Pain on train: 'James Johnson your husband is ded and buried'

The cars on Private James Johnson's train, perhaps one much like this one, plummeted into a ravine.
(Library of Congress)

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Eight months after James Johnson survived a hellish assault on Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg, the 11th New Hampshire private found himself on detached duty more than 600 miles west. On Sunday night, Aug. 16, 1863, Johnson and other soldiers were traveling by train through Indiana. Their destination was Covington, Ky.

Shortly after the fast-moving train had passed the hamlet of Shoals, Ind., the cars somehow ran off the tracks, violently tossing Johnson and other soldiers to the ground. Some soldiers, including men in the 51st Pennsylvania, had been riding atop the train cars, a dangerous practice in the daytime let alone at night. Many were asleep.

"The train was midway on the bridge when the first car left the iron, and the three cars in the rear followed, cutting the ties and bridge timbers nearly off," the 51st Pennsylvania historian wrote. "When about one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards past the bridge, one car that had been running on the edge of the bank, rolled down the embankment, stopping the whole train with a crash. Five cars were frightfully piled upon each other, two of which were reared like a combed roof." The bridge spanned a ravine and a deep stream.

According to a Philadelphia newspaper correspondent, "the accident threw horses and negroes pell-mell into one end [of a railroad car], but none were hurt, though they scratched their wooly heads with astonishments at this unexpected deliverance."

Riding ahead of Johnson, 11th New Hampshire Private Peter K. Proctor waited for his car to stop before he leaped from the train to see if anyone had been injured. He found Johnson, a 36-year-old laborer fom Enfield, N.H., on his back, barely alive.

“He had his leage all smashed up about half way down from his knee,” Proctor wrote to the soldier’s wife, Joann, “and his head was hert verrey bad so that the blood was coming out of his ear.” (See Proctor letter and complete transcript below.)

It was obvious Johnson was a hopeless case – he lived for about 20 more minutes. “I spoke to him,” Proctor explained to Johnson's widow, “but he did not no me or eny one elce.”

James Johnson survived the 11th New Hampshire's attack at Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg.
Eight months later, he was killed in a train accident in Indiana.

The wreck also claimed the life of a 51st Pennsylvania private, and a dozen or so other soldiers were injured. It was astonishing that more had not been killed -- some soldiers landed on the tops of trees while others went tumbling into the ravine. Others had to be cut out of the train.  Most of the soldiers on the train, veterans of Antietam and the siege of Vicksburg, remained remarkably calm.

"Old railroaders, who had been in numberless smashes, said they never saw such a wreck," the newspaper correspondent reported.

In the aftermath of the accident, the 51st Pennsylania regimental historian wrote, no one seemed to notice the bloodied Johnson as he lay sprawled on a stretcher. "...but as he was there a stranger," he recalled, "it is safe to say that the poor fellow had to be buried by the railroad company, as no one appeared to take any notice of him only through curiosity.

"Although it seems inhuman to neglect a fellow comrade, yet when we consider all the ghastly sights of a battle-field, on which a true soldier is compelled to look, they cannot do otherwise than blunt the finer feelings, and an expression of sympathy rarely gets utterance."

In the letter to Johnson's widow, however, Proctor said  he carried his comrade's body to the nearest village, where he found a box for a makeshift coffin. To dig Johnson’s grave, he enlisted the aid of soldiers in the 51st Pennsylvania, who had buried their comrade earlier. But before the Pennsylvanians could finish the sad task, the train was ready to roll to Covington. A war needed to be fought, and there was no time for them to bury James Johnson.

“We carried him back to the villadge and the citterzins said that they would burrey him in good shape and so I left him in there care,” explained Proctor. On James' body, he had found $1.10, postage stamps, a chunk of tobacco, two pipes, a small knife, two letters from Mrs. Johnson and an image, presumably of Joann.

Proctor vowed to tear up James' letters to his wife, “for they are of no consequence  to send back to you,” he wrote to Widow Johnson. He also promised to send her what little money James had as well as a precious memento of the father of her four young children: a lock of his hair.

SOURCES

-- James Johnson's widow's pension file, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., via fold3.com.
-- Parker, Thoimas H., History of the 51st Regiment P.V. and V.V., Philadelphia, King & Baird Printers, 1869.
-- Philadelphia Press, Aug. 20, 1863.

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'THE CITTEZINS SAID THAT THEY WOULD BURREY HIM'

National Archives via fold3.com.
(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

Covington, Ky, Aug. 19 / 63

Mrs. Johnson:

I sit down this afternoon to write a few lines to you and that of a bad kind of news; I am sorry to say it althoe it must be so. James Johnson your husband is ded and buried. He was killed on the road to Covington. We had passed the village of Shoals when the (indecipherable) of the cars gave away and cars was all smashed up and we was going like lightning speade; I was in the car ahead of James. I got out as quick as I could and went back and the first I saw was James. He laid on his back about ded. He had his leage all smashed up about half way down from his knee and his head was hert verrey bad so that the blood was coming out of his ear. I think that was what killed him. I think he must af been on top of the cars. I spoke to him but he did not no me or eny one elce. He lived about 20 minutes after I found him. I laid him out that knight an a (indecipherable) which it happened in the knight about 11 o’clock last Sunday.

I carried him back to the villadg and got a box and put him in and then got a detail out of the 51 Penn. Rigament to burrey him for I was ...

National Archives via fold3.com.

... all alone. None of our rigament was with me. They dug a grave near the villadge where they buried a man that was killed out of the Penn. Rigament the same night; they dug on one other coffin and gave it up for we had not time to dig one other grave for the cars was reddey to go again. We carried him back to the villadge and the citterzins said that they would burrey him in good shape and so I left him in there care. I took his thinges out of his pocket. He had one dollar and 10 cents in money your picture I suppose it must be and som postage stamps and a peace of tobacco and 2 letters that he got from you. The letters I will tore up for they are of no consequence to send back to you. He had 2 pipes in his pocket and a jack knife. I will do with them just what you wish me to do. I cutt of a lock of his hair for you. I will send that and the money to you. I will close now after telling you the whole perticulars and hope I shall hear from you in regard to him.

Yours in haste.

P. K. Proctor

John Johnson is sick and in the hospittle in this cittey but I do not no where to find him as yet. James was killed on the way from (indecipherable) to Covington where we are now. I was not hurt. ...

National Archives via fold3.com

... but we had a narrow escape. We had 10 wounded and 2 killed with James and (indecipherable).

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A visit to the H.L. Hunley, legendary Confederate submarine

While it is being restored, the H.L. Hunley is kept in a massive holding tank
 in a huge warehouse-like building. (CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

Visitors may view the Hunley from behind Plexiglass.

The vessel is kept in a water and sodium hydroxide solution while it is being restored.

Eight members of the Hunley crew died in the sub's final voyage.

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Tour exhibit of gold coin found among remains
 of a Hunley crew member.
(READ MORE HERE)

In October in North Charleston, S.C., I spent 30 minutes with the H.L. Hunley, the famous Confederate submarine that sank three times. (It was raised and put back into service after the first two sinkings.) On its final voyage, on Feb. 17, 1864, the Hunley went to the bottom of Charleston Harbor, drowning all eight of the crew, after it sank the Union blockader USS Housatonic with a torpedo. (Really a large, explosive charge mounted on a spar -- a long pole.) Although subject of intense speculation and study, the reason for its demise remains unknown.

Raised in 2000, the nearly 40-foot long vessel is undergoing careful, and tedious, restoration in a massive tank of water and sodium hydroxide solution -- think Drano -- to help preserve the world's first attack submarine to sink a warship.

Want to visit? The Hunley is kept in a warehouse-like building about 10 miles north of  historic downtown Charleston. Tours are available only on weekends, and adult admission is 16 bucks. You can view the Hunley from behind Plexiglass. In a small exhibit at the end of the tour, you'll find the "legendary" gold coin discovered with the remains of one of its unfortunate occupants. Its history is explained on a placard next to the coin display.

Visitors can also sit in a replica of the sub, slightly larger inside than the original, near the gift shop, where the usual assortment of T-shirts, sweatshirts and other Hunley souvenirs can be purchased. (Claustrophobics should avoid the replica sub.)

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'Remarkable': How 'Captain Tim' escaped from Rebels in 1864

Timothy Robinson's grave in West Cemetery in Bristol, Conn.

1894 image of 16th Connecticut Captain Timothy Robinson. (Connecticut State Library)
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

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On Halloween Night 1905, more than a dozen 16th Connecticut veterans gather at the home of Timothy and Sophia Robinson to celebrate the couple's golden wedding anniversary. It's a grand occasion,  befitting for the old soldier and his wife, among the most respected citizens of Bristol, Connecticut.

This inscribed silver loving cup was given
 to the  Robinsons by 16th Connecticut vets
 in 1905. (Courtesy Garth Gustafson)

While the Robinsons stand in the front parlor where they had been married in 1855, Colonel Frank W. Cheney delivers a short speech and then hands the couple an inscribed, silver loving cup. "Presented to Captain Timothy B. Robinson, by his old comrades of the Sixteenth C.V., 1855-1905," the words on it read.

In a wonderful gesture, Cheney — one of the 16th Connecticut's more beloved figures — also presents Timothy and Sophia each a $20 gold coin. As long as they have the shiny gifts in the house, the 73-year-old veteran tells them, surely tongue in cheek, neither of them would be out of money. Robinson thanks Cheney and the group celebrates in "a sort of old time reunion."

The gray-haired 16th Connecticut veterans, each of whom had suffered significant hardships during the war, have plenty to discuss. Many of them had been captured at Plymouth, North Carolina in April 1864 and imprisoned at Andersonville, the deadliest of all Civil War POW camps. The captain's own brother, 19-year-old Henry, died there in the summer of 1864.

Henry Robinson, Timothy's 19-year-old 
brother, was captured at Plymouth, N.C.,
 on April 20, 1864. He died at Andersonville.
(Courtesy Garth Gustafson)

In brutal fighting at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, the hard-luck 16th Connecticut's first battle, Cheney suffered a serious wound in the arm, knocking him out of the war for good. Eighty-three-year-old Charles Dixon, the 16th Connecticut's chaplain, had been briefly imprisoned at Andersonville and then in Macon, Georgia, where he defiantly disobeyed the Confederate commander's demand that he not pray aloud for President Lincoln. Sixty-one year-old William Nott had survived Antietam, Andersonville and a little-known collision of ships on the Potomac River days after the war had effectively ended — an accident that claimed the lives of seven other soldiers in the regiment.

But perhaps no man in the frame house on Wolcott Street that Tuesday night has a greater war story to tell than 71-year-old Timothy Robinson himself. His is a story of derring-do and survival behind enemy lines — a tale that included a goat, the kindness and bravery of escaped slaves, a failed attempt in a rowboat to reach a Union blockader off the coast of South Carolina and, ultimately, a successful escape from a Confederate POW camp.

By 1905, the two 16th Connecticut officers who shared in Robinson's amazing story had long since gone to their graves.

PRESENT DAY: Robinson's house on Wolcott Street, where the vets gathered Halloween Night 1905.

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Inscribed scabbard for sword presented in 1862 to Timothy Robinson.
(Courtesy Garth Gustafson)

When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, Timothy Boardman Robinson was employed as a machinist at the E.N. Welch Clock Company in the Forestville section of Bristol — an area that for decades had been hub of clockmaking in western Connecticut. In August 1862, he enlisted in the U.S Army, mustering into Company K of the 16th Connecticut as a 2nd lieutenant under the command of Captain Newton Manross, a Bristol native and an assistant professor at a college in Massachusetts. Before they marched off to war together, friends in Bristol presented Robinson and Manross each an inscribed sword and scabbard.

A war-time image of Timothy Robinson, who
twice escaped from Rebel POW camps.

Barely a month after they were mustered in, 16th Connecticut soldiers found themselves on the front lines at Antietam as part of the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Smashed in the left flank in the 40-Acre Cornfield by veteran troops under A.P. Hill, the green Nutmeggers suffered more than 200 casualties on the bloodiest single day of the war. Struck by Confederate artillery, Manross was killed, one of three soldiers in his company who did not survive the battle; Robinson, meanwhile, survived without any physical wounds.

Ushered to the war's backstage, the 16th Connecticut never saw major action again. And then came April 20, 1864 — another tragic day that defined the 16th Connecticut's Civil War experience. Nearly surrounded,  the regiment and the rest of the Union garrison in Plymouth surrendered to Confederate forces under General Robert F. Hoke.
Forced by a Confederate to give up his prized sword and scabbard, Robinson — who had been promoted to captain in April 1863 — and other officers were inititally imprisoned at Camp Oglethorpe in Macon. Their captors sent enlisted men — including Timothy's brother, Henry, who suffered a wound at the Battle of Plymouth — to Andersonville.

When Sherman's march through Georgia in the fall of 1864 made prison camps in the state untenable, the Rebels transferred Robinson and other Federal POWs to a camp in Charleston, S.C. During a trip in early October from Charleston to Camp Sorghum in Columbia, South Carolina aboard a heavily guarded train, Robinson and 16th Connecticut captains Thomas Burke of Hartford and Charles Morse of  New Hartford leaped from a boxcar and escaped. Subsisting on parched corn, the exhausted men were captured asleep in the woods six days later by a hunter, whose dogs guarded the escapees while he sought help.

"Here again commenced a course of treatment which was made none the less revolting by the five months experience they had already endured," an account noted, "and thoughts of escape did not die out among them."

A late-19th century illustration of Camp Sorghum in Columbia, S.C. Robinson and two
fellow 16th Connecticut POWs fled the camp in the fall of 1864.

Returned to Camp Sorghum, Robinson, Burke and Alfred Dickerson, a 16th Connecticut captain from Hartford, didn't stay put for long. After collecting wood with many other officers while on parole near the lightly guarded camp, the three malnourished soldiers snuck into the woods, beyond reach of their captors. The date was Nov. 3, 1864. The escapees' audacious plan was to somehow follow the Congaree and Santee rivers downstream to the Atlantic Coast, a staggering distance of more than 175 miles. From there, well, who knew.

"The night was dreary and rainy and the roads were very muddy," an account of the escape noted, "but, emaciated as they were by over six months confinement and exhausted with the labors of the day and with anxiety, they resolutely pushed on all night and the next day, carefully avoiding the habitations of men, and finding their subsistence in the fields they passed through."

A war-time image of 16th Connecticut
Captain Alfred Dickerson, who died in 1868.
He was only 27. 

In a surprising twist on Nov. 4, Robinson, Burke and Dickerson connected with five other Federal escapees from Camp Sorghum. The men had bribed a guard in exchange for their freedom and survived for two days in a swamp. Luckily for the Connecticut men, those  soldiers had met local Blacks, undoubtedly escaped slaves, who furnished them with two rowboats as well as sweet potatoes, turnips and cornbread.

Sleeping and cooking by day and traveling mostly at night to avoid detection by the enemy, the bedraggled band slowly made its way down the Congaree and Santee rivers. Camped near the river bank one day, the men heard loud voices.

"[W]e discovered a boat below us upon the river, being poled up the river by negroes," Dickerson recalled. "One of our party posted himself upon the bank of the river where he could hail the boat without discovering the presence of the rest of the party, and hailing down the negro in charge of the boat informed him that he was in want of provisions."

The man continued downriver, refusing to stop.

When a Union officer informed the Black man that he was an escapee from a Rebel prison, he "immediately landed," Dickerson recalled, and stayed with the soldiers all day, "cooking rations and giving very valuable information." Directed by their newly-made Black friend, the soldiers stopped downriver that night at a farm, where they captured and killed a goat that supplied them with meat for the rest of their journey. Robinson and Burke each kept one of the animal's horns as a souvenir.

Several days later, the escapees met four other Black men, who gave the group "a large quantity of sweet potatoes, salt and meat." Upon parting with them, Dickerson remembered, "they bade us God speed and a safe journey. Elated and happy with our success, we kept steadily forward and soon after we landed to again consult the negroes who told us we were but five miles from a battery mounting two pieces, upon the right bank of the river, guarded by rebel soldiers.

16th Connecticut Captain Thomas Burke,
 shown in a war-time image, 
died in 1887. He was 50.

"After receiving other information and provisions," Dickerson added, "we parted company with the last of our negro friends, and proceeded down the river, passed the battery in safety, and landing waited for darkness of the night to finish our journey to the coast. Thursday night, full of hope, we again took to our boats and meeting no interference, reached the coast safely."

More than a week after their journey had begun, the escapees finally had reached the mouth of the Santee River, which empties into the Atlantic. Miraculously undetected by the enemy, the group had passed two guarded bridges, two guarded ferrys and Battery Warren during their adventure.

But a huge challenge remained.

On the horizon, they spotted the spars of a ship, a Union blockader. Taking their best boat, three of the men rowed about eight miles from shore before a fast-approaching storm forced them to turn around.

Undaunted, Robinson, Dickerson and another fugitive made a second attempt at sunrise the next day, rowing their ramshackle vessel miles into the Atlantic. Stunned crew on the Union blockader Canandaigua spotted them. According to an account written years later:

"To the officers and men it seemed as if the thunder of their own guns must have startled these fugitives from the caverns of the deep, so incredibly daring was the voyage upon the foaming sea with a boat so leaky and so frail, as hardly to withstand a zephyr, and orders were at once given to take it aboard and keep it as a token of what men would dare to do."

Another boat was sent ashore to rescue the remaining five escapees. Crew handed the eight former POWs new uniforms. Their tattered rags ended up in the ocean.

"[W]hen all were safe upon the deck of the ship and under the protection of the Star-Spangled Banner," Dickerson wrote, "our hardships ended and pleasure took the sway. Our feeling of joy when safe in the protection of our Government can be conceived only by those who have been called upon to undergo similar privations and hardship, and who beheld the dawn of Freedom upon their toilsome efforts."

With their stunning great escape complete, Robinson, Burke and Dickerson were given furloughs to return home.

Timothy Robinson, believed to be second from left in the front row, and other 16th Connecticut vets
at the Bristol, Conn., grave of  Newton Manross, the Company K captain who was killed at Antietam.
 The photograph was taken in June 1885. (Courtesy Bristol Public Library)

Each of the Connecticut escapees survived the war, but neither Thomas Burke nor Alfred Dickerson lived to see the end of the century.

Only 27, Dickerson died on Oct. 24, 1868, of a "very malignant type of erysipelas." His death "brought deep sorrow not only into the circle of his own family friends," an account noted, "but also into a much larger circle of those who knew and loved him." He left behind a wife named Mary and a three-month old daughter named Alfreda.

Nearly 17 years later, on April 17, 1885, Burke — "a man of warm heart and unquestioned courage" — died of pneumonia at a hospital in Hartford, Conn. At the end of his life, he had suffered from financial hardship. "He had not the business turn that would give him success," the local newspaper reported in a front-page obituary, "and he saw hard days which he took quietly and without complaint."

A widower who had lost his wife in a boarding house in 1872, Burke was buried with military honors in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. He was only 50.

Active in veterans' organizations, Robinson — known as "Captain Tim" to family and friends — served as president of the 16th Connecticut's regimental association for many years. Crippled by a cerebral hemorrhage, he died in Bristol on Feb. 6, 1918. He was 83.

In an obituary, a Hartford newspaper called him "the survivor of one of the remarkable escapes of the war."

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A war-time image of
O.P. Mills.

POSTSCRIPT: After the war, Burke gave Robinson, an avid collector of Civil War relics, his horn from the goat the escapees had killed in November 1864. Along with his own horn, Captain Tim displayed the strange souvenirs in his den in Bristol.

According to a descendant, Robinson's personal papers, including many of his wartime letters and his map of the successful 1864 escape route, were destroyed in a house fire in Winsted, Conn., in the early 1970s.

After the Civil War, the scabbard from the sword given to Robinson by friends in Bristol in 1862 was returned to him. But the sword, snatched by a Confederate at Plymouth, N.C., in the spring of 1864, remained missing,

By accident, a 16th Connecticut veteran learned Robinson's sword was in possession of  O.P. Mills, a former Confederate infantry officer and successful cotton mill entrepreneur in Greenville, S.C. Robinson's friends attempted to acquire the sword from Mills, who refused to return it, keeping it as a war prize. When Mills died in 1915, the sword was still in his family's possession.

The current whereabouts of the prized weapon are unknown.

Timothy Robinson's grave in West Cemetery in Bristol., Conn., is yards from the town's
Civil War memorial and the Robinson family memorial (background and below).

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NOTES AND SOURCES

• Blakeslee, B.F, History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, Hartford, Conn., The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., Printers, 1875
• Bristol (Conn.) Press, June 7, 1872
• Hartford Courant, April 18, 1885, Nov. 1, 1905, Feb. 8, 1918
• The Connecticut War Record, December 1864, Page 6. The letter writer signed his account of the escape "One of the Party." The man was undoubtedly Alfred Dickerson
• The Soldiers' Record, Oct. 31, 1868
• Timothy Robinson descendant Garth Gustafson supplied terrific information from his family's archives for this story.

Details, details: Examining 1865 image of Charleston's City Hall

(George Barnard | Library of Congress collection)

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Of all the images taken by Connecticut-born photographer George Barnard in Union-occupied Charleston, S.C., in April 1865, this one of City Hall at the corner of Broad and Meeting streets is my favorite. Cropped enlargements reveal many cool details, such as ...

... these seven Federal soldiers relaxing on a bench in front of the ornate fence and railing to the grand building, constructed in the early 19th century ...

... and in a window on the Meeting Street side of the building (at left), another soldier leans against the sill ...

... while below him at street level, these two Yankees stare at the cameraman. Is that rubble in the foreground a result of the Union navy's frequent shelling of the city?

... and here's a Federal officer under a street lamp.

On the porch of City Hall, a Federal soldier leans against the railing. Note the musket in the background. ...

... while near the right corner of City Hall, a soldier with a musket resting on his shoulder stands near stacked arms.

Damage undoubtedly caused by the Union navy's shelling is apparent to the right of the Meeting street sign ...

... and on Broad Street, a man -- perhaps a Union sailor judging from his attire -- stands near what undoubtedly is more damage caused by the dastardly Yankee navy. Yards away from him another man leans against the building and stares down Broad Street. Perhaps his gaze caught this famous building.

As this Then & Now shows, City Hall survived The Late Unpleasantness, and the war-damaged building was repaired long ago. What else do you see in Barnard's photograph?

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'A Real Love Story': Lt. Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes' recovery

Lucy and Rutherford Hayes on their wedding day on Dec. 30, 1852. Nearly 10 years later, 
he would be seriously wounded at the Battle of South Mountain. (Library of Congress) 

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In late summer and early fall 1862, future U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes spent weeks in Captain Jacob Rudy's two-story brick house in Middletown, Md., in the heart of the beautiful Middletown Valley.

The 23rd Ohio lieutenant colonel wasn't there on a furlough.

On Sept. 14, 1862, while leading his troops at Fox's Gap during the Battle of South Mountain, Hayes was seriously wounded. "Just as I gave the command to charge," the 39-year-old officer wrote in his diary, "I felt a stunning blow and found a musket ball had struck my left arm just above the elbow. Fearing that an artery might be cut, I asked a soldier near me to tie my handkerchief above the wound. I soon felt weak, faint and sick at the stomach."

23rd Ohio Lt. Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes
(Library of Congress)

While he lay in the field as the battle swirled nearby, Hayes had a "considerable talk" with a wounded Confederate. "I gave him messages for my wife and friends in case I should not get up," he wrote. "We were right jolly and friendly; it was by no means an unpleasant experience." Finally rescued by another Union officer, Hayes was carried out of range of Rebel fire, placed behind a big log and given a large canteen of water.

After his wound was dressed, Hayes walked a half-mile to the small house of a widow named Elizabeth Koogle, remaining there for two or three hours. Still faint from loss of blood, he was taken by ambulance three or four miles or so into Middletown -- "Little Massachusetts," it was called, because of its pro-Union sentiment. The town's churches, private homes, barns and other buildings threw open their doors for Union wounded. Hayes' association with local merchant Jacob Rudy, his wife Elizabeth and their two sons and five daughters began that night.

So, too, did a mutual admiration society.

Hayes grew quite fond of the Rudys -- he felt "as snug as a bug in a rug" while he lay in an upstairs room in their house. "I am comfortably at home," he wrote his mother the day after he was wounded, "with a very kind and attentive family here named Rudy."

Two days after he was wounded, Hayes was free of pain when he lay still. He delighted in sampling Elizabeth Rudy's currant jellies. The family's youngest son, 8-year-old Charlie, enjoyed describing for Hayes the troops as they passed their house on the busy National Pike. "Charlie, you live on a street that is much traveled," Hayes said. "Oh, it isn't always so," the youngster replied, "it's only when the war comes."

In April 1877, a lengthy, and remarkably detailed, account of Hayes' stay with the Rudys was published in the New York Herald. Under the headlines "Reminiscences of His Treatment With A Friendly Family" and "A Real Love Story," Rudy's wife and daughters Kate and Ella recounted their experiences with Hayes, sworn in as 19th U.S. president the previous month.

When the ambulance carrying Hayes and army surgeon Joseph Webb, his brother-in-law, arrived about sunset at the Rudy's house on the National Pike, near the western edge of town, the family was in the midst of their own health crisis. Twenty-one-year-old Daniel Webster Rudy, the couple's eldest son, was seriously ill with smallpox, and daughters Laura, 11, and Ella, 9, had scarlet fever.

Still, the Rudys welcomed the disheveled and badly wounded Hayes, whose uniform was spattered with dust and mud. The officer was carried up the narrow staircase and placed in a bed in a room next to the one where Daniel lay ill. Webb and his brother, James, also an army surgeon, tended to Hayes' wounded arm. A highly respected local physician named Charles Baer aided them. The two black servants who accompanied Hayes and Joseph Webb in the ambulance to Middletown slept on the floor of Daniel's room.

               Then & Now: Rudy house in Middletown, Md. (Google Street view)

Early-20th century postcard of the Rudy house, where Hayes recovered from his wounds.

When Lucy Hayes, the lieutenant colonel's 31-year-old wife, arrived from Ohio more than a week after the Battle of South Mountain, Elizabeth Rudy made an instant connection with the mother of five young sons. "... the moment she crossed our threshold," she told the reporter, "I knew she was a good woman and a natural lady. Of course her husband was rejoiced to see her and hear about his children, and she was relieved to know that his wound was not so dangerous as she had imagined it. She made herself easily at home here at once."

Mild-mannered Rutherford Hayes didn't talk much, Mrs. Rudy recalled, and when he did, he never had a cross word to say about the Rebels. "... though he suffered constantly and got little sleep for a week and longer," Ella Rudy said, "he was always cheerful. He not only wouldn't be cross -- he wouldn't allow any extra trouble to be taken on his account. Mother used to ask him if she could not 'do something' for him. He always thanked her, but said no ... "

Lucy Hayes, Rutherford's wife,
 in 1877.  (Library of Congress)

While her husband recuperated, Lucy often visited with wounded Confederate and Union soldiers in hospitals in Middletown, taking them grapes and other delicacies. "She had a great many favorites," Mrs. Rudy said, "but she was attentive to all, and admired by everybody."

In late September, Hayes was well enough to walk about Middletown. He preferred the unpaved south side of the street, sometimes sloshing through shoe-deep mud, instead of the paved north side, causing the town's tongues to wag. In early October, he and his wife visited the Lutheran Church cemetery, where they could watch the sun set and admire gorgeous fall foliage. On his 40th birthday on Oct. 4, Hayes and Lucy traveled with Jacob Rudy and two other men to the South Mountain battlefield. "Hunted up the graves of our gallant boys," he wrote in his diary. Later that month, Hayes finally returned to his home in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife.

Weeks after Hayes' departure, every member of the Rudy family contracted smallpox. Charlie died from the disease on Nov. 4.

In the summer of 1864, with the Union army again in western Maryland, Hayes found time to visit with the Rudys."They were so kind and cordial," he wrote in a letter to Lucy. "They all inquired after you. The girls have grown pretty -- quite pretty."

Captain Rudy, who died on Christmas Day in 1876, had not forgotten about the soldier he took into his home in 1862. "Mr. Rudy said if I was wounded," Hayes told his wife, "he would come a hundred miles to get me."

Hayes remained close to the hearts of Elizabeth, Kate and Ella Rudy, too.

"So you all fell in love with the patient Colonel?" the reporter asked Elizabeth Rudy during his 1877 visit.

"We fell in love with him directly," she replied.

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SOURCES

-- Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Ninteenth President of the United States, Volume II, 1861-1865, Edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1922.
-- New York Herald, April 9, 1877

Then & Now: Explore Fox's Gap at South Mountain battlefield

THEN: General Jesse Reno monument images by Fred Wilder Cross, circa 1920s. NOW:  John Banks, Nov. 4, 2017.
(HOVER ON IMAGES for NOW photos; effect does not work on phones, tablets.)

MONUMENT PANORAMA: Jesse Reno was killed near here on Sept. 14, 1862. (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)
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Fred Wilder Cross, military archivist for the state of Massachusetts from 1918-38, was drawn to Civil War battlefields, none moreso than Antietam and South Mountain. "There are few places that I have visited or of which I have ever dreamed," he wrote in 1926, "that have such a hold upon my heart as the picturesque hills and broad valleys of Western Maryland."

During summer trips to the area in the late teens and early 1920s, Cross took hundreds of images of the battlefields with a camera he had purchased in Fredericksburg, Va., in 1912. At Fox's Gap at South Mountain, he photographed the monument for Union Major General Jesse Reno, who was mortally wounded during the battle on Sept. 14, 1862, and many other nearby sites. Decades after the fighting, the battlefield looked to Cross much as it did in late-summer 1862. Farmer Daniel Wise's cabin, used as a makeshift hospital after the battle, was long gone, but the fields where the armies had clashed remained much as they appeared during the Civil War.

On a brisk fall Saturday afternoon in 2017, curious Appalachian Trail hikers examined the Reno monument while a handful of Civil War buffs pointed to the site of the infamous Wise well, where the  bodies of Confederate dead were unceremoniously dumped. Across Reno Monument Road -- the old Sharpburg Road in 1862 -- a bird-watcher traipsed through a field where a rookie regiment from Michigan had charged more than 155 years ago.

The battlefield had definitely changed since Fred Cross' long-ago visits. Here's a Then & Now look:

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 FARMER DANIEL WISE'S HISTORIC FIELD

Union veteran Uberto Burnham in Daniel Wise's field at Fox's Gap. The Reno monument appears
 in the background. (Black-and-white images by Fred Wilder Cross | William Christen collection)

In this view of farmer Daniel Wise's field, the Reno monument appears in the right distance.
(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

                     PRESENT-DAY PANORAMA: Daniel Wise's field is largely wooded. 
                                       (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

The Central Maryland Heritage League wants to restore Wise's field to its 1862 appearance.

During a visit to Antietam with other veterans in 1920, Uberto Burnham struck up a conversation with a man who he said knew more about the Maryland Campaign than he did. That man was Fred Cross, who suggested they visit Fox's Gap and the rest of the old South Mountain battlefield.

"The next morning we took the bus on Boonesboro pike," recalled the former 76nd New York private, "and at that village connected with the Hagerstown bus which went through Turner's Gap, now a paved road. Quite early in the forenoon we found ourselves on the battlefield. I could hardly realize the situation." (Before enlisting, Burnham was a school teacher, earning $5 a week.)

Cross photographed Burnham in Wise's field, where the old man leaned on his cane and gazed across the landscape.

"It seemed to me almost a vision," he wrote in a story published in 1928 in The National Tribune, a newspaper for Union veterans. "I took great interest in looking over the field."

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DANIEL WISE'S NORTH PASTURE

The view looking toward the Old Sharpsburg Road. The Reno monument is at left. Wise's small 
log house stood just out of camera range at right.  (Fred Wilder Cross | William Christen collection)

      PANORAMA: The 17th Michigan charged from right to left here in Wise's pasture.
                                     (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

"As soon as we had fixed the point of rendezvous, I secured a small detachment of men and started to care for the wounded who had been left in the field. Just as we finished removing or caring for the wounded in the field a few rebels without arms appeared coming into the field, ostensibly looking for their dead or helpless comrades. I quickly observed that they were pilfering from our dead as well as their own, and also gathering up arms, occasionally discharging a musket into the air."

-- Gabriel Campbell, 17th Michigan Captain, in letter to Ezra Carman in 1899.

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 OLD SHARPSBURG ROAD (PRESENT-DAY RENO MONUMENT ROAD)

THEN: Unknown photographer, 1912 (History of the 45th Regiment

 Pennsylvania |  NOW: John Banks, Nov. 4, 2017.  (HOVER ON IMAGE for NOW photo.)
              PANORAMA: Reno Monument Road -- the old Sharpsburg Road -- cuts
                     through Fox's Gap. (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

"We pushed steadily on and presently took a by-path that diverged to the left from the turnpike, and continued on over the rough ground and wooded hill until we came to a clearing where the column formed line of battle near an old log house, the right of the line of the Forty-fifth resting on the road. It must have been then not far from eleven o'clock. The Rebels were pelting us with grape and canister and it was only by lying down that we avoided serious punishment. Between us and the enemy was a cornfield on a side hill; then a piece of thin woods and, as we found out later on, an open space beyond the timber."

-- Private Eugene Beauge, 45th Pennsylvania

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"Our regiment has been badly used since I was with it. Last Sunday at the Battle of South Mountain or Blue Ridge it lost 134 killed and wounded. I saw the place to-day where 28 were buried in a row on the battlefield. They are buried as nicely as possible and each grave is marked plainly with a headboard. Poor fellows! Dwight Smith and Jimmie Cole lie together and the first tears that have started from my eyes since my mother died fell on their graves. They were indeed the most intimate and truest friends I had in the army and fell at their posts, fighting like true soldiers and brave men."

-- 45th Pennsylvania Lieutenant Samuel Haynes, whose regiment suffered severely at Fox's Gap.

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Have something to add (or correct) in this post? E-mail me here.

SOURCES

-- Cross, Fred Wilder, South Mountain and Antietam, Part I, self-published 1925 and 1926, respectively.
-- Gabriel Campbell letter to Ezra Carman, Antietam National Battlefield library.
-- History of the Forty-Fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, edited and arranged by Allen D. Albert, Private of Company D, Grit Publishing Co., Williamsport, Pa. 1912.

Charleston Then & Now: Castle Pinckney (hover on image)

THEN: Unknown photographer and date, S.C. Historical Society | NOW:: John Banks, Oct. 15, 2017.
(Sorry, hover effect does not work on phones, tablets.)
Overcoming the stench of pelican poo, nine fellow Center for Civil War Photography Image of War seminar attendees and I ventured into the seldom-visited Confederate fortification in Charleston Harbor earlier this month. The site of this post-war photograph of young African-American near the entrance to the small fortification was among the stops. Union POWs, who had to overcome much more than pelicans, were kept at Castle Pinckney, now owned by the local chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans. (The group purchased the historic property for $10 in 2011.)

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