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| A tattered copy of Dialogues of Devils, looted from Fredericksburg, Va., in December 1862. |
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| "Taken from deserted house of a wealthy citizen ..." reads a soldier's inscription inside the book once owned by William Warren, a prominent resident of Fredericksburg, Va. (New England Civil War Museum | Rockville, Conn.) |
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| William Warren (Ancestry.com) |
In the chaos that followed, Union soldiers ransacked the ruins. Among the wreckage, they seized a volume from Warren’s library. A private in Company D, 44th New York— “Ellsworth’s Avengers”— claimed the book and carried it with him for the rest of the war, a small trophy born of one family’s catastrophe.
GOOGLE STREET VIEW
William Warren's 1862 house is gone. A gym occupies part of the property today.
For the well-educated Warren — who had been involved in the cotton, iron, and grocery businesses — the war brought financial ruin. According to the 1860 census, his estate was valued at $12,000, an impressive sum at the time. Warren owned a tan yard along the Rappahannock, a short distance from his house, and operated mills to support the Confederacy.
We can only speculate how 37-year-old soldier Cyrus Snow Crain acquired the 1838 edition of Dialogues Of Devils, which chronicled the “many vices that abound in the civil and religious world.” On a blank page near the front, the private wrote: "Taken from the deserted house of a wealthy citizen of Fredericksburg, Va. where books & furniture were scattered about in profusion. Preserved as a memento of the occupancy of that city by our troops Dec. 13th, 14th, 15th 1862.”
Warren’s name appears in the book in three places. The inscriptions deepen the mystery of the book’s journey. Did Crain — who became regimental chaplain in March 1863 — steal the book from Warren's house? Did another soldier give it to him after the United States Army looted the town on Dec. 12, 1862? Or did he simply pick it up in the street?
The 44th New York suffered 42 casualties, including seven killed or mortally wounded, during the disastrous Union attack on Marye’s Heights on Dec. 13. Crain may have obtained the book when his regiment, serving as part of the Union army’s rear guard as it retreated across the Rappahannock on Dec. 16, occupied Fredericksburg the previous day. A 44th New York regimental historian blamed the pillaging of the town on “camp followers, who had the time and opportunity for such lawlessness.”
William Warren's 1862 house is gone. A gym occupies part of the property today.
For the well-educated Warren — who had been involved in the cotton, iron, and grocery businesses — the war brought financial ruin. According to the 1860 census, his estate was valued at $12,000, an impressive sum at the time. Warren owned a tan yard along the Rappahannock, a short distance from his house, and operated mills to support the Confederacy.
But during the Battle of Fredericksburg, “his beautiful home and business interests were completely wrecked,” according to a postwar account published in the Richmond Dispatch. At an unknown date, Warren and his wife, Mary, moved to Richmond, “where he soon won recognition as a business man of fine abilities and sterling worth.” By 1870, he was working for a bank as a bookkeeper and discount teller, among other roles — a career he would hold for decades. Even so, it represented a significant step down from his former station in life.
“Mr. Warren was a typical southern gentleman of the old school,” the Dispatch noted upon his death in 1900. “He was sincerely admired and greatly respected by the community at large -- a man whom everybody trusted implicitly, and who, while occupying a subordinate position, still leaves his mark and a place that will not easily be filled.”
After his wife’s death in 1874, Warren moved in with a daughter and son-in-law in Richmond. There, on Nov. 22, 1900, he was struck by a dray at Tenth and Broad streets while on his way home from work. Three days later, he died from effects of his injuries at his daughter’s house. The 74-year-old Virginian was buried in his hometown of Fredericksburg.
“Our brother was a man of aesthetic nature and refined tastes, with a decided literary bent, which he occasionally indulged in excursions into the field of poetry, with no mean success,” an obituary noted about Warren. “Tennyson was his favorite among the great masters of song, and the tender farewell that trembled on the inspired Laureate’s lips are ‘he crossed the bar’ found echo in our brother’s heart and was often repeated by him in view of his departure.”
For Cyrus Crain, the Civil War dragged on. He spent part of the winter of 1863 at the V Corps post hospital at Windmill Point, the largest military hospital in the Fredericksburg area. On a blank page in the back of Warren’s Dialogues of Devils, Crain even wrote scathing notes about Windmill Point, where roughly 4,000 sick soldiers received care:
In battered condition, Dialogues of Devils survives in Rockville, Conn., at the New England Civil War Museum, a former Grand Army of the Republic hall.
How it got there is unknown.
(See post here on the Windmill Point hospital from John Hennessy, chief historian and chief of interpretation at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.)
NOTES AND SOURCES
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| Warren's property in Fredericksburg was near his tan yard. Explore an excellent map of 1860 Fredericksburg from the National Park Service blog. |
After his wife’s death in 1874, Warren moved in with a daughter and son-in-law in Richmond. There, on Nov. 22, 1900, he was struck by a dray at Tenth and Broad streets while on his way home from work. Three days later, he died from effects of his injuries at his daughter’s house. The 74-year-old Virginian was buried in his hometown of Fredericksburg.
“Our brother was a man of aesthetic nature and refined tastes, with a decided literary bent, which he occasionally indulged in excursions into the field of poetry, with no mean success,” an obituary noted about Warren. “Tennyson was his favorite among the great masters of song, and the tender farewell that trembled on the inspired Laureate’s lips are ‘he crossed the bar’ found echo in our brother’s heart and was often repeated by him in view of his departure.”
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| William Warren's name appears twice at top of the title page. |
“These scribblings were offered to while away time while in the hospital at Windmill Point, Va., a bleak promontory on the Virginia side of the Potomac, a few miles below Acquia Creek. The sick and wounded were hastily taken here before the necessary preparations were completed & as consequence many died & others suffered much."And on another page:
"Would … the people north know how the government treated its sick soldiers at Windmill Point there would be a storm."As regimental chaplain, Crain ministered to soldiers at Gettysburg, where the 44th New York defended Little Round Top and suffered 26 killed among 111 casualties. On March 17, 1864, the army sent him home with a discharge. A short time later, he married his second wife, Mary, with whom he raised three children. (His first wife, Merab, died in 1862.) Crain spent the remainder of his life preaching in small towns across New York and died in 1895 at 71.
In battered condition, Dialogues of Devils survives in Rockville, Conn., at the New England Civil War Museum, a former Grand Army of the Republic hall.
How it got there is unknown.
(See post here on the Windmill Point hospital from John Hennessy, chief historian and chief of interpretation at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.)
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| 44th New York Private Cyrus Crain, who obtained Warren's book, wrote inside it about a Fredericksburg area hospital for soldiers. |
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| 44th New York Private Cyrus Crain, who later became the regiment's chaplain, wrote musings in the book about Windmill Point hospital for soldiers: "The sick and wounded were hastily taken here before the necessary preparations." |
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NOTES AND SOURCES
- Ancestry.com
- Genealogical and Family History of Western New York: A Record of Western New York, Volume 3, edited by William Richard Cutter, New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1912
- Nash, Eugene Arus, A History of the Forty-fourth Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, Chicago, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1911
- Richmond Dispatch, Nov. 27, 1900
- Richmond Times, Nov. 27, 1900
- William Warren obituary from 1900 newspaper clipping, probably from Virginia, accessed on ancestry.com on Dec. 19, 2016.
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