Faces of the Civil War: Robert Hooker Gillette

Robert Hooker Gillette (New York State Military Museum)

Here's the front and back of a CDV of Hartford's Robert Hooker Gillette, a paymaster aboard the U.S.S. Gettysburg, who was killed when the magazine at Fort Fisher exploded in North Carolina on Jan. 16, 1865. An official inquiry determined that careless Federal soldiers, sailors and marines -- many of them drunk, firing their weapons and carrying torches in the magazine of the fort -- were to blame. The image, in the New York State Military Museum collection, once may have been tacked on the wall at the State Capital building in Albany with other images of Civil War soldiers. To my knowledge, Gillette had no connection to a New York unit, but he did serve briefly in the 14th Connecticut before he left the army because of illness shortly after the Battle of Antietam. He joined the Union navy in 1863.