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| Richard Jobes of the 16th Connecticut suffered a bullet wound in his left arm at Antietam. Right: Jobes, pictured with grandson Herbert and daughter Mina, holds his great-granddaughter Dorothy in 1905. The photo at left was taken in 1909, shortly before he died. (Courtesy Roger Spear) |
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| According to family lore, Jobes carried this 1777 Spanish silver coin at the Battle of Antietam. (Photo courtesy Roger Spear) |
Pain.
That Rebel lead that sliced into Jobes necessitated at least two surgeries -- one the night of Sept. 17, 1862, to amputate his left forearm and another months later to help ease his suffering from the first operation.
Jobes' wounding wasn't the only Antietam memory seared into his brain. His younger brother Asbury, a sergeant in Company D in the 16th Connecticut, was captured during the bloodiest day in American history. (He was paroled 19 days later.) And shortly before he was shot, Richard was face-to-face with Samuel Brown, the regiment's popular 26-year-old captain, when a cannon ball whizzed between the men.
"I was the tallest corporal in the Co. and that brought me at the head of the Co. with Capt. Brown," Jobes wrote in a letter to Brown's sister nearly four decades after the Civil War. "A cannon ball passed between him and myself, but very close to him, so close he thought it passed through his long and beautiful whiskers. It was a 6 or 12 lb. ball. He was pale for a moment, rubbed his face and whiskers, then went on coolly giving his commands."
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| A cannonball passed between Richard Jobes and 16th Connecticut captain Samuel Brown. "He was pale for a moment, rubbed his face and whiskers, then went on coolly giving his commands," Jobes wrote after the war about Brown. (Connecticut State Library archives) |
Unable to serve in the regular army because of his terrible injury, Jobes was transferred to the Veterans Reserve Corps on Dec. 2, 1863. Discharged from the Union Army because of disability a little more than three months later, he returned to Suffield, where he struggled to make a go of it again in the cigar-making business. After the war, Jobes, the father of four children, was rocked by another tragedy when his wife Angene died on Aug. 29, 1866.
Nearly a year later, he married another Suffield woman, Emily Barnett, the wife of his Company D comrade who was killed at Antietam. Using the back part the Barnett home to churn out smokes, he sold cigars in Massachusetts in nearby Fall River and Springfield. On July 12, 1869, Jobes was gainfully employed as Suffield's postmaster, a prestigious position he held almost continuously under five presidents until 1908.
But the physical pain from Antietam was never far from Jobes' mind. Seeking an increase in his $18-a-month government pension in the spring of 1882, Jobes took his case before the House Committee on Invalid Pensions in Washington. In stark language, the committee's report described the veteran's condition:
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| After his first wife died, Richard Jobes married the wife of 16th Connecticut private Henry Barnett, who was killed at the Battle of Antietam. (Connecticut State Library archives) |
"At the first amputation a nerve was tied in with the ligatures so as to cause the pensioner excrutiating pain and in a year afterwards a second operation was determined upon after a consultation of the post surgeons at Knight Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut, and the nerve was then cut out for some distance above the point of amputation. This failed to give any relief, and this pensioner has since then suffered very great pain on account of said wound, and is for a great part of the time unable to take any exercise or do anything that tends to create heat without great suffering.
The facts are certified to by four respectable physicians of Suffield, Conn., who are well acquainted with the petitioner and have treated him a various times. In addition to this, 102 citizens of said town unite in a petition stating substantially the extent of his disability and the facts of his extreme suffering, and certifying to his good character."Calling Jobes circumstance an "exceptional case," the committee approved an increase in the veteran's pension.
Jobes, who sometimes dipped his injured arm in cold well water to relieve the pain, lived out his life in Suffield. He enjoyed reading the daily newspaper and tending to his flock of 80 chickens. Especially proud of his hens, he sold their eggs once a week in Springfield. The old man also marveled at that new contraption called the automobile, writing his 18-year-old grandson Howard in 1908:.
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| Richard Jobes lived out his days in this house in Suffield, Conn. |
On Jan. 28, 1909, 12 Grand Army of the Republic members surprised the 83-year-old veteran with a party at his house in Suffield. "The evening was spent in telling old war stories and other experiences since the war," the Hartford Courant reported. Antietam undoubtedly was a prime topic.
Jobes' health worsened in the late fall 1909, especially after he suffered a fractured hip in a fall in November. On Nov. 21, 1909, one of Suffield's oldest Civil War veterans, died at 7 p.m. of Bright's disease. He was buried in Zion's Hill Cemetery behind 1st Baptist Church, a short distance down the road from the small house where he lived most of his life.
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| Jobes, buried in Zion's Hill Cemetery in Suffield, Conn., died in 1909 at age 83. |
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SOURCES:
-- George Q. Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library, Richard Jobes letter to Fanny Brown, Feb. 10, 1909.
-- 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Sergeant William H. Relyea, John Michael Priest Editor In Chief, 2002, Page 36.
-- House Committee on Invalid Pensions, May 12, 1882.
-- Hartford Courant, Jan. 29, 1909, Page 14.
You weave wonderful tales of these men.
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