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| 28th Connecticut Private Sherman Lockwood's grave in Memphis (Tenn.) National Cemetery. (Photo: Bruce and Wendy Linz) |
When the 28th Connecticut left the brutally hot and pestilent conditions in Louisiana for home on Aug. 7, 1863, soldiers in the regiment were so sick that they could barely make it aboard the boat for the first leg of the journey on the Mississippi River. Some even died as they reached the deck of the steamer. Suffering from chronic diarrhea, two brothers in the regiment begged one of their comrades to help them.
“They were very anxious to get home,” Pvt. Louis Scofield recalled years later about Andrew and Sherman Lockwood. “As I was assisting the doctor, I tried to get them through. He said they were too weak and it would be impossible.” On Aug. 13, 1863, Sherman and Andrew were among the 25 to 30 soldiers in the regiment who were hospitalized in Memphis, Tenn., one of the stops along the Mississippi. But the brothers were indeed too ill to survive. Andrew, 30, died at Union Hospital on Aug. 27, 1863, two weeks before Sherman, 23, perished in the same hospital.
After he had re-enlisted in the 6th Connecticut on Christmas Eve 1863, James Lockwood visited his financially-strapped parents in Stamford, Conn., while on furlough in 1864 and gave his mother a present of $20. It was the last time Lydia and Sherman Lockwood saw him. After he was captured at Bermuda Hundred, Va., on June 17, 1864, James, a 22-year-old private, spent nearly four months in prisoner-of -war camps in Andersonville, Ga., and Florence, S.C. Emaciated, he could barely walk when he left Andersonville, according to a 6th Connecticut comrade, and died from effects of starvation in Florence on Oct. 2, 1864.
Buried in Memphis (Tenn.) National Cemetery, Sherman is the only Lockwood brother with a marked grave.
SOURCES
-- Scofield, Loomis, History of the Twenty-Eighth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, (New Canaan, Conn., New Canaan Advertiser, 1915), Page 15.
James Lockwood pension file, National Archives.
“They were very anxious to get home,” Pvt. Louis Scofield recalled years later about Andrew and Sherman Lockwood. “As I was assisting the doctor, I tried to get them through. He said they were too weak and it would be impossible.” On Aug. 13, 1863, Sherman and Andrew were among the 25 to 30 soldiers in the regiment who were hospitalized in Memphis, Tenn., one of the stops along the Mississippi. But the brothers were indeed too ill to survive. Andrew, 30, died at Union Hospital on Aug. 27, 1863, two weeks before Sherman, 23, perished in the same hospital.
After he had re-enlisted in the 6th Connecticut on Christmas Eve 1863, James Lockwood visited his financially-strapped parents in Stamford, Conn., while on furlough in 1864 and gave his mother a present of $20. It was the last time Lydia and Sherman Lockwood saw him. After he was captured at Bermuda Hundred, Va., on June 17, 1864, James, a 22-year-old private, spent nearly four months in prisoner-of -war camps in Andersonville, Ga., and Florence, S.C. Emaciated, he could barely walk when he left Andersonville, according to a 6th Connecticut comrade, and died from effects of starvation in Florence on Oct. 2, 1864.
Buried in Memphis (Tenn.) National Cemetery, Sherman is the only Lockwood brother with a marked grave.
SOURCES
-- Scofield, Loomis, History of the Twenty-Eighth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, (New Canaan, Conn., New Canaan Advertiser, 1915), Page 15.
James Lockwood pension file, National Archives.
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