticut, but he also had made another trip south to retreive remains of other soldiers who died at Antietam.
Because the overwhelming number of dead taxed resources of the Union army, the task of retreiving a loved one's remains, especially non-officers, usually was left up to the family of the dead. And to transport the dead, there was a great demand for coffins -- lots of them. Throughout the Civil War, advertisements by undertakers for caskets were peppered in newspapers, including the Courant. For the sad trip home, Reverend Washburn advised that wood coffins were much better and much less expensive than metallic ones.
In addition to making coffins, William Roberts of Hartford provided "ice boxes for preserving bodies for a short period," according to this advertisement in the Hartford Courant on June 29,1863
"It may benefit some who are personally concerned in this subject," he wrote in the letter published in the Courant on Nov. 12, 1862, "to be informed that metallic coffins are not needed for the safe and comfortable removal of the remains of the dead.
"With the assistance of Wm. M. Smith, an undertaker in Meriden, I brought six bodies of deceased soldiers from the battle-field of Antietam after they had been buried more than six weeks, and not a particle of unpleasant odor escaped from one of them.
"The boxes were made of sound pine boards, thorough fastened with long screws, (not a nail in them), lined, except the covers, a part with lead and a part with zinc, so that they were water-tight," Washburn continued. "The bodies were placed in them and covered with pulverized charcoal near to the top, then filled with sawdust, pressed hard, and the lid firmly screwed on. Such a box costs about one-fourth that of a metaliic coffin. Metallic coffins often fail, while a box prepared as above would, I verily believe, convey a dead body in perfect security around the globe."
Washburn also advised against embalming, a relatively new practice to the United States during the Civil War.
"Place a body in a box as above described," he wrote, "and embalming is utterly useless, and in my opinion, most of the embalming pretensions are a deception and an egregious fraud."
A huge U.S. flag drapes the Civil War memorial in Unionville, Conn., before its unveilingon July 15, 1916. (Photos courtesy Unionville Museum)
A crowd estimated at between 3,000 to 5,000 people turned out for a parade and the dedicationof the memorial, according to an account in the Hartford Courant on July 16, 1915.
Antietam veteran Nathaniel Hayden, a captain in the 16th Connecticut, was the chief donor for the memorial. The frail 80-year-old man was greeted by "great applause" after he was introduced at the dedication, according to the Hartford Courant. CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.
As factory whistles blared promptly at 2:15 p.m. on July 15, 1916, one of the grandest celebrations in the long history of the village of Unionville, Conn., began.
Captain Nathaniel Hayden's obituary
in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 2, 1916.
About 1,000 people in a mile-long parade wound their way to the small triangular green in front of the Congregational Church. The throng included 30 touring cars carrying members of the Burnside Grand Army of the Republic Post, schoolchildren, Boy Scouts, a man mounted on a gray horse dressed as a Tunxis Indian, the 25-piece Bristol Band and guests from nearby Hartford, Simsbury, Torrington and Southington.
In an apparent attempt to out-do each other, owners of local factories, which had suspended activities for the day, supplied brightly decorated floats. Riding on a float covered with flowers, young women from Charles W. House & Son carried white Japanese parasols while the young ladies of J. Broadbant & Son, dressed as Red Cross nurses, rode on a red, white and blue one trimmed with roses. (1)
After the parade ended in front of the church, an enterprising photographer climbed into the steeple to record the scene below. A large crowd, including men wearing straw hats, women in long dresses and frolicking children, had gathered for the dedication of a 40-foot memorial for the 100 Unionville men who served in the Union army during the Civil War.
Although the Hartford Courant reported it was "pathetic to see the weakness of declining health holding him back," 80-year-old Nathaniel Hayden must have been pleased as he surveyed the grand scene that Saturday afternoon. (2) After a chorus sang "Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean" and an invocation by a local reverend, the Civil War veteran was greeted with "great applause." (3)
A highly successful local businessman, Hayden provided the inspiration and much of cash for the monument, which was described on the cover of the dedication program as "the most beautiful G.A.R. monument in New England." One can only imagine the thoughts that went through his head as the enormous American flag was slowly removed from the granite monument to reveal these words on the front of the base: Unionville honors the earth that wraps her heroes' clay.
Civil War memorial in Unionville, Conn.
Nearly 54 years earlier, on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862, in a cornfield outside a small western Maryland town called Sharpsburg, Hayden surveyed a much different scene.
"The Most Beautiful G.A.R. monument in New England," the program for the event on July 15, 1916 declared.
(Courtesy Unionville Museum)
Rebel soldiers rose from behind a stone wall, blasting away at the 16th Connecticut, a regiment mustered in only weeks earlier.
Perhaps he heard 16th Connecticut captain Frederick Barber of Company H cry out as he was hit in the right hip, "Oh, my God. I'm killed! Goodbye, boys. You've lost your captain. Farewell! Farewell!" (4) His entire right leg amputated a day after the battle, the 32-year-old soldier died on Sept. 20 at a field hospital.
A captain of Company G in the 16th Connecticut, Hayden also suffered at the Battle of Antietam. Struck by a bullet or piece or shell, the 26-year-old soldier was severely wounded in the left arm, below the elbow. Discharged for disability on Jan. 17, 1863, Hayden dealt with small bits of bone oozing from the wound as late as May 1863 and was scarred for the rest of his life. (4).
But overcoming obstacles was nothing new to Nathaniel Hayden. Born on May 10, 1836, in West Hartford, he was one of eight children of Ransom and Hannah Hayden, who died at 41 when Nathaniel was only 5 years old. By age 10, Hayden was earning his own living, once holding a job making whiplashes from sheepskin.
Advertisement in the Hartford Courant on July 28, 1862,
seeking men to fight in the War of Rebellion.
Nathaniel Hayden was listed as recruiting officer.
As a young man, Hayden also worked in the liquor business in Winsted, Conn., but he quit because he was a teetotaler. According to one account, he was so eager to get a job as a clerk in Hartford dry goods store that he walked 22 miles in a snowstorm from Barkhamsted to Hartford to interview.
He was hired, beating out six other boys for the position. (5)
A clerk in a Hartford dry goods store of Pease & Foster when the war broke out, Hayden enlisted in the Union army on July 11, 1862. After raising a company of men, mostly clerks from Hartford County, he was elected captain and mustered in on Aug. 24, 1862. "He was an officer of decided capability," the Hartford Courant reported four decades after the war, "and his loss was thoroughly regretted by the men" after Antietam.
After the Civil War, Hayden married Elizabeth Dodd of Jersey City, N.J., made a small fortune in the coal, feed and trucking business and dabbled in thoroughbred horse racing. Elizabeth enjoyed the ponies, too. When cars became fashionable, Hayden bought one, often taking his for long drives. Retiring in his early 50s, he frequently attended the many reunions of the 16th Connecticut Infantry, swapping old war stories but never partaking in a strong drink.
On Sept. 1, 1916, six weeks after the huge celebration in his adopted hometown, the 46-year resident of Unionville died at his home on Main Street. After a funeral service there, the Captain was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, a little more than a mile from the soldiers' memorial that he championed.
After the Civil War, Nathaniel Hayden lived in this house in Unionville, Conn., a short distance down the street from the Civil War memorial. It's now the Ahern Funeral Home.
Nathaniel Hayden's gravestone in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, Conn.
(1) Hartford Courant, Sept. 2, 1916 Page 9
(2) Hartford Courant, July 16, 1916, Page 7
(3) Hartford Courant, Sept. 2, 1916 Page 9
(4) 16th Connecticut private Wells Bingham's letter to his father, Sept. 20, 1862, Antietam National Battlefield research library.
(5) George Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library.
(6) Ibid.
When she and her sister were growing up in Bristol, Conn., Marcia Eveland remembers fooling around with the presentation sword of her great-great-great uncle Newton Spaulding Manross, a captain in the 16th Connecticut Infantry.
Newton Manross with the sword given to him by the citizens of Bristol, Conn. (Photo courtesy Bristol Historical Society)
"My sister and I didn't know what it was, and it was in the attic, so we played with it," Eveland said. "And I told my sister ghost stories about the sword floating up in the air and coming to cut off her head!"
Today, the beautiful sword, made in Collinsville, Conn., is a family treasure.
The captain of Company K, Manross was killed at the Battle of Antietam 150 years ago today, cut down by grapeshot in farmer John Otto's 40-acre cornfield. During a ceremony honoring Bristol's Civil War soldiers at West Cemetery on Monday evening, Eveland honored her ancestor by placing his sword next to a wreath at the town's Civil War memorial.
"Our family has always cherished the fact that he was our uncle," Eveland said.
Before he marched off to fight the Civil War, Manross was given the sword by the citizens of Bristol. A brilliant man, Manross was acting professor of chemistry and philosophy at Amherst (Mass.) College when he joined the Union army. He told his wife upon enlisting, "You can better afford to have a country without a husband than a husband without a country." I never get tired of that quote.
Although I have never played with the Manross sword, I was accidentally jabbed with it when I first perused it in April. It was an honor.
Marcia Eveland holds the sword of her great-great-great uncle Newton Manross, a captain in the 16th Connecticut, who was killed at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.
8th Connecticut re-enactor Chris Matt solemnly stands by the Civil War memorial at West Cemetery in Bristol, Conn., on Monday. Newton Manross' sword and scabbard were placed next to the wreath by his great-great-great niece, Marcia Eveland.
Veterans of the 16th Connecticut gathered for this photo on Sept. 17, 1921 — the 59th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. It was published in the Hartford Courant on Oct. 2, 1921. Henry Adams is in the middle front row, holding a cane. (Connecticut State Library archives | CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)
Henry M. Adams, a 16th Connecticut private, was wounded in the 40-acre Cornfield during the Battle of Antietam. The 16th Connecticut monument peeks above the corn in the left background.
Obituary for Henry Adams in the Hartford Courant on July 10, 1922. The 16th Connecticut veteran was 81.
Wounded twice in his right leg, Henry M. Adams lay incapacitated in a cornfield for more than 40 hours before he was finally rescued. But the 22-year-old private — a teacher as a civilian — was among the lucky ones in the hard-luck 16th Connecticut.
He was still alive.
In its first battle of the Civil War, the untested regiment — composed of farmers, mill workers, blacksmiths, cigar makers, a professor and other citizen-soldiers — lost at least 43 killed and many more wounded in a one-sided fight late on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862, at the Battle of Antietam. Veterans of A.P. Hill's division pummeled the Connecticut soldiers, sending some fleeing to the rear as far as Burnside Bridge, about a half mile away.
"One thing I can tell you is there was some pretty tall running in the 16th," Private William Drake of Company B of the 16th Connecticut wrote his cousin 12 days after the battle, "and I guess that I made myself scarce rather fast."
For Adams, the days after Antietam were just the start of months of recovery. Indeed, the horror of the bloodiest day in American history seared into his brain and the physical wounds plagued him the rest of his life.
In an account written decades after the Civil War, Adams recalled the moment he was shot and long convalescence in makeshift field hospitals in the Sharpsburg, Md., area.
"Between 4 and 5 p.m. we were ordered to charge on a certain rebel battery and take it," he wrote. "We were prompt to obey as far as lay in our power. But just before we reached our battery of cannon, the hideous rebel yell arose from behind the stone wall and we were shocked and repulsed."
A short time later, a spent minie ball — "a momentary sting, that was all," the private in Company G recalled — burrowed into his calf. Seconds later, another minie ball smashed into Adams' right leg, shattering his femur between the knee and thigh and knocking him to the ground.
"For 42 hours I lay where I had fallen, unaided and unharmed," the soldier from East Windsor, Conn., recalled.
In the hours after the fighting ended, Confederates controlled the field where Adams and other wounded and dead Union soldiers lay. Confederates stripped fallen 16th Connecticut Captain Samuel Brown, a 26-year-old former teacher and others of their outer clothing and shoes.
In the Sept. 26, 1862, Hartford Courant,
Henry M. Adams was listed among the many
casualties of Company G of the 16th Connecticut.
After Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia retreated south across the nearby Potomac River on the night of Sept. 18, Union soldiers finally found Adams. Comrades carried him to the nearby Joseph Sherrick farm, where he received a change of clothes and food. Later, soldiers took him to Sharpsburg's German Reformed Church, where many wounded in his regiment received care.
"To this date I had two wonderments," Adams noted. "1st, why did I not die -- the other -- why my limb was not set."
Later, Adams' mother tended to her son. She had traveled from Connecticut.
"I spent the winter months with other injured soldiers, five of whom had each his mother as a nurse, at the 'Big Spring' hospital, two miles from Keedysville (Md.)." Adams recalled.
Adams was treated at Crystal Spring Hospital, near Keedysville, Md. It was also known as Big Spring Hospital or Locust Spring Hospital. The site is still a farm today. (Photos by friend of the blog Richard Clem)
Nearly seven months after Antietam, on April 1, 1863, the U.S. Army discharged Adams because of disability and sent him home to Connecticut. He remembered that day with bitterness.
"Was no April Fool day to me, when my mother and her cripple boy on crutches started 'Homeward Bound.' " he noted. "I received my discharge papers at Hagerstown (Md.) and my full pay for doing ... nothing — except to be maimed for life and to draw a U.S. pension."
After the Civil War, Adams returned to teaching in Connecticut public schools. He became superintendent of the Hartford County Temporary Home for Dependent Children. A staunch Republican who held several political offices after the war, he was fond of travel, reading, current events and telling Civil War stories.
"It is his great delight to read stories of the stirring times of the Civil War and recall the battles in which he took part," the Hartford Courant reported on Adams' 75th birthday.
He died nearly seven years later. Civil War veterans attended his funeral in Melrose, Conn.
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Clockwise from top, these soldiers from Connecticut were killed or mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam: Private Henry Barnett (Suffield), Private Gideon Barnes (Burlington), Private Robert Hubbard (Middletown), Lieutenant George Crosby (Middle Haddam), Private Daniel Tarbox (Brooklyn), Lieutenant Marvin Wait (Norwich), Captain Jarvis Blinn (New Britain), Captain Newton Manross (Bristol) and Private John Doolittle (Middletown).
"Why did I not die?"
"Why did I not die?"
Those five words almost jumped off the page as I read Private Henry Adams' account in the Connecticut State Library of his experience at the Battle of Antietam. Suffering from two bullet wounds in his right leg, the 22-year-old soldier, a teacher before the Civil War, lay in a cornfield for at least 17 hours before he was discovered by Union soldiers and carried to a nearby field hospital.
Nearly seven months after Antietam, on April 1, 1863, Adams was finally discharged from the Union army because of disability and sent back home to Connecticut from a Maryland hospital.
"Was no April Fool day to me, when my mother and her cripple boy on crutches started 'Homeward Bound.' " the 16th Connecticut soldier bitterly noted. "I received my discharge papers at Hagerstown (Md.) and my full pay for doing ... nothing -- except to be maimed for life and to draw a U.S. pension."
Yet Henry Adams was among the lucky Connecticut soldiers at Antietam. He survived the bloodiest day in American history, fought 150 years ago Monday in the farm fields and woodlots near a speck on the map called Sharpsburg, Md.
So many men and boys from the state came back to Connecticut in wooden boxes, the remains of some dug up by a Hartford undertaker William Roberts, who advertised his grisly body retrieval services in the Hartford Courant. Many soldiers suffered and died from ghastly, multiple wounds. I'll never forget reading the surgeon's entry in his casebook for James Brooks, a teen-aged private in the 16th Connecticut from Stafford:
"He has six wounds... "The boy is emaciated but has an appetite and there is hope." "Oct. 7 evening: Doing pretty well considering multiplicity of his wounds." "Oct. 9 morn.: Holding his own remarkably." "Oct. 11th: Failing rapidly and might die soon." "Oct. 11th 3 p.m.: Just died."
Close-up of the grave of Newton Manross in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, Conn.
In the past 15 months, stories of these men and boys who history has largely forgotten have been told on this blog. Who were these soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice at Antietam to preserve the Union? That simple question has driven me: Who were they? Several were laborers and teachers. At least one was a cigar maker. One was a brilliant, bookish professor, who had traveled the world before the Civil War. Nearly all were citizen-solders.
From Brooklyn in the east to Bristol in the west, I have visited their grave sites throughout Connecticut, often placing a penny on a tombstone (Lincoln side up!) as a small remembrance. Mining diaries, letters and albums in historical societies and libraries, I have attempted to paint a picture of their lives. Thanks to contributors such as Scott Hann, Matthew R. Isenburg, Tad Sattler as well as several descendants, I have photographs of many of these Antietam veterans to pair with their stories.
In a strange way, I feel like I know these men and boys. And so to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, here's a roll call of 29 Connecticut soldier stories I have posted here since June 2011, with a back story on each:
Henry Aldrich's pearl-white tombstone in Antietam National Cemetery.
Private Henry Aldrich, 16th Connecticut (Bristol): Aldrich's pearl-white tombstone, probably a replacement for an older marker, stands out among the many slate-gray markers in Antietam National Cemetery. Lieutenant Julian Pomeroy's letter to Sarah Aldrich informing her of the death of her husband began like I imagine thousands of other letters home did during the Civil War: "It becomes my painful duty to inform you ..." The Aldrich family was not wealthy, and Sarah's written plea, full of misspellings, to the powers-that-be for the discharge of her oldest son from the Union army following her husband's death is heart-rending. "Think what a pleser it will be to have some one get food for my children," she wrote in the letter I found in her widow's pension file. "Think how a Mothers hart is broken to have her children criing for food when she hasnt any."
Private Gideon Barnes, 16th Connecticut (Burlington): Earlier this summer, Lester Larabee of Bristol read a short entry on my blog about Barnes, one of his wife's ancestors. A history buff who has a blog about his family, Larabee had a carte-de-visite of Barnes that his mother-in-law had set aside. He e-mailed me a copy of the photo and pointed me to some terrific nuggets about Gideon Barnes' family, which once lived not far from my home in Avon, Conn. Interestingly, Barnes is buried in Bristol's Forestville Cemetery, just a few steps from Newton Manross, the beloved captain of Company K.
Captain Frederick Barber, 16th Connecticut (Manchester): Antietam collector extraordinaire Scott Hann in Arizona supplied the CDV of Barber for this story. I'll never forget reading the account of the captain's surgery for the first time. Shot in the hip, his entire right leg was amputated a day after the battle. He died two days later. His wife, Mercy, funded the building of a memorial for Barber and the men of Glastonbury who died during the Civil War. Mercy Barber never re-married.
Antietam is misspelled on Barnett's gravestone in Old Center Cemetery in Suffield, Conn. A 32-year-old cigar maker, he left behind a wife and two young children.
Private Henry Barnett, 16th Connecticut (Suffield): After I posted the story on Barnett, I found a terrific account of his experience at Antietam. William Relyea, a private in the 16th Connecticut, recalled the 32-year-old cigar maker's merry mood as he marched into battle in John Otto's cornfield. "You shant have any peanuts when your peanuts are gone," he sang, just as he did as he reviewed the dead after the Battle of South Mountain two days earlier. "Poor fellow," Relyea wrote of Barnett after the war, "we found him near a pile of fence rails where he fell and died on that fateful afternoon." (1)
Private John Bingham, 16th Connecticut (East Haddam): I talked my way into the Antietam National Battlefield research library in late August, hoping I could dig up a nugget or two on soldiers from Connecticut. I'm glad I did. Among a pile of soldier letters was a gem of a letter written by 16-year-old Wells Bingham to his father back in Connecticut. "It is a sad tale which I am about to tell you," he wrote Elisha Bingham. "John, poor, poor John, is no more." John Bingham, just 17 years old, was killed in Otto's cornfield. Wells survived Antietam and the war, but apparently upset over business dealings, he committed suicide in 1904. What demons from the Battle of Antietam did Wells Bingham carry for the rest of his life?
Captain Jarvis Blinn, 14th Connecticut (New Britain): Like many Connecticut soldiers killed at Antietam, including Captain Samuel Brown of the 16th Connecticut, Blinn's body was returned to the state by Hartford undertaker William Roberts. Connecticut Civil War researcher Mary Falvey supplied the fascinating account of a witness to Blinn's funeral in Rocky Hill. "His wife is heart-broken," Augusta Griswold wrote to her fiance, 8th Connecticut chaplain John Morris. "Their attachment to each other was unbounded -- he was all to her. Such a sad, hopeless, despairing countenance I never saw." (2) As of last Wednesday, Blinn's tombstone lay broken in Center Cemetery in Rocky Hill, Conn.
Video: Where Samuel Brown's body was found after the battle.
Captain Samuel Brown, 16th Connecticut (Enfield): In the lobby of the Captain Samuel Brown Elementary School in Peabody, Mass., hangs a painting of the 26-year-old soldier, one of the town's favorite sons. An 1858 graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, Brown grew up in South Danvers (now called Peabody), and became a teacher at the Ellington School for Boys in Connecticut. I battled a swarm of gnats last month to shoot the video of the spot where Brown's body, stripped of his outer clothes and shoes, was found by two soldiers after the battle.
Private Oliver Case, 8th Connecticut (Simsbury): No one matches John Rogers' passion for telling the story of this soldier, whose beautiful tombstone is high up on the hill of Simsbury Cemetery. A Georgia native, Rogers bought the bible that Case carried at Antietam at a community yard sale 19 years ago. Cost: Three bucks. Inside the front cover, Case wrote: "If you die, die like a man." Rogers chronicles Case's story on his excellent blog.
In the weeks and months after Antietam, Smoketown Hospital occupied this site. Wounded at Antietam, Sergeant Rufus Chamberlain died here on Oct. 21, 1862.
Sergeant Rufus Chamberlain, 16th Connecticut (Stafford): Last month, I checked out the site of Chamberlain's death, a seldom-visited field near the Antietam battlefield. But in the days and weeks after the battle, it was a place of horror and misery. "This place is in a most miserable condition, the men complain very much,"a member of the Maine Soldiers Relief Agency reported in early November 1862. "The effluvia arising from the condition of these grounds is intolerable, quite enough to make a man in perfect health sick, and how men can recover in such a place is a mystery to me."Given leave, Rufus Jr., a private in the 16th Connecticut, was by his father's side when he died at Smoketown Hospital on Oct. 21, 1862.
14th Connecticut Lieutenant George Crosby is buried in Union Hill Cemetery in East Hampton, Conn.
Lieutenant George Crosby, 14th Connecticut (Middle Haddam): Crosby's brownstone memorial, weather-worn and cracked, won't survive many more years if it's not repaired soon. Only 19, Crosby was mortally wounded at Antietam, dying at home in Middle Haddam 37 days after the battle. Brothers Frederick and Francis Hollister, privates of the 14th Connecticut, are buried 25 yards from Crosby's marker. They survived Antietam, but died within a half-hour of each other of disease on Dec. 23, 1862.
Private John Doolittle, 8th Connecticut (Middletown): Among the many photos in a tattered album of Middletown Civil War dead in the archives of the Middlesex County Historical Society is an image of an angelic-looking John Doolittle. Like many Connecticut soldiers, Doolittle received care at the German Reformed Church in Sharpsburg after he was wounded. He died there from effects of his wounds on Oct. 10, 1862. Seldom-visited by tourists today, the church should be on your battlefield itinerary -- especially if you are from Connecticut. In 1891, Connecticut veterans donated two beautiful stained-glass windows to the church to memorialize their fallen comrades.
Private Alvin Flint, 11th Connecticut, (East Hartford): The Flint family's tragic story, first recounted in detail in William Frassanito's terrific book, "Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day," has been told many times. Shortly after he enlisted, Alvin's mother and sister died of consumption. Alvin was killed near Burnside Bridge, and his father and 13-year-old brother George died of disease in the winter of 1863 in service of the Union army. On a wayside exhibit near the entrance to Center Cemetery, where the Flints are buried, is a reproduction of an ambrotype of young Alvin. My aim is to view the original, which may be in a Connecticut collection.
Captain John Griswold, 11th Connecticut (Old Lyme): Thanks to a Griswold descendant who unlocked the gate to the small, private cemetery where the captain is buried, I examined his intricately carved tombstone. The marker, created in the Hartford studio of Thomas Adams, was described in the Hartford Courant on Aug. 5, 1863, as "strikingly beautiful." My photograph of the bottom of Griswold's marker is one of my favorites. "Tell my mother I died at the head of my company," it reads.
Words at the bottom of John Griswold's tombstone in Old Lyme, Conn.
Sergeant Charles E. Lewis, 8th Connecticut, (Canterbury): Moments before I was about to leave rural Carey Cemetery on Canterbury, I discovered the weathered, side-by-side graves of Lewis and his fiancee, 22-year-old Sarah Hyde. She died on Oct. 16, 1862, almost one month after Antietam. Was the cause a broken heart? We'll never know, of course. The short account of Lewis' funeral in the Hartford Courant on Oct. 24, 1862, includes this poigniant sentence: "They had been brought up together in life, in death they were not divided, and together they sleep the last sleep."
Private William Hall, 11th Connecticut, (Chaplin): Information on Hall is scant, but his name sticks out to me for two reasons. Probably killed in a huge firefight near Burnside Bridge, he is buried in the aptly named Bedlam Road Cemetery in out-the-way Chaplin, Conn. And, sadly, his gravestone looks oddly out of place, tucked near a bush away from every other marker in the cemetery.
The out-of-the-way marker of Private William Hall of the 11th Connecticut in the interestingly
named Bedlam Road Cemetery in Chaplin, Conn., about 50 miles east of Hartford.
Corporal John Holwell, 11th Connecticut (Norwich): In reading the many letters in the Connecticut Historial Society Civil War collection from Holwell to his wife, I almost felt like I was invading the soldier's privacy. His young son, Eddy, was the apple of the eye of the Mexican War veteran. "Your dagerreotype and the children's look very natural and I was very glad to receive them. ..." he wrote to his wife. "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."
16th Connecticut lieutenant William Horton's grave in Stafford, Conn. His 3-year-old son, James, died 10 months after his father.
Lieutenant William Horton, 16th Connecticut (Stafford): Perhaps the only copy in the state of the sermon Reverend A.W. Ide read at Horton's funeral is at the Pecquot Library in Southport, Conn. I raced down to the library one Saturday afternoon, getting there shortly before it closed, and snapped photos of each page of the small, old book with my Blackberry. "It is God who has removed your husband, your nearest earthly friend; and He thus designs to bring you nearer to Himself," Ide said in addressing Horton's wife during the well-attended service. "He is the God of the widow and fatherless."
Private Robert Hubbard, 14th Connecticut (Middletown): Longtime relic hunter Richard Clem of Hagerstown, Md., obtained a letter from a farmer to the Hubbard family that helped fill out the story of the 32-year-old soldier. After he was killed by friendly fire on William Roulette's farm, Hubbard was buried near a corn crib by the barn, according to Roulette family lore. William Roulette arranged for the return of Hubbard's body to his family in Middletown in December 1862, three months after the battle. Hubbard's family sent a draft for $70 to cover the cost of a casket, disinterment of the body and shipment of the remains to Connecticut. But according to letter sent by Roulette on New Year's Eve 1862 to the Hubbards, the cost was only $55. Ever the honest man, Roulette sent 15 bucks back to the Hubbard family.
Private Horace Lay, 16th Connecticut (Hartford): From diaries to photographs, there is a wealth of information at the Connecticut Historical Society on the Civil War. Perhaps the best source of information is the soldiers' letters home -- a typically unvarnished view of history. Many of the letters are in such pristine condition that they appear to have been written just recently. (But, really, who writes letters anymore?) In perhaps his last letter home to Charlotte, Lay begins with "Dear Wife," which seems oddly formal for a man who had been married for more than 14 years. "I shall write you as often as I can," the 36-year-old soldier wrote in the letter dated Sept. 8, 1862, from Leesboro, Md., "but if that is not as often as you expect don't be too alarmed. I may be too busy." Nine days later, Lay suffered wounds in both legs at Antietam and was carried from the field. He lingered at German Reformed Church for weeks, but died with Charlotte by his side on Nov. 16, 1862, almost two months after Antietam.
Captain Newton Manross, 16th Connecticut (Bristol): You lose any romantic notions of war when you read accounts like this one in the Connecticut State Library: "I often think of that day, Sept. 17, 1862, and helping Captain Manross into the fence corner," Lester Taylor, a private in Company H of the 16th Connecticut, wrote 39 years after the battle. "I could look down inside of him and see his heart beat, his left shoulder all shot off." Manross' sword, once part of the Bristol Historical Society's collection, was recently returned to a descendant.
General Joseph Mansfield, XII Corps commander (Middletown): Six days after Mansfield was mortally wounded near the East Woods, the 58-year-old general was buried in Middletown, Conn., in one of the largest and most elaborate funeral services held in the state for a soldier. Almost every business in town was closed, and houses and stores along the funeral procession route were draped in black. Mansfield's service was conducted from the entrance of North Church so the large crowd outside could hear. Among those attending were Governor William Buckingham, Colt's Armory Band and scores of military men. Even General George McClellan's wife, Ellen, was at the service.According to an account of the funeral in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 24, 1862, the Middletown mayor "called upon the ladies to provide refreshments for the military guests, and a superb collation was set in McDonough Hall. Five tables extended the length of the Hall and three across, fairly groaning under the weight of the luxuries upon them."
The grave of Private William Porter (middle), mortally wounded at Antietam, is next to his wife, Arazina (right), and brother, John, in Green Cemetery in Glastonbury, Conn. John also died in service to the Union. William died on Oct. 10, 1862, after his left leg was amputated.
Private William Wallace Porter, 16th Connecticut (Glastonbury): In researching Connecticut's Civil War service, I already have found 20 sets of brothers who died during the Civil War -- including William Wallace Porter and John Porter of Glastonbury.John, who served in the 16th Connecticut until discharged for disability in December 1862, was killed near Petersburg while with the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery on Nov. 25, 1864.William's story is especially tragic. His 26-year-old wife, Arazina, died in 1860, a year before the Civil War began, leaving William to raise two children. After William died, his father raised the children. The brothers and Arazina are buried together in Green Cemetery in Glastonbury.
Private Henry Talcott and Private Samuel Talcott, 14th Connecticut (Coventry): A rebel artillery shell caused havoc in Company D of the 14th Connecticut, mortally wounding the Talcott brothers of Coventry, Conn., a small farming community of about 2,000 people. Two other Company D soldiers were killed in that same barrage of rebel artillery on the William Roulette farm: privates William Ramsdell and Coventry's George Corbit, who is buried near the brothers in Center Cemetery.
A descendant of Daniel Tarbox supplied this photo of him as a youngster.
Private Daniel Tarbox, 11th Connecticut (Brooklyn): A descendant in North Carolina supplied much of the information on Tarbox, an 18-year-old soldier who was mortally wounded near Burnside Bridge. He even provided a copy of the receipt for the cost of disinterment of Daniel's body and the purchase of a zinc-lined coffin that carried the soldier's remains back to Connecticut.The Tarbox family, the descendant wrote in an e-mail, have been pack rats for decades. Thankfully, they helped me tell the story of the son of a prosperous farmer.
Lieutenant Marvin Wait, 8th Connecticut (Norwich): Thanks to the generosity of early photography expert Matthew R. Isenburg of Hadlyme, Conn., I was able to post two photos of Wait to my blog. Like the Bingham brothers, Daniel Tarbox, George Crosby and Alvin Flint, Wait was only a teen-ager. It was eerie to stand in the First Congregational Church vestibule, where Wait's coffin was placed before he was buried in nearby Yantic Cemetery. That cemetery is the final resting place of scores of Civil War soldiers and Connecticut's Civil War governor, William Buckingham, who attended Wait's service.
Close-up of wrought-iron fence that surrounds Wadsworth Washburn's grave.
Sergeant Wadsworth Washburn, 16th Connecticut (Berlin): Using GPS and my wits, I usually have few problems finding the grave of a Civil War veteran. But the site of Washburn's final resting place proved to be a challenge. Tiny Bridge Cemetery is tucked into a non-descript suburban neighborhood in Berlin. The orderly sergeant's grave is one of the more beautiful I've seen for a Connecticut veteran of Antietam. Topped by figures of angels, a wrought-iron fence surrounds Wadsworth's grave. The death of their son was the second great tragedy for Rhoda and Reverend Asahel Washburn. Their first-born child, Emma, died at 17 in 1848. Reverend Washburn traveled to Sharpsburg, Md., to retrieve his son's body. UPDATE: On Saturday morning, Sept. 22, I discovered a photo of Washburn in the Connecticut State Library archives.
Captain Samuel Willard, 14th Connecticut, (Berlin): Just before the Battle of Antietam, Willard -- who had embraced religion about a decade before the war -- wrote this in his journal: "These may be my last words; if so, they are these: I have full faith in Jesus Christ my Saviour. I do not regret that I have fallen in defence of my country; I have loved you truly and know that you have loved me, and in leaving this world of sin I go to another and better one, where I am confident I shall meet you. I freely forgive all my enemies, and ask them for Christ's sake to forgive me." According to one account, his journal was recovered with his body after the battle. Where is it today? It's one of history's small mysteries.
(1) "16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Sergeant William H. Relyea," John Michael Priest Editor-in-Chief, Burd Street Press, 2002, Page 36.
(2) Letter from Augusta Griswold to John Morris, Oct. 19, 1862.
Close-up of gravestone of 14th Connecticut captain Samuel Willard in Madison, Conn.
