Connecticut Memorial Day photo essay: Who were they?

We often get caught up in mind-numbing Civil War casualty figures. Six hundred and twenty-five thousand deaths overall. (Or were there really many, many more?) More than 23,000 casualties at Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the war. More than 50,000 casualties during three days at Gettysburg, nearly 32,000 in nearly two weeks of fighting at Spotsylvania Courthouse and more than 23,000 at Shiloh in two days.

And on and on ...

At my last stop Sunday afternoon during a 3 1/2-hour, five-cemetery tour in western Connecticut, I found a number I can really wrap my head around:

One.

As in one American flag and one red carnation placed on the grave of every Civil War veteran at Bantam Burying Ground in beautiful, rural Litchfield County. The flags I expected, but the red carnation on each veteran's gravestone in the un-mowed, older section of the cemetery was an especially nice touch. Here are snapshots of what I found Sunday, a day before Memorial Day:

... Even the cause of death is provided on 7th Connecticut Sergeant Seth W. Reynolds' marker in Warren Cemetery: a bullet wound to the lungs during the Battle of Pocotaligo (S.C.). The battle was a failed Union effort to sever the railroad connection to Charleston, S.C., on Oct. 22, 1862. "Among the incidents worthy of mention," according to a regimental history, "was the death of Sergeant Reynolds of Company A. He was mortally wounded in the fight, and his comrades carried him six weary miles to the landing, only to see him die after they reached there. He was a large, heavy man, and frequently said, 'Boys, this is too hard work for you. Leave me here.'; but they could not bear to leave him while life lasted." Reynolds died the next day. "I have fought a good fight," the quotation at the bottom of the 22-year-old soldier's marker reads ...

... 23-year-old Private Albert Beckwith of the 19th Connecticut (later 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery) died of typhoid fever on Jan. 1 or 2, 1863, in a 3rd Division hospital in Alexandria, Va. He left behind a wife named Eliza, whom he married on Oct. 9, 1860 in New Hartford, Conn., and a daughter named Mary Eliza, who was born on March 11, 1862. Eliza re-married in 1868. Whether Albert is buried under this marker in Old Neupag Cemetery or if the marker really is a cenotaph is unclear ...

... Only 22 years old, Private George L. Pendleton of 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery died of disease on Sept. 11, 1862 in Washington, where the regiment served in the defenses of the capital. During the Civil War, disease killed thousands in Washington, where encampments of soldiers turned the Potomac River into a cesspool. "Of all the detestable places Washington is first," lawyer and diarist George Templeton Shaw noted. "Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fair [fare], bad smells, mosquitos, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience... Beelzebub surely reigns here." Earlier in the war, Pendleton served with the 19th Connecticut. This marker is in Cornwall Cemetery. ...

... Perhaps looking for a great adventure, teenager John S. Richardson, who was born in Connecticut,  enlisted as a private in the 3rd Minnesota on Sept. 30, 1861, at Blue Earth County, Minn. Early in the war, the 3rd Minnesota served mostly in garrison duty -- first in Kentucky and then in Tennessee, where Richardson suffered an unknown injury and was discharged for disability on March 15. 1862. That may have been fortuitous because four months later Nathan Bedford Forrest captured nearly the entire regiment at Murfreesboro, Tenn., leading the third charge against the 3rd Minnesota himself. Only 18 years old, Richardson died a little more than four months later, on July 30, 1862, of an unknown cause. In front of his marker at Bantam Burying Ground were wild daisies, an old metal Grand Army of the Republic marker and a single red carnation ...

... 19-year-old Orlando Evans, a private in the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery,  died at Knight Hospital in New Haven of typhoid fever on Feb. 28, 1863, a little more than six months after he enlisted. Opened in 1862 to treat wounded soldiers, Knight Hospital dealt with 25,000 soldiers during the war. Orlando was the son of 41-year-old Rhoda and 53-year-old David Evans, a shoemaker who was "well thought of by all the people" in Torrington, Conn. I found Evans' weathered marker in an un-mowed section of 1st Ecclesiastical Cemetery in Torrington in the shade of a line of trees.