'My precious Lyman': Returned to sender, a letter to a soldier

A letter addressed to Lyman Smith of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery in May 1864.
(Blogger's collection)

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The soul-crushing anxiety of a family with a loved one at the front seeps from a four-page letter nearly 160 years after it was written.

“Pray to God for your safe keeping” appears in neat, cursive writing on Page 1; on page 2, “the ear of Jesus is always open to our faintest cry.”

On pages 3 and 4, in another writer’s less legible hand, appear the words “anxiety for your safety is doubled now,” “these dreadful battles cast gloom on us all” and “May God bless.”

"My precious Lyman," his mother Julia started the letter to her son.

A tattered, three-cent cancelled stamp with a bust of George Washington remains affixed in the upper right corner of the letter's envelope. Near the left corner, a postal clerk stamped “Litchfield, Conn.” – the letter’s place of origin – and the date, “May 25, 1864.” In late spring in Virginia, Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Potomac traded vicious blows with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse and North Anna River – obscure places the letter writers surely had never heard of before the war. 

A writer addressed the letter to a 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery soldier in Washington, the Heavies' base for months. But in spring 1864, Grant yanked the Connecticut boys from defenses of the nation’s capital for deployment in his bloody Overland Campaign battles. 

Lyman Smith of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery
was from Litchfield, Conn. (Photo courtesy of
Smith descendant)

Someone crossed out the original address on the envelope, replacing it with “Litchfield, Conn.” The envelope is cleanly sliced open, perhaps with scissors or a razor. But by whom?

Nearly all the soldiers in the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery hailed from small towns in Litchfield County in western Connecticut. Many lived in the county seat of Litchfield, where citizens often gathered around the telegraph office in 1864, awaiting news of the fate of loved ones at the front. "You have no idea," one of them recalled, "of the intense anxiety in Litchfield in the days following [the Battle of] Cold Harbor."

I know Litchfield well, having visited the antebellum Congregational Church, site of at least one soldier's funeral in 1864; examined the town's impressive Civil War memorial and stared at these markers in  West Cemetery: 

George Booth, killed at Antietam.

Edward Wadhams, killed Fort Darling.

Henry Wadhams, killed North Anna River.

Luman Wadhams, mortally wounded at Cold Harbor.

The letter, which sits on my office shelf, was written by Lyman Smith's mother, Julia, and sister, Mary. Lyman never read their loving words. The letter was returned to sender. 

Only 22, Private Smith fell on June 1, 1864 at Cold Harbor, Virginia. He, too, has a marker in West Cemetery. 

A LETTER TO LYMAN: A TRANSCRIPT

"We shall wait with great anxiety," wrote Lyman Smith's sister, Mary.

My precious Lyman, 

Your letter from Fredericksburg containing twenty dollars came last evening. We had received one from you a day or two before from Ft. Craig with ten dollars in it—all of which we will keep for you safely.

Dear child, you are now in reality in the midst of war and you don’t know what anxious hearts gather around our table three times a day now [and] how fervently your sisters and myself pray to God for your safe keeping. Let your aspirations also go forth and mingle with ours before the mercy seat of Christ.

We ere not heard for our much speaking and you can lift up your heart even amidst the din and carnage of battle, and the ear of Jesus is always open to our faintest cry, and we never call upon Him in vain. He is able to keep you if you ask Him for He has said that He has “all power in Heaven and on Earth.” 

At Cold Harbor, Va., a marker explains
ground where 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery
fought on June 1, 1864. In the background,
a monument to the regiment. 

We shall wait with great anxiety to hear from you. Write just as often as you can, if it not more than a line or two. Don’t let a week pass if it is possible for you to write. We are all well. I will make this letter short that I may get it into the Office this morning. I pray for you without ceasing, my dear Lyman. Pray for yourself and your loving Mother.

Wednesday morning.

My dear Lyman, I have only time for a few words this morning. Our anxiety for your safety is doubled now that you are at the front and we can only wait from day to day and hope for the best. May God guard you safely through it all and bring you to trust in Him instead of your own strength. These dreadful battles cast their gloom on us all—there is hardly a family but is sobered and saddened.

Edward Wadhams was shot through the heart a week from last Monday and left behind the rebel entrenchments at Fort Darling. It is feared that his body will never be found. Mrs. Luman Wadhams is with Mrs. Wadhams for the present. I shall call on her as soon as possible. 

Pa and [your brother] Ed are very busy with their farming. Pa is bushing peas today and Ed planting corn. I wish you were safely home. Write if only a word every time you can have a chance to mail a letter. 

We shall write to you often, although you may not get the letter. May God bless and keep you in safety, my dear brother. 

Your loving sister, — Mary

[Your sister] Nealie send love and will write in a day or two.

The complete letter from Lyman Smith's mother and sister, dated May 25, 1864.

---

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

-- Letter transcription hat tip to William "Griff" Griffing of Spared & Shared. (Read about Griff, subject of my Civil War Times magazine column.)

'A careful, industrious boy': Robert Watt, killed at Cold Harbor

Private Robert Watt of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery 
was killed at Cold Harbor  on June 1, 1864. 
(Photo courtesy Lester Larrabee)

A "careful, industrious boy," Robert Watt did what he could to support his widowed mother, Mary, who reared three children in their small house on a quarter-acre plot in Litchfield, Conn., about 35 miles west of Hartford. Born in Ireland, Robert and his family immigrated to the United States after his father, Robert Sr., died from a fall from a horse on  June 27, 1847. To help his mother, Watt frequently purchased flour, tea, sugar and molasses in town at the stores of Charles Bishop and Frederick D. McNeel, and in the winters of 1859-1861, he paid for the fuel to heat the family home.

Lester Larrabee of Bristol, Conn., pictured with his wife Nancy, 
holds CDVs of Robert Watt and Gideon Barnes. Watt, killed
 at Cold Harbor, and  Barnes, mortally wounded at Antietam,
 are Nancy's ancestors.

On Aug. 25, 1862, Watt enlisted in the Union army before mustering into the 19th Connecticut Infantry, which trained at Camp Dutton, two miles from the center of town. Mary Watt even may have visited her son there as discipline initially was lax in the regiment, which was largely comprised of men from Litchfield and other Litchfield County towns.

"The interest and pride in the county in its own regiment was naturally of the strongest," Dudley Landon Vaill, the son of a regiment veteran, wrote in 1908. "The family that had no son or brother or cousin in its ranks almost seemed the exception, and Camp Dutton became at once the goal of a ceaseless stream of visitors from near and far, somewhat to the prejudice of those principles of military order and discipline which had now to be acquired." Lieutenant colonel Elisha Kellogg, the veteran soldier who instilled military discipline in the citizen-soldiers, reportedly said "if there were 900 men in camp, there were certainly nine thousand women most of the time."

         Site of Camp Dutton, where the 19th Connecticut trained in August-September 1862.

Marker near site of Camp Dutton erected in 1912
by survivors of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artllery.

To the cheers of citizens, Private Watt and his 19th Connecticut comrades assembled on the Litchfield green on Sept. 15, 1862, and then headed south by train for Washington, arriving in the capital two days later -- the same day thousands were killed 75 miles northwest at the Battle of Antietam. For nearly 18 months, the regiment served away from major fighting, first in Alexandria, Va., and later in defenses south of the capital. On Nov. 23, 1863, the 19th Connecticut was re-designated the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, but the duty in garrisons near the capital apparently was so mundane that Vaill noted the period "was not marked by incidents of any note."

On June 1, 1864, that dramatically, and tragically, changed.

In the midst of his bloody Overland Campaign, Ulysses Grant had pulled the "Heavies" from the defenses of Washington in mid-May and designated them to be used as infantry. Formed in three lines to attack well-entrenched Rebels on the second day of the Battle of Cold Harbor, 10 miles northeast of Richmond, the regiment moved at the double-quick through an open field, past an abandoned rifle pit and through a piney wood, encountering only scattered fire. As a battalion of four companies of Connecticut soldiers drew within 20 yards of the enemy's breastworks in a small hollow, a "sheet of flame, sudden as lightning, red as blood, and so near that it singed men's faces" erupted. Most of the shots were high, according to a regimental history, and few of the "Heavies" were hit.

Moments later, however, a long line of unseen Rebels opened fire on the regiment's left, pinning the Yankees to the ground and causing horrific casualties. "No human valor could withstand (the fire)," a regimental historian noted. "and which no pen can adequately describe. ... It was the work of almost a single minute. The air was filled with sulphurous smoke, and the shrieks and howls of more than two hundred and fifty mangled men rose above the yells of triumphant rebels and the roar of their musketry."

"About face!" shouted Colonel Kellogg, who soon afterward was shot in the head and killed. Astride a large bay horse whose bowels were torn apart by rifle fire, brigade commander Emory Upton frantically told his men to lie down. Many of those who could simply scattered.

On June 6, 1864, the Hartford Courant headlines trumpeted that the 
Rebels had been whipped at Cold Harbor five days earlier. 
The reality was much different. 

Struck in the breast, Watt was killed, one of 326 casualties in the regiment and 14 men from Litchfield who were killed or mortally wounded. Lyman Smith, a 22-year-old private from Litchfield, was shot in the head and killed instantly. In a letter home to his father on June 2, 1864, Private Lewis Bissell of Company A mentioned both dead comrades.

"I have not seen his body but some of the boys have and attached his name," Bissell wrote about his cousin, Lyman. "Robert Watt lies near him. Tell his mother that I have his Bible. I shall send it home if possible. If not, will keep it until I can."

Today, near the edge of a wood in East Cemetery in Litchfield, a weathered, slate-gray tombstone marks Watt's final resting place. He was only 25 years old when he killed.

SOURCES:

Bissell, Lewis, The Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell: A History and Literature Curriculum, Page 267

Vaill, Dudley Landon, The County Regiment, Litchfield, Conn., Litchfield County University Club, 1908

Robert Watt "widow's" pension file, fold3.com

Vaill, Theodore F, History of the Second Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, Winsted, Conn., Winsted Printing Co., 1868

Watt family correpondence

Marker for Robert Watts in East Cemetery in Litchfield, Conn.  Robert's 
last name was often spelled with an "s" in records. 
(Photo courtesy Lester Larrabee)