JOHN BANKS' CIVIL WAR BLOG: December 2016

Friday, December 30, 2016

Saturday, December 24, 2016

A Christmas Eve message home: 'You will be pained to learn ...'

Chaplain William Channing's condolence letter to Sergeant James McLaughlin's brother-in-law.
(National Archives via fold3.com)

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After Civil War battles, families North and South anxiously awaited news of the fate of loved ones. If a soldier had been killed or wounded, word often was found in casualty lists printed in a hometown newspaper or conveyed by an officer in a soldier's regiment. In the case of Sergeant James McLaughlin of the 28th Massachusetts, a regiment in the famed Irish Brigade, news of his fate was delivered to his family by a chaplain in a short note written on Christmas Eve.

William Channing,
chaplain in Stanton
Hospital.

On Dec. 13, 1862, McLaughlin was wounded in the arm by an artillery shell during the Irish Brigade's disastrous charge on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg. He was transported across the Rappahannock River to a makeshift hospital and then on to Washington, where hospitals were set up throughout the capital to care for thousands of sick and wounded soldiers.

Nine days after the battle, McLaughlin took a turn for the worse. Perhaps wracked by infection as well as other effects of his wound, the 39-year-old soldier died on Dec. 22. Two days later, William H, Channing, a chaplain at Stanton Hospital, jotted a few lines about McLaughlin's sad end to the soldier's brother-in-law back in Massachusetts. (See complete transcription of note below.) The cause of death was "mortification of the arm," wrote Channing, who noted "all was done for him that was possible under the circumstances."

"His life," the chaplain added, "could not be saved."

McLaughlin's death was particularly tragic. He left behind two orphaned children, 14-year-old Mary and 8-year-old George, whose Irish-born mother, Mary, had died of consumption in 1858. Peter Kirlan, McLaughlin's brother-in-law, traveled to Washington, recovered James' body and returned with the remains to Massachusetts, where he was buried in a cemetery in Watertown.

James McLauglin's grave in
Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery
in Watertown, Mass.
(Find a Grave)

Cared for by family members, Mary and George eventually received a small government pension because of their father's death. After his sister's death from consumption in 1867, George sought an increase in his monthly minor's pension from the government. The outcome of his case is unknown.

X X X
Stanton Hospital
Monday, Wash. D.C.
Dec. 24, 1862

To Mr. Peter Kirlan
East Cambridge, Mass

Sir:

You will be pained to learn that your friend and correspondent, Sergt. J. C. McLaughlin of the 28th Mass., Co. A, died on the 22 inst. of mortification in the arm produced by the terrible wound which he received at the Battle of Fredericksburg. All was done for him that was possible under the circumstances. His life could not have been saved. Will you communicate to his friends the sad intelligence that this brave man died, as became a gallant soldier, and let the knowledge of his heroic fidelity to duty be their consolation. The priest who attended upon him in his last hours will probably write to you or to his parish. He will be buried today in the cemetery at the Soldiers Home. .

With true sympathy, I remain yours truly
W.H. Channing
Chaplain Stanton Hospital

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

SOURCE

-- James McLaughlin pension file, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., via fold3.com.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Positively devilish: Book looted from Fredericksburg in 1862

A tattered copy of Dialogues of Devils, looted from Fredericksburg, Va., in December 1862.

"Taken from deserted house of a wealthy citizen ..." reads a soldier's inscription inside the book once
owned by William Warren, a prominent resident of Fredericksburg, Va.
. (New England Civil War Museum | Rockville, Conn.)

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William Warren of Fredericksburg, Va.
(Ancestry.com)

In 1862, 38-year-old merchant William Warren lived with his family at the corner of Amelia and Caroline streets in Fredericksburg, Va. His house, only blocks from the Rappahannock River, was destroyed during the Federals’ bombardment of the town on Dec. 11, 1862. Compounding the disaster for the family, their residence was looted by Union soldiers. A book from William's collection ended up with a private in Company D of the 44th New York, "Ellsworth’s Avengers," who kept it for the remainder of the war.

We can only speculate how the 1838 edition of Dialogues Of Devils, which chronicled the “many vices that abound in the civil and religious world,” was obtained by 37-year-old Cyrus Snow Crain. On a blank page near the front, the private wrote, "Taken from the deserted house of a wealthy citizen of Fredericksburg, Va. where books & furniture were scattered about in profusion. Preserved as a memento of the occupancy of that city by our troops Dec. 13th, 14th, 15th 1862.” Warren’s name is written in the book in three places.

Did Crain, who became regimental chaplain in March 1863, steal the book from Warren's house? Was it given to him by another soldier when the Yankees looted the town on Dec. 12, 1862? Or did he simply pick it up in the street?

The 44th New York suffered 42 casualties, including seven killed or mortally wounded, during the disastrous Union attack on Marye’s Heights on Dec. 13. Perhaps Crain obtained the book when his regiment, part of the rear-guard for the Union army as it retreated across the Rappahannock on Dec. 16, occupied Fredericksburg a day earlier. A 44th New York regimental historian blamed the pillaging of the town on “camp followers, who had the time and opportunity for such lawlessness.”

GOOGLE STREET VIEW
William Warren's 1862 house is gone. A gym occupies part of the property today.

For the well-educated Warren, who was involved in the cotton, iron and grocery businesses, the war brought financial ruin. His estate, according to the 1860 census, was worth $12,000, an impressive sum at the time. Warren owned a tan yard along the Rappahannock a short distance from his house. He also operated mills to benefit the Confederacy. But during the Battle of Fredericksburg, “his beautiful home and business interests were completely wrecked,” according to a post-war account published in the Richmond Dispatch.

At an unknown date, Warren moved with his wife, Mary, to Richmond, “where he soon won recognition as a business man of fine abilities and sterling worth.” In 1870, he went to work for a bank as a bookkeeper and discount teller, among other roles, positions that spanned decades. But it was a giant step removed from his previous station in life.

Warren's property in Fredericksburg was near his tan yard
along the Rappahannock River. (Explore an
excellent 1860 map of Fredericksburg from
National Park Service blog.)

“Mr. Warren was a typical southern gentleman of the old school,” the Dispatch noted upon his death in 1900. “He was sincerely admired and greatly respected by the community at large -- a man whom everybody trusted implicitly, and who, while occupying a subordinate position, still leaves his mark and a place that will not easily be filled.”

After his wife’s death in 1874, Warren moved in with a daughter and son-in-law in Richmond. There, on Nov. 22, 1900, he was struck by a dray at Tenth and Broad streets while on his way home from work. Three days later, he died from effects of his injuries at his daughter’s house. The 74-year-old Virginian was buried in his hometown of Fredericksburg.

“Our brother was a man of aesthetic nature and refined tastes, with a decided literary bent, which he occasionally indulged in excursions into the field of poetry, with no mean success,” an obituary noted about Warren. “Tennyson was his favorite among the great masters of song, and the tender farewell that trembled on the inspired Laureate’s lips are ‘he crossed the bar’ found echo in our brother’s heart and was often repeated by him in view of his departure.”

William Warren's name appears twice at top of title page.

For Cyrus Crain, the Civil War dragged on. He spent part of the winter of 1863 at the V Corps post hospital at Windmill Point, the largest military hospital in the Fredericksburg area. On a blank page in the back of Warren’s Dialogues of Devils, Crain even wrote scathing reviews of Windmill Point, where 4,000 sick soldiers were treated:

“These scribblings were offered to while away time while in the hospital at Windmill Point, Va., a bleak promontory on the Virginia side of the Potomac, a few miles below Acquia Creek. The sick and wounded were hastily taken here before the necessary preparations were completed & as consequence many died & others suffered much."

And on another page:

"Would … the people north know how the government treated its sick soldiers at Windmill Point there would be a storm."

As regimental chaplain, Crain ministered to soldiers at Gettysburg, where the 44th New York defended Little Round Top and suffered 26 killed among 111 casualties. He was discharged from the army on March 17, 1864. A short time later, he married his second wife, Mary, with whom he raised three children. (His first wife, Merab, died in 1862.) Crain preached in small towns throughout New York, and died in 1895 at 71.

In battered condition, Dialogues of Devils survives in Rockville, Conn., at the New England Civil War Museum, a former Grand Army of the Republic hall.

How it got there is unknown.

(See post here on the Windmill Point hospital from John Hennessy, chief historian and chief of interpretation at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.)

44th New York Private Cyrus Crain, who obtained Warren's book, wrote scathingly inside it about
a Fredericksburg area hospital for soldiers.

44th New York Private Cyrus Crain, who later became the regiment's chaplain, wrote musings
in the book about Windmill Point hospital for soldiers: "The sick and wounded were hastily
taken here before the necessary preparations..."

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

NOTES AND SOURCES

-- Ancestry.com

-- Genealogical and Family History of Western New York: A Record of Western New York, Volume 3, edited by William Richard Cutter, New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1912.

-- Nash, Eugene Arus, A History of the Forty-fourth Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, Chicago, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1911 .

-- Richmond Dispatch, Nov. 27, 1900.

-- Richmond Times, Nov. 27, 1900.
-- William Warren obituary from 1900 newspaper clipping, probably from Virginia, accessed on ancestry.com on Dec. 19, 2016.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Where is Fredericksburg painting stolen in 1862?

War-time sketch by Arthur Lumley shows Union soldiers looting Fredericksburg on Dec. 12, 1862.
(Library of Congress collection)

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Twenty years after the Civil War, 50-year-old Thomas Burke, "a man of warm heart and unquestioned courage," died of pneumonia at a hospital in Connecticut. The 16th Connecticut veteran Burke suffered from financial hardship at the end of his life.

War-time image of 16th Connecticut
Captain Thomas F. Burke.

"He had not the business turn that would give him success," the Hartford Courant reported April 18, 1885, in a front-page obituary, "and he saw hard days which he took quietly and without complaint." Burke, a widower who had lost his wife in a boarding house fire 13 years earlier, was buried with military honors.

A frame-maker when he enlisted in August 1862, Burke apparently had a good eye for fine art. On the walls of his residence on Asylum Street in Hartford, he had "works that another man would have sold easily and at high prices," the Courant noted, "but very often remained with him some time and then went back to their former owners."

During the Civil War, Burke added at least one painting to his art collection.

After the bombardment of Fredericksburg by Federal artillery on Dec.11, 1862, U.S. Army soldiers looted the town — actions that fueled the enmity of Confederate soldiers and citizens alike. Crazed soldiers dragged pianos from houses and absconded with silverware, rare books and even fashionable women's clothing.

"One [of our] rooms was piled more than halfway to the ceiling with feathers from beds ripped open, every mirror had been run through with a bayonet, a panel of each door cut out, furniture nearly all broken up, the china broken to bits, and everything of value taken away," a Fredericksburg woman recalled.

Among items stolen was a beautiful oil painting called The Saviour at the Garden of Gethsemane, which had hung in the house of a 62-year-old woman named Juliet Neale, one of Fredericksburg's leading citizens. A "distinguished French nobleman" reportedly had given it to her as a gift.

A wealthy divorcee, Neale served as a nurse at Belvoir, aiding Confederate wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. (Neale's house at 307 Caroline Street, used as a Federal hospital, still stands. See it here on Google Street View.)

Juliet Neale, whose painting was "obtained" by 16th Connecticut Captain Thomas Burke.
(Courtesy of Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center)

PRESENT-DAY: 307 Caroline Street, where Juliet Neale lived in 1862.
(Google Street View)

The soldier who made off with the painting was none other than Burke himself — a man who, according to his obituary, was known for his "ample and spontaneous" charity.

Burke's war-time service was full of hardship and derring-do: On Sept. 17, 1862, he escaped the bloodbath at Antietam, the regiment's first battle of the war, without physical injury. At Fredericksburg, the 16th Connecticut was held in reserve, seeing little action. Captured with most of the rest of the regiment at Plymouth, N.C., on April 20, 1864, he spent six months in Rebel prisons, in Macon, Ga., as well as in Columbia and Charleston, S.C.

Thomas Burke (right) in a war-time image.
(Photo: BZC)

Burke's POW experience included two escapes. Packed into a train en route from Columbia to Charleston, Burke and two other 16th Connecticut officers leaped from the open boxcars. Six days later, a hunter captured the men asleep in the woods. His dogs guarded the escapees while he went for help.

Returned to a POW stockade in Columbia, Burke and two other 16th Connecticut officers escaped again on Nov. 3, 1864, "with only rags to cover them, and nothing for their journey." Noted an 1872 account:

"The night was dreary and rainy and the roads were very muddy, 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."

Joining forces with other escapees, the fugitives made a perilous journey on a South Carolina river on two boats supplied by local slaves. With a supply of sweet potatoes, turnips and cornbread and the "benediction of the faithful negroes," the eight former POWs traveled for nine days through dangerous backcountry to the Atlantic Ocean. Three of the soldiers, including 16th Connecticut captains Timothy Robinson and Alfred Dickerson, finally rowed their leaky rowboat miles into the Atlantic to the Union blockader Canandaigua, stunning the vessel's crew:

"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."

The remaining five men were rescued. Their rescuers gave the eight soldiers new uniforms — their "tattered, vermin rags were thrown into the sea" — and furloughs to visit home. Perhaps it was during his furlough that Burke admired his ill-gotten goods: the painting from Neale's house. It's unknown how the artwork got to Connecticut in the first place.

A 16th-century version of "The Saviour at the Garden of Gethsemane." The appearance
of Juliet Neale's version of this painting is unknown.

Burke had the painting in his possession until 1880, when he sold it or gave it to Charles H. Owen, a Hartford man who served as a major in the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery.

Perhaps suffering with a guilty conscience, Owen decided sometime early in the 20th century to return the purloined painting to its rightful owner. In a front-page story under the headline "Relic of the War" on Nov. 26, 1901, the Hartford Courant wrote about Owen's make-good effort:

"Correspondence with Fredericksburg has revealed that the painting was taken from the home of Mrs, Juliet A. Neale, who had bequeathed the house and its contents to her niece, Mrs. H. Mcd. Martin, who is living. Mrs. Martin remembers the picture well as it hung in the house of her aunt."

The painting, the newspaper wrote, had been "obtained" by Burke in Fredericksburg during the war. The Courant reported that "for a time [the painting] was mislaid and recently it was recovered."

On Nov. 26, 1901, the Hartford Courant reported about
the discovery of a painting "obtained" by a
Connecticut officer in Fredericksburg in 1862.

A day after the Hartford newspaper's report, the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch picked up the story, describing the painting as "valuable" and a "beautiful picture." Days later, The Saviour at the Garden of Gethsemane, albeit damaged, finally was returned to Neale's heir more than 39 years after it had been stolen.

"Before it came into my hands it had been cut from the frame, rolled tight and cracked," Owen wrote in a letter to Neale's niece. "It has been oiled several times to preserve it, but experts say it can never be restored to its original appearance."

The story doesn't end here. Juliet Neale's painting again is missing. While aware of the long-ago media coverage of its return to Virginia, Neale's historically minded descendants in Fredericksburg are unaware of its current whereabouts.

Could it be in a Virginia museum, perhaps somewhere in the Fredericksburg area? Was it donated to an historical society? Is it rolled up, crumbling and forgotten, in an attic or basement somewhere in Fredericksburg? Could it have been sold at a flea market to a buyer unaware of its rich history?

Perhaps readers can provide clues.

We also wonder what Thomas Burke, the man who started this story, would think of it all. Perhaps his long-ago obituary in the Hartford Courant offers a hint:

"He would pinch himself to help a stranger and never would think twice of it. He will be singularly regretted by those who knew him well enough to understand the real man that lay somewhat hidden under a rather misleading exterior."

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

SOURCES AND NOTES

Baltimore Sun, Nov. 27, 1901
Confederate Veteran, Vol.25, 1917, Page 534
Connecticut War Record, December 1864
Bristol (Conn.) Press, June 7, 1872
Fredericksburg Remembered -- Musings on history, public history, and historic Fredericksburg, "The Women of Fredericksburg Mobilize," Oct. 3, 2010 (blog accessed Dec. 17, 2016.)
Hartford Courant, Jan. 19, 1872, April 18, 1885, April 20, 1885, Nov. 26, 1901
Richmond Dispatch, Nov. 27, 1901
The Free Lance, Fredericksburg, Va., Nov. 30, 1901
1860 U.S. census

Sunday, December 11, 2016

In Middletown, holiday cheer, grim news from Fredericksburg

Either killed or mortally wounded at Fredericksburg (clockwise from left): 14th Connecticut
privates David Lincoln, Daniel Otis, Andrew Scheurer, Enoch Wilcox II and Dwight Wolcott.
(Middlesex County Historical Society)

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Although the temperature had recently plummeted to as low as minus-3, frigid weather did not thwart Christmas preparations in Middletown, Conn., in 1862. Women in the congregations decorated the Episcopal and Universalist churches with evergreens, and parishioners adorned Christmas trees with ornaments for Sunday school children.

"Saint Nicholas will visit this place on Wednesday night," the Middletown Constitution reported in its Christmas Eve edition. "He will come by private conveyance. Such as expect a visit from him need not be particular to leave their doors unlocked. He prefers to come in by way of the chimney. The little folks had better hang up their stockings in a good place where Santa Claus can find them."

At several stores in the town along the Connecticut River, "valuable and beautiful presents may be found," and Putnam's local bookstore was especially well-stocked with gift books. "What is more acceptable in most cases as a Christmas or New Years gift," the local newspaper cheerily noted, "than a handsomely bound volume with something valuable between its rich covers? Any one in search of such a present can satisfy himself at Mr. Putnam’s."

A cropped enlargement of a war-time image of Fredericksburg, Va.
(Timothy O'Sullivan | Library of Congress)

Where 14th Connecticut cross the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg.

But for many area families of men and boys in the 14th Connecticut, mostly soldiers in Company B from Middletown, the holiday season brought anxiety and grief, not cheer. In the weeks after the Federals' disaster at Battle of Fredericksburg, grim news had been reported in the local weekly newspaper. On Christmas Eve, the Constitution published a detailed letter written Dec. 16, three days after the battle, by Middletown citizen-soldier John Pelton, a sergeant major in 14th Connecticut:

"The rebels had awoke as well as ourselves, and the way they played into us from their batteries was a caution to poor folks. They were very strongly entrenched behind earth works and rifle pits of the heaviest kind. At ten minutes to twelve we, that is our division under Gen. [William] French, were ordered to the front and to charge the rebels, and take their pits and batteries. We went forward as ordered and went willingly, but went in vain.

"The rebels poured in a terrible volley of both musketry and artillery, consisting of grape and canister shell and railroad iron which literally mowed us down. It was utterly impossible for us to stand before such a tremendous force. They were behind entrenchments, and we in an open field, and on a hill side at that, and mud knee deep, a stone wall in our front which they used as a screen for their sharpshooters. The fire was awful. Our regiment went into the action with 362 men, and came out with 106. Think of that will you, and then ask why we did not take their redoubts. We also went into the fight with eighteen field staff and line officers, and when we came out we had three line officers left that were not wounded or killed."

Added Pelton, whose only physical injury during the battle was a leg bruise from a trampling by a horse:

"To tell the truth the regiment is cut to pieces, in fact, we have not got one hundred men that are able to march a mile. We left Connecticut the 25th of August with 998 men, and have not been out 4 months yet, and look at us now! Take those that are in hospitals and here, and we could not muster over 180 men. If that is not using up men fast, your humble servant would like to inquire what is. How I have escaped being killed both at Antietam and Fredericksburg is a mystery to me, but it is nevertheless so."

14th Connecticut Captain Elijah Gibbons was mortally
wounded at Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862.

In the letter to his brother, Pelton also listed the casualties from Company B:

"D. B. Lincoln, killed ; Sergeant H. N. Shaw, in arm; Sergeant G. A. Hubbard, slightly; Corporal H. A. Lloyd, in arm; Corporal W. H. Johnson, Jr., in arm; James H. Marble, in leg ; Chas. S. Brooks, in foot ; Daniel H. Otis, leg shot off ; James H. Sage, slightly ; Wm. H. Johnson, Sen., missing, think killed; James H. Hillieker, eye; John Vanderwort, in leg."

The final death toll for Middletown soldiers was 11 — 10 in Company B alone — a calamity for the town of about 3,500. Among the dead was one of the town's leading citizens, Captain Elijah Gibbons, an ardent abolitionist and a sexton and Sunday school teacher at the First Baptist Church on Main Street.

A minie ball shattered Gibbons' thigh bone during a charge on the Confederates' impregnable position on Marye's Heights. After he suffered the wound, the 31-year-old officer was briefly aided by 2nd Lieutenant David Canfield, a Middletown marble carver, who was shot through the head and killed instantly. The night before the disastrous charge, Gibbons read to Canfield and other Connecticut soldiers verses from a Bible found in a battle-damaged Fredericksburg house. "Canfield made many anxious inquiries as to his views of life and death," a 14th Connecticut regimental history noted years later about the solemn evening, "and announcing his willingness to face the grim conqueror for the sake of his country and God, relapsed into silence."

2nd Lieutenant
David Canfield
(Middlesex County
Historical Society)

Six days after the battle, Gibbons died at a Federal hospital in Falmouth, Va., across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg. His body was recovered from the regimental graveyard and returned for a funeral in Middletown on Jan. 3 — "a day of funerals" on Main Street for "two brave sons" of the city, according to the Constitution. Services also were held that bright, winter day for 14th Connecticut Private Robert Hubbard, a friendly-fire casualty whose remains had finally been returned from Antietam nearly four months after the battle.

In the funeral procession into town for Gibbons, bells tolled, and the Baptist church was filled with mourners, who filed past the officer's coffin on the porch. A photograph of Gibbons hung just above his remains, which had been so well embalmed in Virginia that his coffin remained open. Gibbons' name, age and occasion of death were inscribed on the coffin, which was nearly hidden by huge flags.

Inside the church, Gibbons' pew was draped in black, and flags hung above the pulpit and covered the organ. After a sermon and a short prayer, the choir sung in a "most admirable manner," the Constitution reported, then Gibbons' coffin was escorted a short distance down Main Street to Mortimer Cemetery. The procession included the Middletown mayor, city council, the Colt Armory Band, military men and workmen from the Douglas Pump Works, where Gibbons was employed as a foreman before the war.

After Gibbons was laid to rest, three volleys were fired over the grave. "He was a brave soldier, an esteemed citizen, an earnest Christian," the Constitution reported about the beloved officer, who left behind a widow and two young children. "May his example long live after him."

At least he had a marked grave.

Enveloped by fall leaves, the grave of 14th Connecticut Captain Elijah Gibbons in
Mortimer Cemetery in Middletown, Conn.

Brownstone memorial in Mortimer Cemetery for 31-year-old Elijah Gibbons, who died in Falmouth,Va,

An artillery shell nearly tore off the legs of David Lincoln, a 28-year-old private in Company B. Comrades took him to a makeshift division hospital at Absalom Rowe's house near the Rappahannock River. (See image below.)

"Near the south porch lay our Lincoln, his two legs dangling from the trunk by naught but the slender cords," 14th Connecticut Chaplain Henry Stevens recalled years later. "Though the sight of his poor, mangled form forced out our tears, his smile was beatific as he gave us words of love for his young wife and friends and expressed his devotion to his country and his readiness to die." As Stevens visited with the stricken private, an artillery shell narrowly missed Lincoln, who had no hope of surviving his grievous wounds.

"We buried him in the garden," the chaplain recalled, "taking sixty seconds of precious time for a little service at his grave." Lincoln's wife, Adelaide, was pregnant with the couple's first child, a girl she named Estelle. Her husband's final resting place is unknown.

The burial sites are also unknown for three other privates in Company B: William Hilliker, an 18-year-old farmer; William Johnson Sr, a 40-year-old farmer/factory worker; and Enoch Wilcox II, a 22-year-old farmer. Hilliker served with his 15-year-old brother, Joseph, who was shot through the eye at Fredericksburg but survived. Johnson, the married father of six children, served with his son, William Jr., who was severely wounded in the battle.

Two teens in Company B also died at Fredericksburg.

As he crossed a bridge over a millrace, Daniel H. Otis, a 15-year-old private who lied about his age when he enlisted, was mortally wounded by the same artillery shell that nearly severed Lincoln's legs. The remains of the youngest soldier in the regiment were recovered by his father and re-buried in a small Middletown cemetery. Private Dwight Wolcott, an 18-year-old post office clerk, was also killed in the charge.

1891 image of bridge across millrace where privates David Lincoln and Daniel Otis were
mortally wounded. (Souvenir of Excursions to Battlefields)

A circa-1940s image of the Rowe House at 607 Sophia Street in Fredericksburg.
14th Connecticut soldiers were among the Union wounded treated in the divisional hospital here.
The house no longer stands. (Library of Congress)

Private Andrew Scheurer, a 24-year-old mechanic and German immigrant, lingered until he died of his wound on January 3. His body was brought home and buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. Wounded in the chest, 19-year-old Private Harmon Farmer of Company E died at a Washington hospital a month after the battle. He was buried in Military Asylum Cemetery.

Although suffering with a bullet wound in his wrist, color bearer Henry A. Lloyd was seen joking in the Rowe house "in a way that seemed ghastly," Chaplain Stevens recalled. The corporal, a telegraph operator as a civilian, was transferred to Trinity Hospital in Washington after he had his arm amputated just below the elbow. On Jan. 12, 1863, Sarah Lloyd received a letter from her husband that he was recovering and soon would be home. But he died the next day from complications of his wound.

"For a time he did well, but owing to exposure on his part, a change took place and he rapidly declined," the Middletown Constitution reported on Jan. 21. "We learn that he was well cared for while living, and was buried with military honors ... A large number of ladies and friends of the hospital attended the funeral, the services of which were of a very interesting character." Three volleys were fired over the temporary Washington grave for Lloyd, whose remains were eventually re-interred in Middletown.

For Sarah Lloyd, the cycle of grief and mourning was repeated 18 months later. On June 5, 1864, her 4-year-old son Harry died in Middletown.

Gravestone for 14th Connecticut Private Daniel H. Otis in Maromas Cemetery in
Middletown, Conn. The 15-year-old soldier was mortally wounded by an artillery shell.

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

NOTES AND SOURCES:

American Civil War Research Database
Middletown Constitution, Dec.24, 1862, Jan.7, 1863,Jan. 21, 1863
La Lancette, Thomas E., A Noble And Glorious Cause: The Life, Times and Civil War Service of Captain Elijah W. Gibbons, Godfrey Memorial Library, Middletown, Conn, 2005. (La Lancette's fine work is a go-to source for information on Company B of the 14th Connecticut. His work is cited for the circumstances of the mortal wounds of Daniel Otis and David Lincoln.)
David B. Lincoln, Henry A. Lloyd, William Johnson pension files via fold3.com, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Fuller, Ted, Biographies of Middletown's Honored Dead, revised with corrections 2014, accessed online Dec. 11, 2016
Page Charles D., History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Meriden, Conn.: The Horton Printing Co., 1906
Stevens, Henry, Souvenir of Excursion to Battlefields by the Society of the Fourteenth Connecticut Regiment and Reunion at Antietam, September 1891, Washington: Gibson Brothers Printers & Bookbinders, 1893.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

The executions of privates Henry Stark and Henry Schumaker

An illustration in Harper's Weekly shows the execution by firing squad of a Union deserter in 1861.

Adapted from my book, Hidden History of Connecticut Union Soldiers. E-mail me here for information on how to purchase an autographed copy.

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About 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 17, 1864, all the troops in the 6th Connecticut and three other regiments assembled in a field by a causeway near their camp in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for a gruesome spectacle: the execution of two of their own. The condemned men were 6th Connecticut Privates Henry Stark of Danbury and Henry Schumaker of Norwalk -- deserters whose “skill and perseverance might have won them honor if rightly applied.” Draftees and immigrants from Germany, the men had joined the regiment six months earlier.

Although some conscripts and draftees “manifested a disposition to do their duty, and did make very good soldiers,” according to an officer in the regiment, most of the 200 who swelled the ranks of the three-year regiment were not trusted by the volunteers. “Their advent was not hailed with much pleasure or satisfaction by the old regiment, as they claimed that ‘forced men’ would not fight and could not be trusted in case of emergency,” wrote Charles Cadwell, a sergeant in Company K from New Haven.

Along with another German immigrant and draftee, Private Gustave Hoofan of Danbury, Stark and Schumaker deserted while on picket duty sometime in February. Recaptured, they were placed in close confinement but escaped twice more. After the second escape, the three men were captured in Ossanabaw Sound, near Savannah, Georgia, about 40 miles from Hilton Head, and placed in the provost guard house. On March 4, 1864, they were court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad.

But before the sentences could be carried out, the three “very bold, ingenious” Germans, who had been chained hand and foot to a post inside of the provost quarters, somehow escaped again, using a boat near a pier to make their way to freedom. After their vessel ran aground near Warsaw Sound in Georgia, they were recaptured by soldiers aboard a picket boat from the gunboat Patapsco and placed under tight guard upon their return to Hilton Head.

6th Connecticut Colonel Redfield Duryee

For Schumaker and Stark, the end was near. An exceptionally lucky Hoofan, however, made another great escape thanks to a most fortuitous circumstance: a clerical error. The judge advocate misspelled his last name “Hoffman” on the death warrant, leading a by-the-book Colonel Redfield Duryee of the 6th Connecticut to protest the sentence of the private, who was then ordered to be released and returned to duty in his regiment.

“The man was more than pleased at this announcement,” recalled Cadwell about Hoofan, “but the Judge Advocate, a lieutenant of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania regiment, was severely censured in general orders for his inexcusable carelessness and fatal error.”

The day before the sentence was carried out, Duryee ordered that all fatigue work be suspended on the day of execution and that every officer and man not on the sick list or other duty be present for the macabre event. “Every soldier who could walk was ordered to go,” 6th Connecticut Pvt. Hugh Ives of Hoofan’s Company B wrote to his mother on the afternoon of the executions.

Advised of their fate by the provost marshal, Schumaker and Stark “seemed stolid and indifferent at first, but upon reflection they gave way to their feelings and desired to have a priest sent to them” because each was Roman Catholic, Cadwell wrote. “… It was for a long time difficult to convince them that their case was hopeless, but [the priest’s] arguments finally forced conviction, and, after hearing their confession twice, he performed all the rites of the Church that were practicable.”

Taken from their cells about 2 p.m., the men rode in army wagons upon the coffins in which they were to be buried. As funeral music played, two ranks of drum corps, the regimental chaplain, two surgeons, a reverend from the U.S. Christian Commission and a 24-man firing squad of soldiers from the 6th Connecticut slowly made their way to the execution site. The condemned were driven around their comrades, who formed in a three-sided square, so all the assembled soldiers could get a good look at what happens to men who desert the Union army.

“They maintained a calm demeanor to all,” Cadwell noted, “except as they passed our regiment they took off their caps several times to their old comrades.”

After they reached the end of the square, the soldiers were assisted from the wagons and their coffins were placed on the ground. The provost marshal read the charges and the sentence for the condemned. A priest then delivered a short prayer before he heard their confessions, forgave and pardoned them, sprinkled holy water on the soldiers and bade them goodbye.

After they were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind them, the Germans were made to kneel upon their coffins, facing their regiment. Commanded by 6th Connecticut Captain John King of Hartford, the executioners went into position five or six paces from the men, and when Captain Edwin Babcock of the U.S. Colored Troops gave the signal with his sword, they fired into Schumaker and Stark, riddling them with bullets and killing them.

“Both culprits met their death with indifference,” the Hartford Daily Courant reported on April 28, 11 days after the executions, “and were killed by the first volley.”

“One fell forward the other backward,” wrote Ives, who along with the rest of the regiment marched passed the dead men en route back to camp before each was buried. “There is another one to be shot tomorrow. He belongs to our regiment.”

On April 30, a heart-rending letter Schumaker had written to his father in Germany the morning of his death was published in the Hartford Daily Courant. Translated from German, it read:

Dear Father

When this letter reaches you, I shall not be longer living. I did very wrong years ago to leave you. Farewell, my dear parents, and you, dear sisters, whom I shall meet again in Heaven. Do not grieve me much; and you too, dear mother, my fate is just, I have deserved it, and sacrificed my life in this land. A thousand times farewell and hold me close in memory.

Your Unlucky Son

After the war, the remains of deserters Schumaker and Stark were disinterred and re-buried side-by-side in the national cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina, among the remains of more than 9,000 other Yankee soldiers.

Gustave Hoofan deserted again on November 11, 1864. His fate is unknown.

Deserters Henry Schumaker and Henry Stark are buried side-by-side in
Beaufort (S.C.) National Cemetery. (Photo: Judy Birchenough)

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NOTES AND SOURCES

-- There are several variations of Gustave Hoofan’s name, including Hoffan and Hofen.
-- Cadwell, Charles K., The Old Sixth Regiment, Its War Record, New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1875
-- 6th Connecticut Pvt. Hugh Ives letter to his sister, April 17, 1864, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn.

Sunday, December 04, 2016

Can you identify these 20th Connecticut veterans?

Reunion photo of 20th Connecticut veterans in Cheshire, Conn.,
on Aug. 24, 1911. (Blogger's collection)

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Robert Usher

Tilt your head to the right. There you go -- that's not so hard. Or better yet, just turn your monitor/tablet/phone 45 degrees to check out this image of the reunion of 20th Connecticut veterans in Cheshire, Conn., on Aug. 24, 1911. Purchased Saturday afternoon from a dealer in Bristol, Conn., it was once part of the collection of Robert Cleveland Usher, an officer in the 20th Connecticut and, after the war, a prominent citizen of Plainville, Conn.

Most of these old soldiers probably defended Culp's Hill at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, and fought with Sherman during his March to the Sea in 1864. Could the old veteran standing behind the woman in the middle of the image be George Warner, who lost his arms to friendly fire at Gettysburg (see enlargement below)? Does Jesse Rice, who lost his arm at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.) in 1865, appear in the image? When he died in 1915 at 71, Rice, a farmer from Cheshire, was on government rolls for a $55-a-month war pension.

Usher, who survived the war unscathed physically, enlisted in the 20th Connecticut as a musician on Aug. 27, 1862, rose to sergeant major and, shortly before the end of the war, was promoted to lieutenant. The veteran, who died of pneumonia at 81 in his home in Plainville on April 20, 1922, undoubtedly appears in the photograph. If you can find him and identify others in this image, e-mail me at jbankstx@comcast.net.

Enlargement of reunion image and a circa-1910 image of armless veteran George Warner
with his wife. (Right image: Courtesy Bob O'Brien)

Does 20th Connecticut vet Jesse Rice, shown in an image taken shortly after the war,
appear in the reunion photo? This photograph of Rice was found in his pension file
in the National Archives in Washington.

Saturday, December 03, 2016

Antietam Then & Now: Pennsylvania veterans return

(Hover over image for "Now" scene; does not work on phones or tablets.)

In the years following the Battle of Antietam, veterans returned to the battlefield, many to attend the dedication of their monuments there. On Sept. 17, 1904, old soldiers in the 124th Pennsylvania were photographed at their monument at the intersection of Starke Avenue and Hagerstown Pike on the day of its dedication. During their visit, many of them scoured the fields for war relics and pointed out to their families where they were on that bloody day.

Some simply wondered how they survived.

Veteran Joseph Hawley near the Hagerstown Pike, where he was wounded in 1862.
(Images above from History of the 124th Pennsylvania Volunteers 1862-63)

In 1900, 124th Pennsylvania veteran Joseph Hawley returned to Antietam and stood on the spot near the Hagerstown Pike where he was wounded in the neck on Sept. 17, 1862. After he was shot, the colonel was carried to the nearby farmhouse of David R. Miller and was later taken to Hagerstown, Md., to recover. Hawley, who was 78 when he died in 1915, carried the bullet in his neck for the rest of his life.

Twelve years before Hawley's visit, men in the 125th Pennsylvania had their photo taken by the battle-scarred Dunker Church, near the West Woods, where they were routed on the morning of Sept. 17, 1862. Upon his return to Antietam in 1904, Morris Davis, a private in the 125th Pennsylvania, read aloud his poem about the battle to a group of veterans gathered there. It began:

Antietam : Gentle peaceful stream.
Upon thy banks so fair,

What memories, to the mind will turn
Of one who lingers there.

And it ended:

May the great God, who rules above.
And guides the affairs of men.

Forbid, in his infinite love
Such fratricide again.

JOHN BANKS'
CIVIL WAR BLOG

Regimentals

Friday, December 30, 2016

Top posts of 2016: Antietam, Gettysburg and a Bible story

Saturday, December 24, 2016

A Christmas Eve message home: 'You will be pained to learn ...'

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Positively devilish: Book looted from Fredericksburg in 1862

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Saturday, December 17, 2016

Where is Fredericksburg painting stolen in 1862?

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Sunday, December 11, 2016

In Middletown, holiday cheer, grim news from Fredericksburg

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Wednesday, December 07, 2016

The executions of privates Henry Stark and Henry Schumaker

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Sunday, December 04, 2016

Can you identify these 20th Connecticut veterans?

Saturday, December 03, 2016

Antietam Then & Now: Pennsylvania veterans return

--More Then & Now images HERE in large format.
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Regimentals

Friday, December 30, 2016

Saturday, December 24, 2016

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

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Saturday, December 17, 2016

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Sunday, December 11, 2016

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Wednesday, December 07, 2016

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Sunday, December 04, 2016

Saturday, December 03, 2016

--More Then & Now images HERE in large format. --Like my blog on FACEBOOK

--More Then & Now images HERE in large format.
--Like my blog on FACEBOOK