Civil War in Arizona: Picacho Pass skirmish photo gallery

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The Picacho Pass skirmish, a decisive Confederate victory, was fought April 15, 1862, 
40 miles north of Tucson, Ariz.

A wayside marker explains the skirmish at Picacho Pass, fought in the far distance.

The plaque at left notes that the three Union dead at Picacho Pass were buried on the battlefield.
 Two of the soldiers were later disinterred and re-buried in a San Francisco cemetery.

                              Picacho Pass, state-owned land, is accessible with a permit.
                              (CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL-SCREEN PANORAMA.)

A plaque in Picacho State Park is dedicated to the
 Confederate frontiersmen who defended Picacho Pass.

The Civil War wasn't just fought in the East and South. Fighting took place in the Southwest and Far West at such far-flung places as Glorieta Pass in the New Mexico Territory; Palmetto Ranch on the banks of the Rio Grande River, near Brownsville, Texas; and in the Arizona territory at Dragoon Springs, Stanwix Station and elsewhere. 

On April 15, 1862, a skirmish was fought in the shadows of the Picacho Mountains, about 50 miles north of Tucson, among thick mesquite and saguaro cactus. Led by Lieutenant James Barrett of the 1st California Cavalry, an advance party of 13 Union soldiers battled nearly a dozen Rebels at the advance outpost near Tucson, quickly taking three prisoners at Picacho Pass before they were routed. Among the three Yankee dead was Barrett, who was killed instantly by a bullet in the neck and buried in an unmarked grave near railroad tracks that still border the battlefield.

Twenty-five days after the fighting, a general order was issued to honor the two other Union soldiers who died. When the names of privates George Johnson and William S. Leonard were called at roll  for the remainder of the war, it stated, their companies were to respond: "He died for his country!" The remains of Johnson and Leonard were recovered and re-buried in a cemetery in San Francisco. No Rebel was killed at Picacho Pass and the Confederates had few wounded, if any.   

Located on state-owned land that requires a permit to visit, the skirmish site is located across two three-lane highways opposite Picacho Peak State Park. On a beautiful, crisp winter morning, I crossed railroad tracks and two gulleys and maneuvered through sagebrush to shoot the interactive panorama posted above of the battle site.

The skirmish was fought in the shadow of the Picacho Mountains.

Saguaro cactus are abundant at the Picacho Pass skirmish site. 

Reenactors commemorate the Picacho Pass skirmish each March at Picacho Peak State Park.

6th Connecticut captain: 'Must so slight a wound take my life!'

6th Connecticut Captain Dwight Woodruff's marker in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery.

After a Rebel bullet tore into his left wrist during the Battle of Deep River (Va.) on Aug. 15, 1864, Captain Dwight Woodruff initially appeared to be doing as well as could be expected. The 23-year-old officer from New Britain, Conn., who rose through the ranks from private to commissary sergeant to lieutenant and finally to captain by June 1864, was transported to Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., where a massive complex for sick and wounded soldiers had been constructed. But, according to a contemporary account in a Hartford newspaper, "the wound changed most suddenly" and "mortification," commonly known today as gangrene, set in.

Perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his life, Woodruff's left arm was amputated. When it became clear that he would die, the officer reportedly said, "That is a small wound to take a man's life, but it was received in a noble cause  -- in the cause of my country. Must so slight a wound take my life!"  A day after he was wounded, Woodruff died at Chesapeake Hospital, formerly a  four-story female seminary.

"He was brave and faithful, beloved by the regiment," a regimental historian wrote, "and his untimely death was regretted by all." Woodruff's body was embalmed and his uncle, L.A. Parker, made arrangements to have his nephew's remains returned to Connecticut, where he was buried with Masonic honors in West Avon Cemetery.

A Civil War-era image of Chesapeake Hospital, where Captain Dwight Woodruff died.
(Photo: Library of Congress)

SOURCE:
Connecticut Press, Sept. 10, 1864

16th Connecticut Private Edward Smith: 'Lost at Sea'

Edward Smith , a 21-year-old private in Company K of the 16th Connecticut, was from 
Bristol.  This is an 1892 copy of a war-time image of Smith. 
 (Photo: Connecticut State Library)

In a Bristol, Conn., cemetery dotted with graves of Civil War soldiers, it's easy to miss the weather-beaten memorial for Edward Smith, a 21-year-old private in Company K of the 16th Connecticut. From Bristol, Smith survived the Battle of Antietam and seven months' confinement in Rebel prisons in Andersonville and elsewhere only to drown when the steamer Massachusetts collided with the propeller barge Black Diamond on the Potomac River on the night of April 23, 1865, nine days after President Lincoln was assassinated. Smith, a mechanic and the son of English immigrants, was one of seven soldiers in the regiment to lose his life in the little-known incident that may have claimed the lives of nearly 90 soldiers, many of whom were recently released or paroled prisoners of war.

Two days after the accident, the Hartford Daily Courant published a 185-word account of the tragedy in a Page 2 column of short stories that included news from Havana, Cuba. Another Hartford newspaper, The Daily Times, also provided scant coverage, noting on April 26 that “the loss of life, as near as we can ascertain at present, will certainly exceed 50.”  The names of the seven sons of the state who met their demise in the Potomac were not reported in the Courant until April 29. According to the newspaper, the last words of one of the victims, 16th Connecticut drummer George W. Carter, were "write to my dear mother. Boys I must go."

Smith's name is barely discernible on a four-foot family marker in West Cemetery, about 200 yards from a 25-foot brownstone Civil War memorial for Bristol soldiers on which his name is listed as "Lost At Sea." The body of only one 16th Connecticut soldier, Charles Robinson of East Windsor, was recovered after the accident. The 24-year-old private is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Grave No. 8828.

A close-up of  the Smith family memorial in West Cemetery in Bristol, Conn. Edward Smith's
 death date is incorrectly noted on the family monument as May 2, 1865. 
He died the night of April 23, 1865.

Smith's body was never recovered after he drowned in the Potomac River. This marker is a cenotaph.

16th Connecticut reunion ribbons and visit with Joe Newman

Joe Newman, 83, served in the U.S. foreign service in London, Paris and Rome.

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Spend 90 minutes with 83-year-old Joe Newman, a gregarious New Jersey native, and this is what you'll probably discover:

He's passionate about baseball. (He officially "retired" from playing in 2008.)

He enjoys telling tales about his family. (Newman wrote a book about growing up in Maplewood, N.J.)

He's a stickler for grammar.

As a private in the 16th Connecticut, Augustus Funck was 
wounded at Antietam and survived imprisonment at 
Andersonville and Florence, S.C.
(Photo: Connecticut State Library archives)

And he loves history, especially Civil War history.

On a raw, rainy day in Connecticut, Newman bounded from room to room in his beautiful, early 19th-century house, showing me his vast collection of books, art and historical treasures, some of which were collected during his days as a U.S. foreign service officer in Paris, London and Rome.

In his office/library, he pointed out first-edition memoirs of Grant and Sherman; a huge history book published in 1611 that he purchased in London; a typewritten letter written to him and signed by LBJ and a magnificent, rare early 20th-century book on the history of baseball.

In the living room, near several other shelves of books, he showed off two metal lanterns and then handed me a small box that included an old tag. The lanterns, the tag noted, were from Old North Church, the one of Paul Revere fame in Boston.

"And here's the piece de resistance, John," he said, gesturing to a large box on a table in another room. Inside it were original New York newspapers that covered the shelling of Fort Sumter that ignited the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination.

Of course, I was most captivated by the collection of 16th Connecticut reunion ribbons on a four-foot, brown wooden board mounted high on the wall in his library/office. Newman's ancestor, Private Augustus Funck of the 16th Connecticut, was wounded at Antietam, captured at Plymouth, N.C., on April, 20 1864, and survived nine months in Rebel captivity in Andersonville, Ga., and Florence, S.C. (His brother, Henry, perished in Florence.) As did many of his fellow veterans, Augustus attended post-war gatherings of his comrades, including an excursion to Antietam at which the 16th Connecticut monument was unveiled on Oct. 11, 1894.

An immigrant from Germany, Augustus was a self-made man, taking over his father's undertaking/furniture business after the war and becoming a prosperous businessman. "He worked harder than anybody else in the business for years," the Hartford Daily Courant noted in his obituary in 1911, "and the success of the big enterprise was due to no one else but himself."

After our visit concluded, Newman put on his hat and gloves and headed out into the light rain for a short walk on his 150-acre property. "Come back again, John," he said with a wave and a smile. Makes sense to me, Joe, makes sense to me.

16th Connecticut veteran Augustus Funck's reunion ribbons.
(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

 Augustus Funck attended a gathering of 16th Connecticut veterans at Antietam on 
Sept. 17, 1889,  the 27th anniversary of the battle.

16th Connecticut reunion ribbons from 1894 and 1895.

Funck attended 16th Connecticut reunions in 1898, 1899, 1903, 1904 and 1905.

Augustus Funck survived Andersonville, but his brother died in a Rebel prison in Florence, S.C.

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5th Alabama Batallion's 'bright and promising boy'

A private in the 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion, James M. Tompkins was mortally wounded at the 
Battle of Gaines Mill. (Image from blogger's collection)

James M. Tompkins, a 20-year-old private in the 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion, lay on the field for hours, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood caused by a bullet that had sliced open the femoral artery in his leg. Earlier on the afternoon of June 27, 1862, Tompkins and his regiment had pushed within 50 feet of the Federal lines during the Battle of Gaines' Mill (Va.) before they were beaten back. Finally taken to the rear, the young man died later that night, one of 8,700 Rebel casualties during their crucial, and bloody, victory seven miles northeast of Richmond.

James was the youngest son of Mary and Major John Tompkins, a wealthy plantation owner from Edgefield, S.C., who served a term in the state's legislature before he moved his family to Sumter County in Alabama in 1851. Two of James' brothers also joined the Confederate army: John R., a Yale-educated lawyer, politician and newspaper editor, served in the Confederate ordnance department and as adjutant on General G.D. Ramsay's staff; and DeWitt, who was wounded at Gaines' Mill, was a captain in the 14th South Carolina. Military service was embedded in the DNA of the Tompkins family, whose ancestors served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

James Tompkins' body was recovered from the battlefield and buried next to his mother, who had died in 1843, in a family plot in Edgefield.  "He was a bright and promising boy,"  according to a post-war account, "just budding into manhood when, with so many of his generation, he was called from the school room to the battlefield; called to exchange his books for the haversack, the promise of a bright future for almost certain death at the hands of a countless, overwhelming foe."

 James Tompkins died of a leg wound suffered at the Battle of Gaines' Mill.

Reverse of the image of Private James M. Tompkins.

Close-up of period tag on the back of the Tompkins image notes he "fell in the
 Battle of Gaines Mill before Richmond."

Robert Ferriss' death at Antietam: 'We feel his loss deeply'

Corporal Robert Ferriss of the 8th Connecticut. (Image courtesy Ferriss descendant)

                                    8TH CONNECTICUT MONUMENT AT ANTIETAM:
                         The regiment's dead and wounded lay in this field after the battle.
                                  (Click on image for full-screen interactive panorama.)


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Perhaps no Union regiment's color guard at the Battle of Antietam suffered more than the 8th Connecticut's. Sergeant George Marsh of Company A was killed by the concussion of a solid shot about dawn and 10 other color bearers were killed or mortally wounded in the thick of a fierce fight near Harpers Ferry Road late on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862. Among them was Robert Bruce Ferriss, a 27-year-old corporal in Company I from New Milford, about 50 miles west of Hartford.

Antietam was an especially bloody battle for the 375-man 8th Connecticut, which suffered 56 killed or mortally wounded, including 16-year-old Private Dwight Carey of Canterbury, who was the youngest soldier from the state to die there, and 54-year-old  Private Peter Mann of Enfield, who was the oldest. "The whistle of iron was terrible," an officer in the regiment later wrote. (Download my Excel spreadsheet of Connecticut Antietam deaths here.)

In late September 1862, it fell to Company I Captain William J. Roberts to inform the Ferriss family of the death of their son. In a two-page letter to Ferris' mother, Roberts described in detail the moment Robert was shot, the recovery of his body and where he was buried in a trench on John Otto's farm on the battlefield, a short distance from where Ferriss took a Rebel bullet in the chest. The note is similar to condolence letters other commanding officers sent to the families of 16th Connecticut Private Henry Aldrich and 11th Connecticut privates Daniel Tarbox and Fennimore Weeks, also casualties in the battle.  Antietam was an agonizing experience for Roberts, who despite being violently ill and vomiting throughout the battle remained with his regiment.

For years, the condolence letter to Louisa Ferriss and many letters that Robert wrote home after he enlisted on Sept. 21, 1861, were stuffed in shoe boxes. Handed down to one of Ferriss' descendants, they are now kept in two large, protective binders, safe for future generations of the family. Thanks to that descendant's generosity, the letter breaking the news of Robert's death 152 years ago is shared here.

PAGE 1.

"It was near the close of the battle that he reeled and fell down near me." 

Mrs. Ferriss:

It is with great sorrow that I write to you concerning the death of your son Robert who was almost instantly killed by a musket shot through the breast at the battle of Antietam on the 17th of this month. He fell at his post on the right of his company when he was cheering his comrades and fighting with all his strength. It was near the close of the battle that he reeled and fell down near me, giving me a very forlorn look which he also directed towards Col. [Hiram] Applemen [Appelman], who was also very near him. I asked him if he wished for anything but the blood rushing from his mouth prevented him from speaking & his head sinking upon the ground satisfied me that he was dying. My attention being called to another part of the line I saw no more of him as we were soon ordered away. 

In my first letter home, I could not report him dead as there might have been a possibility of his having only fainted & of his revival. That night & following day the enemy held that field but the day after we drove them back & I hurried to see the fate of our missing comrades & found Corp. Robert Ferris where we left him lying peacefully on his back with a very pleasant smile upon his countenance, as if he had lain down to his long rest with the sweet consciousness that his work was done, and well done. We [illegible] his limbs and composed his body for the grave wrapping a blanket about him. On account of the great numbers of the slain on this portion of the field and the scarcity of implements for burying it was impossible to make separate graves and our comrades were laid side by side decently in a trench with the others killed of our Regt. where their [illegible] will mingle in death as their strength united in life to defend their country and its land. Of Robert at home I knew but little but I know well that he was the same steady, honest man on the day of his death that he was the day he left New Milford for the purpose of fighting the battle of his country.

PAGE 2

"We sympathize truly with you in your great affliction..." 

As a company we feel his loss deeply, one of our best and most efficient officers had fallen. He was looked upon among the 1st to take command of important & dangerous posts. Brave, yet prudent, firm and unyielding. Our country has lost a gallant soldier, our state an excellent citizen, his comrades a trusted friend and his parents a noble son.

Ferriss' weathered state-issued marker in
 Center Cemetery in New Milford, Conn. His body
 was returned to Connecticut for burial.
 (Richard M. Clarke/Find A Grave)

We sympathize truly with you in your great affliction and would offer words of consolation were it necessary to offer such to those who have given their sons to their country.

The money and valuables which Robert had about his person were taken from his body by the enemy. His knapsack is at Washington and I will have [it] sent home as soon as we receive them.

With respect I remain yours truly

Wm. J. Roberts

P.S. The grave of Robert is marked by a stake on which is nailed a piece of board with his name and rank cut upon it. His body could be taken up if his brother or some one should come after it. The trench in which he is laid is on the South side of a pen containing four large grain stacks upon the battlefield. It is situated on the left side of the road after crossing Antietam Bridge and directly in the rear of and opposite side of the 1st house on the road. This house is now used as a hospital for the wounded.

Corporal Robert Ferriss was originally buried in a field on John Otto's farm near the large tree 
in the right background of this early-20th century photograph.

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