Antietam: Seeking the elusive story of Captain John Drake

Captain John Drake of the 16th Connecticut was killed at the Battle of Antietam
on Sept. 17, 1862. (Photo Connecticut State Library archives)

Of the four Connecticut regiments that fought at the Battle of Antietam, I find the story of the 16th to be the most compelling -- and heart-rending. Fighting in its first battle of the Civil War, the ill-trained regiment was cut to pieces at Antietam, where four of its captains were killed or mortally wounded. While I have been able to dig up information on Frederick Barber of Company H, Newton Manross of Company K and Samuel Brown of Company D, an in-depth story of Captain John Drake of Company I proves elusive.

Drake's grave in Hartford's Spring Grove Cemetery. 
Antietam  is barely legible on the marker. 
(Photo courtesy Mary Falvey)

Born in New Hampshire, Drake spent part of his life in Cincinnati before moving to Hartford. On June 23, 1860, he married Anna Very, who worked for many years as a book keeper at Phoenix National Bank in Hartford. Like many men who served in the Union army -- including Captain Edwin Lee of the 14th Connecticut -- Drake was employed at the Colt Arms factory in Hartford. He was "much interested in the religious work of Warburton Chapel,"  which served immigrant families on Temple Street in Hartford. (1) After President Lincoln called for 300,000 volunteers in July 1862, Drake enlisted on Aug. 8 and helped raise a company, which was mustered into the Union army on Aug. 24, 1862. Not quite a month later, Drake was dead, killed in farmer John Otto's cornfield.

"Captain Drake was the most gentlemanly man in the regiment," Surgeon Nathan Mayer noted. "He was the very soul of courtesy and unaffected dignity of deportment. He always had a quiet care for his men, when they were sick, and was a marked favorite with them, as well as with comrades in the line." (2)

Regiment adjutant John Burnham, Antietam's unsung hero, supervised the burial of 16th Connecticut soldiers, ensuring that the graves of soldiers such as Drake could be found later. Along with the bodies of Brown and 16th Connecticut privates William Nichols and Seth Franklin Prior, Drake's remains were returned to Hartford by undertaker William Roberts on Oct. 10, 1862. Advertising his ghastly services in the Hartford Courant, Roberts made a good living retrieving bodies of soldiers throughout the South during the Civil War. Drake had a military funeral in Hartford, where he was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery.

If you can help me find out more about Drake, send me an e-mail at jbankstx@comcast.net.

(1) George Q. Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library, Biographical Sketches of 16th Connecticut soldiers
(2)  History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, Hartford, The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1875

Help wanted: Antietam graves in Connecticut

Close-up of Theodore DeMars' gravestone.

Theodore DeMars of Cromwell, Conn., was only 19 when he was killed at Antietam.
He is buried in Kelsey Cemetery in Cromwell, Conn.

Antietam casualty listed printed in the
Hartford Courant on Sept. 27, 1862. 
This list continued elsewhere on the page
 and did not include the 14th Connecticut.
(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

For a pretty cool project, I'm aiming to find graves of Connecticut soldiers killed or mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam who are buried in the state. A little odd, yes, but it beats what these people do.

Using the casualty list from the Sept. 27, 1862 Hartford Courant as a macabre checklist,  I have visited many Antietam graves in Connecticut during the past year and told the heart-rending stories of men such as Captain Newton Manross of Bristol, Lieutenant Marvin Wait of Norwich and Private John Bingham of East Haddam. (Find A Grave also is a terrific resource, by the way.)

Four regiments from Connecticut -- the 8th, 11th, 14th and 16th -- fought in the fields and woodlots outside Sharpsburg, Md., on Sept. 17, 1862. Scores of Connecticut men, including 19-year-old Thomas DeMars of Cromwell, were killed there. A private in Company A of the 16th Connecticut, DeMars is buried (above) in Cromwell's Kelsey Cemetery, once a quiet country graveyard but now airport runway loud thanks to nearby I-91.

Funerals for soldiers were a common occurrence in Connecticut  in the days and weeks after Antietam.  "It is seldom that we are called upon to bury so many braves in so short a space of time," the Hartford Courant noted on Oct. 13, 1862, nearly a month after the battle.

If you can help with my unusual detective work, shoot me an e-mail here.

A penny atop the gravestone of 19-year-old Theodore DeMars, killed at Antietam.

Manross monument: Then and (sadly) now

Top: In a photo taken in 1887, Civil War veterans from the Newton Manross  G.A.R. post
 gather at the monument for Manross, a captain in the 16th Connecticut who was killed
at Antietam. Below: The monument in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, Conn.,  from approximately
 the same angle today.   (Top photo courtesy Bristol Historical Society via Tom LaPorte)

By all accounts, Captain Newton Manross of the 16th Connecticut Infantry was a brilliant man.

Newton Manross as a civilian.
(Image courtesy Tom LaPorte)

A day after he graduated from Yale in 1850 with a degree in geology, Manross sailed for Europe, where he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1852.  He later traveled extensively in South America, visiting Trinidad, Panama and Mexico and exploring for coal, iron and other minerals. An outstanding scientist, his work appeared in the prestigious American Journal of Science.

Shortly after Manross was named professor of chemistry and philosophy at Amherst (Mass.) College, he joined the Union army on July 22, 1862, telling his wife Charlotte "you can better afford to have a country without a husband than a husband without a country." Less than two months later, the 37-year-old citizen-soldier once described as a "man of exceptional learning and scholarship" was dead, killed by a cannon ball at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

From a prominent Bristol, Conn., family, Manross was buried in Forestville Cemetery in his hometown. After the Civil War, survivors of Manross' Company K of the 16th Connecticut placed an 8-foot brownstone monument in their captain's honor near his gravestone. Sadly, that monument is deteriorating, worn by the elements of 100-plus New England winters. In addition to several prominent cracks, the backside of the monument is separating from the main portion. One good smack could easily send that piece crashing to the ground.

Newton Manross deserves better. Perhaps this post will spur an effort to repair a monument for an exceptional man who died for his country nearly 150 years ago. (For more on the Manross monument, check out my video below.)

A professor before the Civil War, Manross was killed by artillery fire at Antietam.

Can these prominent cracks in the Newton Manross monument be repaired?

Survivors of Newton Manross' Company K of the 16th Connecticut placed this monument
in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol in honor of their "gallant and beloved captain."

Antietam: Quirky pieces of history

Bela Burr of Farmington, Conn., was mustered into Company G of the 16th Connecticut as a
private on Aug. 24, 1862. Less than a month later, he suffered a wound in the left ankle
at the Battle of Antietam. Here are a circa 1890s X-ray of the ankle and the piece of lead removed.
(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Burr had this piece of flattened lead in his left ankle for decades before
 it was removed. Neither the piece of lead nor Burr's X-ray are currently
 on public display at the  New England Civil War Museum in Rockville, Conn.

Perhaps these two photos explain why Bela Burr looks a little cranky in the photo of old soldiers on the wall of the New England Civil War Museum in Rockville, Conn. For perhaps 45 years, the private in the 16th Connecticut carried a souvenir from the Battle of Antietam: a piece of buckshot or minie ball in his left ankle.

Burr was wounded during the 16th Connecticut's disastrous experience in farmer John Otto's 40-acre cornfield outside Sharpsburg. The piece of lead was surgically removed sometime early in the 20th century. An X-ray of Burr's ankle, apparently taken in the 1890s, and the piece of  lead are two of the quirkier items -- Dunkard Church shingle, anyone?  -- in the collection of the outstanding little museum about 20 miles northeast of Hartford.

Burr's tale is amazing and quite sad.

Francis W Burr, Bela's brother and also a private in Company G of the 16th Connecticut, was shot in the groin at Antietam and died in Locust Spring Hospital near the battlefield on Oct. 11, 1862. Bela Burr, who also suffered a gunshot wound to his right shin, astoundingly lay on the battlefield 48 hours near the body of Captain John L. Drake of the 16th Connecticut before he was discovered and taken to the nearby Otto barn for treatment. Burr was transferred to a hospital in Frederick, Md., before he was sent to Knight General Hospital in New Haven in March 1863. Burr, who lived in Farmington, Conn., before the war, was discharged from the Union army because of disability on Nov. 20, 1863 and eventually settled in Rockville. (1)

Burr was listed among the Antietam casualties in the Hartford Courant
on Sept. 26, 1862. His brother, Francis, also was wounded at Antietam.
 He died of his wounds on Oct. 11, 1862.

Burr sought a $30-a-month government pension in 1908, prompting the Hartford Courant to trumpet his cause.

"Read the simple story of his experience," the Courant wrote, "and ask yourself if you think $30 a month paid to him in his old age is a national extravagance. Money can never measure the debt we all owe to the true heroes of the great struggle, among whom the quiet and unassuming men like Burr are as truly entitled to be counted as the great generals whose names are part of history."

A longtime newspaper editor and publisher in Tolland (Conn.) County, Burr died April 29, 1908. It's unclear if he ever received his $30-a-month pension.

Why did the old soldier, a member of the Rockville G.A.R. post that eventually became the museum, save the piece of lead and X-ray? People collect stuff -- weird stuff like this, this and, quite sadly, this. It's only human nature.

(1) Hartford Courant, March 19, 1908, Page 8

Faces of the Civil War: The Bingham brothers

The Bingham brothers of East Haddam, Conn.  Teen-age privates in Company H of the
16th Connecticut,  John (left) was killed at Antietam and Wells survived  the war. 
 (Photos courtesy Military and Historical Image Bank)

UPDATE: The Antietam secretary mentioned in this post was exposed in 2018 as a forgery.

---

Just teenagers when they joined the Union army, the Bingham brothers fought at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. One brother was killed. The other survived, and 14 years later, he received a unique gift in memory of his dead brother: a piece of folk art that may hold a rare Civil War relic from the bloodiest day in American history.

The story of this secretary, recently purchased by a New England antiques dealer, starts with the Bingham boys, John and Wells. From East Haddam, Conn., about 30 miles southeast of Hartford, they enlisted as privates on Aug. 7, 1862. Seventeen days later, John, 17, and Wells, barely 16, were mustered into Company H of the 16th Connecticut Infantry. (1)

The secretary was given to Wells Bingham by friends in 1876
 to honor the memory  of his brother, John, who was killed 
at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

The physical and mental burden of having two teenage sons in the army undoubtedly took a toll on Elisha and Martha Bingham, who had seven other children ranging in age from 3 to 24 by August 1862.  Elisha, who married Martha in 1857 after his first wife died, supported his large family as a farmer, and his sons were likely an integral part of the farm. By August 1864, four other Bingham sons were in the Union army: Eliphalet,  21; Charles, 22; William. 24; and Alonzo, 26. (2)

Like most Civil War soldiers, the Bingham boys probably knew little of the rigors of army life before the war. In fact, before the 16th Connecticut shipped off for New York on Aug. 29, 1862, en route to its final destination in Washington, they probably never had traveled far from East Haddam. Barely trained and unfamiliar with how to use weapons, the Bingham brothers' rookie regiment found out soon enough about the horrors of the Civil War.

In early September 1862, John and Wells marched with the 16th Connecticut from their camp at Fort Ward outside the capital to join the Army of the Potomac in Maryland. The regiment was under sporadic artillery fire at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, until it was ordered to attack the Confederates left flank late that Wednesday afternoon.

The result was disastrous.

After marching 17 miles from Harper's Ferry, A.P. Hill's veterans struck the raw 16th Connecticut in the left flank in the 40-acre cornfield of a farmer named John Otto. In the massive confusion of their first battle, many Connecticut soldiers broke and ran, a stigma the regiment never erased. Out of 779 men and boys, the 16th Connecticut suffered 43 killed, 161 wounded and 204 captured or missing.

The clock on top of the secretary includes
the words "The Union Preserved."

Among the dead was a farmer's son, 17-year-old Private John F. Bingham. (He is buried East Haddam, Conn.)

Although the memory of the death of his brother and many other comrades probably was seared into his brain the remainder of his life, Wells Bingham apparently escaped physically uninjured.

Fast forward to April 20, 1864.

Part of a hugely outnumbered Union garrison at Plymouth, N.C., most of the 16th Connecticut men surrendered and were sent to the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Ga. But just before they waved the white flag that Wednesday, Professor Lesley Gordon wrote in a terrific account, "Lt. Col. (John) Burnham ordered the regimental flags destroyed, and the poles buried. It was one thing to have an entire regiment captured; but to have one’s colors seized was especially dishonorable. Burnham dispatched Color Cpl. Ira Forbes and Color Sgt. Frank Latimer to tear the flags into shreds and distribute them to the men."

The Connecticut men who survived kept the pieces of flag throughout their imprisonment in Andersonville.

Fast forward again to the end of the war.

In a huge stroke of luck, Wells Bingham escaped the hell of imprisonment in the South because he had returned to Connecticut to recruit soldiers and was not in Plymouth when the 16th was captured.  "Could not have been happier or more envied if I had been chosen to be a Major General," he wrote in a post-war assessment of that period. Wells was discharged from the army on July 8, 1865. His older brother, Eliphalet, wasn't as lucky. According to one account, he died in Arlington Heights, Va., on May 1, 1864. (Another account indicates he died in Fredericksburg.)

In a post-war assessment of his Civil War service, Wells Bingham expressed his happiness
at avoiding capture at Plymouth, N.C. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

On July 4, 1876, a little more than 11 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, friends of Wells Bingham presented the Civil War veteran with a one-of-a-kind gift in memory of his dead brother, John. Evidently sparing no expense, the handcrafted 8-foot secretary is made predominantly of walnut and oak. Spelled out in cattle bone on the ornate front are the words "Antietam" and "Sept. 17, 1862," as well as John F. Bingham's name. A Ninth Corps badge is mounted between the "18" and "76." The knobs are bird's-eye maple with bone inset circles. A clock, crowned with an eagle and including the words "The Union Preserved" near the base, is mounted on top. When the inside right front door is opened, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" plays on a music box.

And on the plaque just below the bookshelf are these words:

Is this a piece of the 16th Connecticut regimental
flag that was carried at Antietam? This star on a
cloth is encased in a tin on the front of the secretary.

"Presented to Wells A. Bingham by his friends. The secretary a rememberance of his brother John F. Bingham who offered up his life at Antietam, Maryland Sept. 17, 1862. The encased star a remnant of the colors carried that day by the 16th Infantry. The memory plaque made from a shard of his knife."

After the war, the remaining pieces of the 16th Connecticut's regimental flag were reassembled by Andersonville survivors. That flag, now on display in the Hall of Flags at the State Capitol building in Hartford, is missing stars. Could the star from the secretary be one of the stars missing from the cherished flag that was carried through the smoke of battle at Antietam? Or does it belong to another flag?

It merits further research ... or it could remain one of history's small mysteries.

A footnote: Wells A. Bingham died on Aug. 16, 1904. He was 58.

His death was ruled a suicide. (3)

(1) American Civil War Research Database
(2) Some Account Of The Cone Family in America: Principally Of The Descendants, William Whitney Cone, 1903, Page 111
(3) New York Times, Aug. 17, 1904

A plaque on the front of the secretary notes that John F. Bingham "offered up his life at Antietam."

Detail of the front of the secretary, including images of Lincoln and Washington.

John F. Bingham's name is prominent on the front of the secretary.



After Antietam: 'In death they were not divided'

My shadow eerily hovers by the tilted gravestones of Charles Lewis and his fiancee,
Sarah Hyde,  in Carey Cemetery in Canterbury, Conn. Lewis, a sergeant in the
8th Connecticut Infantry,  was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
Like many women in Connecticut in September 1862, Sarah Hyde anxiously awaited news from a terrible battle in Sharpsburg, Md., more than 400 miles away.

Large, bold headlines about an awful battle
in Sharpsburg, Md. three days earlier
jumped off the front page of the
Hartford Courant on Sept. 20, 1862.

The second youngest of six children of Reverend Nehemiah and Rebecca Hyde of Canterbury, a small town about 50 miles east of Hartford, 21-year-old Sarah was engaged to a soldier from nearby Griswold. Charles E. Lewis, the 25-year-old son of Jedediah and Clarissa Lewis, was an apprentice carriage maker in 1860 and perhaps had many dealings with the reverend, a wagon maker by trade. 

Before marrying, Charles, like many of his peers, heeded the call of his nation, enlisting in the Union army on Sept. 9,  1861. Lewis served with the 8th Connecticut Infantry during the Burnside Expedition in North Carolina, fighting in a battle near New Bern, N.C., on March 14 before the regiment was assigned to the Army of the Potomac in early July.

Antietam dwarfed any previous battle for the men of the 8th Connecticut, who as part of the Union left flank crossed Antietam Creek, marched through the 40-Acre Cornfield and then, unsupported, were overwhelmed on three sides and pushed back on the outskirts of Sharpsburg.  

Lewis was listed as a carriage maker apprentice from Griswold, Conn., in the 1860 U.S. census.

"The wounded prop themselves behind the rude stone fence," a post-war account of the 8th Connecticut's fight at Antietam noted, "and hurl leaden vengeance at the foe. Even the chaplain snatches the rifle and cartridge box from a dead man, and fights for his life." Among those killed in the confusing fight was Lewis, who "had always fought in the front ranks of the Eighth."

Sergeant Charles Lewis' Civil War  memorial
stone  in  Carey Cemetery in Canterbury, Conn.
I believe he is buried beneath a gravestone
behind this marker. 

On Sept. 23, 1862, the Hartford Courant printed a long list of Antietam casualties from the 8th, 11th, 14th and 16th Connecticut regiments. How Sarah received the news about her fiance is not known, but she was "sickened upon hearing his death" and soon fell into a depression. On Oct. 16, 1862—almost a month to the day after Charles was killed—she also died, perhaps of a broken heart. 

Three days later, two funerals were held at Canterbury's Carey Cemetery, not far from the center of town. Charles Lewis, his body likely recovered from the battlefield by his family, was laid to rest in a family plot. Immediately to the right of his final resting place is the grave of his fiancee, Sarah Hyde, described by the Courant as "a bright girl of twenty-one."

"They had been brought up together in life, in death they were not divided," the newspaper reported, "and together they sleep the last sleep."

Similar scenes played out thoroughout Connecticut as bodies flowed into the state in late September and October 1862 in the aftermath of Antietam. Funerals in towns from Lebanon to New Britain to Middletown and Rockvillle and elsewhere were commonplace.

"It is seldom that we are called upon to bury so many braves in so short a space of time," the Courant reported nearly a month after the battle.

Closeups of the well-worn gravestones of Charles Lewis (left) and Sarah Hyde. Although
difficult to read, Lewis' date and place of death can still be read near the bottom of his
tombstone. Sarah died Oct. 16, 1862, almost a month after Lewis was killed at Antietam.

Here are snapshots of funeral coverage and more from Hartford newspapers in the aftermath of Antietam: 

Sept. 24: Yesterday was a day of sorrow, not only for Middletown (where the funeral took place), but for the whole State. One of Connecticut's bravest heroe's was consigned to the grave. Brig. General Joseph F. K. Mansfield, killed at the battle of Sharpsburg, and his body having been brought to Middletown, his native place, the funeral was announced for yesterday at 2 1/2 o'clock. Business in the town was generally suspended, and the stores and dwellings along the route of the procession were beautifully draped in mourning. On every side the National colors, draped in crape, met the eye. Across the main street hung in several places the American flag, also shrouded in black. Emblems of sorrow were seen in all directions."

Wadsworth A. Washburn's grave in tiny Denison Cemetery
in Berlin, Conn. Washburn, an orderly sergeant in the
16th Connecticut, was killed at Antietam. His father
retrieved his body from the battlefield.

Oct. 4: "Serg't E. A. Parmele -- The body of this much lamented young man, killed at the battle of Antietam, arrived in this city on Wednesday, and was temporarily placed in the receiving tomb of Spring Grove Cemetery. When found, the body was wrapt in the shelter tent in which he last slept. The funeral will take place at 11 o'clock to-day from his father's residence, No. 6 Chestnut street, after which the remains will be taken to Meriden for interment."

Oct. 13: "Three bodies of soldiers killed in battle, belonging to Rockville, arrived yesterday morning on the boat. We were unable to obtain their names. ... Their friends have the satisfaction of knowing that they have the sympathies of the city with them, and that their loved ones died in a glorious cause."

Oct. 13: "Rev. Mr. Washburn, of Berlin, having returned from the battle-field of Antietam with the remains of his son, Orderly Sergeant Wadsworth A. Washburn, of Co. G 16th regiment, C.V. Funeral services will be attended in the Congregational Church in Berlin, on Monday, (to-day) at 2 o'clock, P.M."

Oct. 27: "Never before have the citizens of Coventry been called upon to perform a more painful duty than they were last Thursday in cosigning the remains of Geo. W Corbit and Samuel L. Talcott, to their last resting-place. There two victims of this accursed rebellion were members of Co. D, 14th Reg't, and were wounded at the battle of Antietam, and after lingering some four weeks amid great pain and suffering have since died ... After the services the congregation viewed the remains, and the sad procession slowly wended its way to the cemetery. The flag draped in black was borne by the members of the Sunday School Class of Talcott, to whom he was strongly attached. Both of these young men were universally esteemed, and when the last call for troops was made, they manfully enlisted for the conflict."

Nov. 18: It is hardly two weeks since the citizens of Coventry performed the last sad duty of laying "neath the turf" the remains of George N. Corbit and Samuel L. Talcott, yet hardly had the sun of a fortnight set behind the western horizon, or the dread echoes of the rumbling hearse died away in the distance, than they were again called upon to perform a similar duty, and bear to his last resting place the remains of Henry Talcott, a brother and comrade of the above, and with them a victim of that blood-red field, Antietam. Finding his wound to be of too serious a nature to admit further service in the rank and file of our army, should he recover, when the remains of his fallen brother were started homeward, he obtained his discharge and came thither to seek his kindred and friends, and among the hills of his native town to recruit his fast wasting frame. But alas! his anticipations were not realized; he reached home only to breath his last, while near and dear friends tenderly watched beside him, and last Wednesday he was laid by the companions of his early days, beside his brother in the "city of the dead."



George Corbit, 25, and brothers Samuel, 20, and Henry Talcott, 26, were privates in Company D of the 14th Connecticut from Coventry. Henry was wounded when an artillery shell burst near a wall in the lane leading up to William Roulette's farmhouse, wounding three other men and killing three in his company. (4)

The death of second son was a huge blow for the Talcott brothers' parents, Erastus and Aurelia.

"Yet let us not dispair," the Courant noted in the Nov. 18, 1862 article, "the sun of Liberty will yet dawn, and its golden beams will yet shine with dazzling splendor o'er new made graves, and future generations will remember with pride those who have fallen in their country's behalf."

The brothers are buried next to each other in Center Cemetery in Coventry. Corbit also is buried there, 20 yards from the Talcotts.

The graves of the Talcott brothers, Samuel and Henry, and George Corbit are in
Center Cemetery in Coventry, Conn. Privates in Company D of the 14th Connecticut,
they died of wounds received at Antietam.

Center Cemetery in Coventry, Conn.

---

—Have something to add (or correct) in this post? Email me here.

SOURCES

• 1860 U.S. census
• Hartford Courant, Oct. 24, 1862
• History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Conneticut Volunteer Infantry, Charles Davis Page, Page 43, 1906
• The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-65, William Augustus Croffut, John Moses Morris 1869, Page 272, Page 277

Avon's Wallace Woodford 'came home to die'

Wallace Woodford, a 22-year-old private in the 16th Connecticut, is buried
 in West Avon (Conn.) Cemetery. He  died shortly after being released 
from a POW camp in 1865.

Wracked with pain, Wallace Woodford thrashed about as he tried to sleep, tormented by thoughts of his treatment by the Rebels. Woodford's parents desperately tried to nurse him back to health following his return home to Avon, Conn. on Jan 3, 1865, after eight months in Confederate prisoner-of-war camps. But the 22-year-old private in the 16th Connecticut Infantry was clearly a broken man.

Wallace Woodford is buried in Avon, Conn. 
His parents, Corydon and
 Sylvia,  are buried in the same plot.

"He had been so long without proper nourishment that he was unable to eat even the most delicate morsels which his parents provided for him on his return," the Hartford Courant reported. "Continued hunger had destroyed his vitals. When asleep he would throw his arms about, thinking he was in Andersonville ... endeavoring to obtain food."

Exhausted mentally and physically, Woodford found it difficult to talk about his imprisonment in Andersonville, the most notorious Civil War prisoner-of-war camp, and later at a stockade in Florence, S.C. "Words could not describe the horrors," he reportedly told his friends. (1)

Unable to gain strength, Wallace Woodford, paroled by the Rebels on Dec. 10, 1864, died exactly a month later in his hometown, his parents Corydon and Sylvia likely by his side.

For Woodford and other members of the 16th Connecticut, Andersonville was hell on earth. By August 1864, the camp in southwestern Georgia was home for 32,000 Union prisoners of war jammed on about 26 1/2 acres. POWs, who often drank from the polluted stream that ran through the camp, suffered from overexposure, malnutrition and disease.

In his excellent book on his imprisonment published in 1865, Robert H. Kellogg, a private in Company A in the 16th, recounted the terrible, crowded conditions there.

"I ... wished that the President, under whose banner we had fought, could look in upon our sufferings, for surely the sight would move him to help us, if anything could be done," Kellogg wrote. "Live worms crawled upon the bacon that was given us to eat. 'It is all right,' we said; 'we are nothing but Yankee prisoners, or, as the rebels usually speak of us, 'damned Yankees.' " (2)

By August 1864, 32,000 Union soldiers were jammed into the 26 /1/2 acres
 of Andersonville prison. Wallace Woodford arrived at the camp in southwestern 
Georgia sometime in the spring of 1864.  (Library of Congress photo)

Nearly 13,000 Unions soldiers died at Andersonville during the camp's 15-month existence from February 1864 to April 1865. Near the end of the war, when Union General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the state, many Andersonville prisoners were transferred to other camps in Georgia and South Carolina. (Private Van Buren Towle of the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, whose story I told in this post in May, also was imprisoned at Andersonville and Florence, S.C.)

One of the hard-luck regiments of the Civil War, the 16th was sent into captivity April 20, 1864, when the hugely outnumbered Union garrison in Plymouth, N.C. surrendered. University of Akron professor Lesley Gordon has an excellent account of the regiment's surrender and capture here.

Robert Kellogg (right) , a sergeant  in the  16th Connecticut,
  described the horrors of  Andersonville in a book
 published in 1865. 
 (Photo courtesy Connecticut History Online/
Connecticut State Library.)

Wallace Woodford enlisted in the Union army as a private on July 28, 1862, about a year after Bull Run, the first major battle of the war. Nearly a month later, he was mustered into Company I of the 16th Connecticut, one of about 1,000 soldiers from prosperous towns in Hartford County.

Like most Civil War soldiers, young Wallace probably knew little of the rigors of army life before the war. In fact, before the 16th Connecticut shipped off for New York on Aug. 29, 1862, he probably had never traveled far from Avon, a small farming town of a little more than 1,000 people about 15 miles northwest of Hartford. (3)

By the summer of 1862, the Union army had suffered a series of defeats around Richmond during McClellan's Peninsula campaign. It was obvious the war would not be over soon, but Woodford, like many men his age, probably was excited about his new adventure.

Less than a month after it was mustered into the Union army, the barely trained 16th Connecticut was under fire, struggling to ford Antietam Creek about a mile upstream from the Rohrbach Bridge, during the Battle of Antietam. Later that afternoon on Sept. 17, 1862 -- the bloodiest day in American history -- it was positioned on the extreme left flank of the Union army, in the field of a farmer named John Otto.

John Otto's 40-acre cornfield at Antietam, viewed from the Confederates' 
vantage point. "We could not see the rebels, but could hear them and their
 bullets," a 16th Connecticut soldier wrote.  The 16th Connecticut monument, 
dedicated in 1894,  is in the distance.

Charles Clark, a sergeant in Company A of the 16th, described the fighting outside Sharpsburg, Md.

"A piece of shell struck very near me," he wrote in an account published in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 25, 1862. "Our Chaplain had his clothes torn, our Surgeon's horse was wounded, and a private in Company I was hit in the left arm. About noon we advanced again, and were informed that our right was whipping out the rebels. In the middle of the afternoon, we went into the fight, and a terrible one it was, piles of our men were wounded. Our regiment was in a corn-field, where we could not see the rebels, but could hear them and their bullets."

On Sept. 25, 1862, the Hartford Courant printed 
a list of  16th Connecticut soldiers killed at 
Antietam. Seven men from Woodford's Co. I were
 listed,  including Henry Evans of Avon, Conn. 
Woodford was among the wounded.

The 16th was thrashed that September afternoon, struck in the left flank by veterans of A.P. Hill's division who had just arrived on the field after a 17-mile march from Harpers Ferry, Va. Many of the Connecticut men broke and ran during the battle, a stigma the regiment never erased. Out of 779 men, the 16th Connecticut suffered 43 killed, 161 wounded -- losses of about 26 percent.

At some point during the fighting at Antietam, Woodford was wounded and perhaps later treated at a field hospital at the Henry Rohrbach farm nearby. Seven members of Company I, including Corporal Henry D. Evans of Avon, were killed.

Many men in the 16th Connecticut never got over Antietam or imprisonment in Andersonville.

Wrote Lesley Gordon:

An estimated three hundred members of the 16th Connecticut were imprisoned at Andersonville and nearly one third of them perished there. Even for those who survived and returned home, many found their health destroyed by their long captivity, and struggled to adapt to civilian life. It is unclear how many soldiers from the 16th Connecticut battled mental depression, but several spent their final years in the state’s Insane Asylum. (4)

Sixteeen months after Antietam, Private Wallace C. Woodfoord's short life ended. Sometime during the middle of a New England winter, he was mourned and eulogized at West Avon Congregational Church. His body lies today in West Avon Cemetery beneath an 8-foot brownstone monument inscribed with these words:

"8 months a sufferer in Rebel prisons. He came home to die."

A closeup of Wallace Woodford's well-worn grave marker.

(1) Hartford Courant, Jan. 12, 1865
(2) "Life And Death In Rebel Prisons," Robert H. Kellogg, 1865, Page 166
(3) U.S. census
(4) “The ‘Rebs Took Us All”: The 16th Connecticut in War and Captivity, Lesley J. Gordon, 2009, University of Akron

'Sad work': Connecticut dead at Antietam

Alvin Flint, 18, a private from East Hartford in the 11th Connecticut, was among those listed in the
 Hartford Courant as killed in action at Antietam.

On Sept. 27, 1862, the Hartford Courant printed on its front page the "official" list of dead, wounded and missing from the 8th, 11th and 16th Connecticut regiments at the battle of Antietam 10 days earlier.

Cemetery markers for Connecticut men killed
at Antietam: Alvin Flint (Center Cemetery,
East Hartford), Joseph Mansfield (Indian
Hills Cemetery, Middletown), Henry
Evans (West Avon Cemetery, Avon).

The list took up 25 inches of newsprint.

25 inches.

It included Alvin Flint, an 18-year-old private from East Hartford who died in the 11th Connecticut's attack at Burnside Bridge. (Less than four months later, his father and 13-year-old brother both died of disease while serving in the Union army.)

It also listed Corporal Solomon Allen of  East Windsor. Killed.

Sergeant Cyprian Rust of New Hartford. Killed.

Lieutenant-colonel Hiram Appleman of Groton. Badly wounded in the leg.

Private Austin Fuller of Farmington. Missing. (He later became a prisoner of war.)

Corporal Leonidas Barber of Stonington. "Dangerously" wounded in the head.

Private George S. Wilcox of Wallingford. Three fingers amputated.

Private Hiram Blakeslee of Southington. Wounded in both feet.

For families of soldiers back in Connecticut, the fate of their loved ones may have been known less than 10 days after the battle 360 miles away in Sharpsburg, Md. Still, the publication of this list must have been an incredibly painful jolt for many readers of the Hartford Courant.

For families of the dead, a trip to bring home the bodies of their sons, husbands or brothers must have been even more agonizing. Fortunately, some members of the Union army tried to ease their burden.

In a letter to the Hartford Courant published Sept. 30, 1862, First Lieutenant John Burnham of the 16th Connecticut provided a detailed description of where those killed in his regiment were buried so "friends at home shall have authentic information as soon as possible."

Burnham described how the bodies were arranged for burial, key landmarks near the gravesites and the placing of small headboards marked with the names and companies of the dead men.

Top, crude headboards mark graves of Union soldiers killed near Burnside Bridge, which appears
 in the background. Bottom., that's me at approximately the same spot as the Civil War soldier. The
tree in the background at extreme left was there during the battle. (Top photo: Library of Congress)

John Burnham
(Mollus Collection)

"I have been particular to mention the precise locality of each," Burnham wrote in the letter dated two days after the battle, "so that in the event of the signs being displaced by the elements or otherwise, they may be found; and I trust that anyone who comes to the spot will be very particular and disturb none but those of whom they are in search."

Added Burnham: "The collection of the bodies was conducted under my own personal supervision, and after the men had reported them all picked up I examined the whole field myself, so that I am confident none were left on the ground."

For Burnham, a Hartford resident, the memory of this onerous work must have remained with him the rest of his life.

"If any mortal was ever rejoiced at the completion of any task," he wrote in the letter to the newspaper, "it was myself when this sad work was over."

A list of Connecticut casualties at Antietam published on the front page of the
Hartford Courant on Sept. 27, 1862. The list continued elsewhere on the front page
and did not include casualties from the 14th Connecticut.

Civil War under my nose: Avon, Connecticut

The 16th Connecticut, including 15 men from Avon, fought in this field on the Otto Farm  at
Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.  The 16th Connecticut monument is in the distance.



 Robert Hawley, a private in the 16th
Connecticut  from Avon, Conn., was mortally
wounded at Antietam.  This is
his marker at West Avon Cemetery. 

After walking a Civil War battlefield, I always come away with a renewed respect -- heck, make that awe -- for the common soldiers.

How did they do it?

What kind of courage did it take for soldiers to blast away at each other with rifled muskets from 75 yards?

How could they march, sometimes barefoot, 10 or more miles in a woolen uniform on a hot summer day?

What kind of fortitude did it take to subsist on green apples, hardtack and corn?

Incredible.

At the Battle of South Mountain, near Boonsboro, Md., on Sept. 14, 1862, soldiers killed and maimed each other fighting over tremendously difficult, rocky terrain. Three days later, at nearby Sharpsburg, Md., barely trained troops of the 16th Connecticut Infantry fought on terrain that, while not as imposing as South Mountain, was nonetheless trying. I've walked that same ground on a warm spring day, and it's a haul.

Private Newton Evans of Avon, Conn., was
wounded  at Antietam and later died at
Andersonville prison in Georgia.

The John Otto Farm at Antietam includes gulleys, ridges and  a 40-acre cornfield that was the scene of terror for the 16th Connecticut. After finally slugging their way across Antietam Creek at the Rohrbach Bridge, Union troops briefly re-grouped on the Otto property. As they pursued the Rebels on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862, the Federal army was in sight of the village of Sharpsburg. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was in desperate straits.

Part of Ambrose Burnside's left flank in the Army of the Potomac at Antietam, the 16th Connecticut formed in Hartford on Aug. 24. 1862. It was comprised of men from towns in Hartford County, including the small farming community of Avon, where I live now. In 1860, 1,059 people lived in Avon, and at least 84 men from the town served in the Union army during the Civil War. (1)

The 16th Connecticut, which included 15 men from Avon, was green. None of the Connecticut boys had even fired a weapon in battle before Antietam. Could they be counted on? Or would they, like some rookie soldiers in the 14th Connecticut in fighting at the Roulette Farm at Antietam, "shut their eyes" and fire their muskets in the air? (2)

Corporal Henry Evans of Avon, Conn.,
was killed at Antietam. This marker is in West
Avon Cemetery, but Evans is actually buried
in the national cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md.

Before navigating a hill to reach the 40-acre cornfield on the Otto Farm, the 16th Connecticut came under heavy fire.

"The air was filled with bullets and fiendish missiles," Bernard Blakeslee, a lieutenant in the 16th Connecticut from Hartford recounted in a memoir published 10 years after the war. "Hundreds of cannon were now aimed at us; grape and cannister, marbles and railroad iron were showered down like rain. The crest of the hill was a great protection to the Sixteenth, and only about a dozen were disabled. A battery was ordered up to engage the enemy, but it was whirled back in less than five minutes, losing every officer, seven men, and five horses. To see those men stand there and be shot down till they received orders to retire was a fearful sight." (3)

Eventually, the 4th Rhode Island and the 16th Connecticut made their way up a ridge and reached the head-high corn in the 40-acre cornfield, where they were blasted in the left flank and scattered by troops from A.P. Hill's division, which had marched 17 miles from Harpers Ferry. Hill's division saved Lee at Antietam.

Sign for second-most infamous
cornfield at Antietam.

"General Rodman observed that the rebels were about to flank us and get in our rear, and ordered the Fourth Rhode Island, and Sixteenth Connecticut to swing to the left that we might face them, but at that particular moment the rustling of cornstalks warned us that the rebels were on us," Blakeslee wrote. "Colonel Beach gave the order 'Attention!' While this order was being executed a terrible volley was fired into us. Volley after volley in quick succession was hurled into our midst. The Sixteenth sprang up and returned the fire with good effect; some fixed bayonets, advanced, and were captured. The most helpless confusion ensued. Our men fell by scores on every side." (4)

Out of 779 engaged, the 16th Connecticut lost 43 killed, 161 wounded and 204 captured or missing. Corporal Henry D. Evans of Avon was killed and three of his fellow townsmen -- privates Newton Evans, Wallace Woodford and Robert Hawley were wounded. Hawley died eight days later. (Woodford and Evans later became prisoners of war; Evans died in Andersonvile on Sept. 9, 1864, and Woodford died at home on Jan 10, 1865)

Wallace Woodford, a private from Avon in the 16th Connecticut,
was  wounded at Antietam. As this marker in West Avon
Cemetery notes, he was "eight months a sufferer
in Rebel prisons." He died at home on  Jan. 10, 1865.

Woodford is buried in West Avon Cemetery, about three miles from my house, under a large brownstone family memorial that notes he was "eight months a suffererer in Rebel prisons."

There are markers for Evans and Hawley in the West Avon Cemetery, but neither is buried there. Evans' final resting place is the national cemetery in Sharpsburg, gravesite No. 1,084. Hawley's final resting place is unknown.

(1) American Civil War Research Database.
(2) Mr. Dunn's Experiences in the Army: The Civil War Letters of Samuel W. Fiske, Pages 8-9, edited by Stephen W. Sears, 1998.
(3) History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, 1875
(4) Ibid.

Flags and Grand Army of the Republic markers by headstones in West Avon
(Conn.) Cemetery. At least 84 men from Avon served in the Union army during the Civil War.