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.

'No sweet dream': Remarkable life of a Gettysburg casualty

Armless vet George Warner (on rock) at 20th Connecticut monument dedication at Gettysburg.

      (HOVER ON IMAGE FOR PRESENT-DAY VIEW OF THIS SCENE ON CULP'S HILL)

 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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In the months and years after George Washington Warner had both his arms nearly completely blown off by friendly fire at Gettysburg , a stark picture was presented of the former 20th Connecticut private. “This case calls for unusual sympathy,” a Hartford surgeon wrote after a medical visit by Warner in the winter of 1864. "He is entirely helpless -- so far as that he cannot dress himself nor eat his food without the aid of others,” Homer Buchanon and John Richardson, Warner’s neighbors in New Haven, Connecticut, noted ten years later. “… it is unsafe for him to walk out from his home alone and consequently [he] is always attended by a young man … he [is] entirely incapacitated from performing any act without the aid and assistance of one or more persons.”

And yet despite his handicaps, Warner led a remarkable, eventful life after the Civil War.

“… the former soldier radiates cheerfulness and optimism as he sits on the veranda of his cosy [sic] little home and nods to passers-by or chats with his neighbors,” Warner’s hometown newspaper reported five decades after he was grievously wounded. “Life has been no sweet dream for Mr. [Warner], but he has made the best of it, and intends to enjoy things to the utmost for a good many years to come.”

Married with five children before the war, Warner fathered three more children with wife Catherine after he was discharged from the army on October 17, 1863. A frequent attendee at Grand Army of the Republic veterans’ events, Warner was a familiar figure for years in New Haven at Memorial Day parades and monument dedications.

"Life has been no sweet dream" for 
George Warner, his hometown newspaper
wrote five decades after he was
severely wounded at Gettysburg.
(Bob O'Brien collection) 

At the dedication of the 20th Connecticut monument in Gettysburg on July 3, 1885, Warner was given the honor of raising a huge American flag from atop the monument near the crest of Culp’s Hill, about 300 yards from where he was terribly wounded 22 years earlier. A special pulley was constructed that allowed him to do the honors by simply moving backward with a rope tied around his waist. Afterward, Warner, wearing a regimental ribbon and a bowler hat and sitting atop a boulder near the monument, posed with his comrades for an image shot by renowned Gettysburg battlefield photographer William Tipton.

Nearly two years later, on June 17, 1887, Warner was called upon to unveil one of the four statues at the base of the 110-foot Soldiers and Sailors monument at the summit of East Rock Park in New Haven. In one of the grandest events in the city’s history, thousands marched on a hot, hazy day from the center of town to East Rock, 400 feet above New Haven and Long Island Sound. “The crowd surged where it pleased,” the New Haven Morning News reported. “Its very magnitude made it omnipotent.”

A huge procession that included hundreds of veterans crossed a bridge and wound its way to the park, where merchants were “busy as bees” selling ice cream and beer. “The river of moving blue coats, brass buttons and the various uniforms of the civic societies presented a magnificent appearance …,” another local newspaper reported. While cannons of three warships offshore boomed in celebration, many in the crowd at East Rock, estimated by some at 100,000, sought shade in the woods. At about 2 p.m., former Union generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan were in attendance as Warner, again using a special pulley and a rope, remarkably removed the drapery on the statue with his teeth.

On June 16, 1905, at the dedication of a Civil War monument on New Haven's Broadway, near Yale University, Warner used another special contraption that also allowed him to use his teeth to remove a flag to unveil the 33-foot granite monument. Afterward, he presented in his clenched teeth a small American flag to Gen. Edwin Greeley, a former 10th Connecticut colonel.

In the decades after the war, Warner’s son, William, frequently accompanied him, helping him scratch out a living selling books and paying the trolley fare for his armless father. Warner also peddled carte de visites of himself -- in one he looks forlorn, empty sleeves of a coat dangling by his side, while in another George sits with his five children and his wife, who holds a cannon ball. A device attached to doors in Warner’s three-story house on Edgewood Street, near the Yale Bowl in New Haven, allowed the veteran to open them with his feet. In his later years, Warner sometimes rode the trolley alone (with the fare in his coat pocket for the conductor), played records on his phonograph and loved to play pinochle. Son Charles, a cabinet maker, built his father a box on which he could place his cards so he could easily point out which one he wanted to play with his stump.

JULY 3, 1885:: 20th Connecticut veterans at  dedication of their monument at Gettysburg.
Randy Bieler collection.  (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Born May 9, 1832 in Glastonbury, Connecticut, George was one of 10 children of Andrew and Phoebe Warner, who squeaked out a living as farmers. When he was 12, Warner was employed as a laborer on a local man’s huge farm along the Connecticut River, earning $12 a month – enough to purchase a cow as a present for his mother. (The family apparently sold the animal for a profit two years later.) After Warner’s father died, George, several of his siblings and his mother found employment in a cotton mill.

On August 5, 1862, Warner enlisted in the 20th Connecticut in Derby, leaving behind his wife and children in nearby Beacon Falls, where George was employed as a mill worker. “It was a sacrifice,” the New Haven Register reported in 1922, “but it showed the stuff of which the men of those hectic days were made.”

At Chancellorsville, Virginia, on May 2, 1863 -- the 20th Connecticut’s first battle of the war -- Warner and his comrades held a small trench at the foot of a hill. Union artillery was positioned to the rear of the regiment, near a patch of woods. When Rebels appeared at the top of a hill, the regiment was caught in a crossfire fire between the two armies, sending Warner and his comrades running for the lives into the woods “to keep from being cut to pieces.”

“I escaped unhurt,” Warner recalled years later, “but one piece of lead struck my knapsack and took it clear off my back. I lost all my little keepsakes, including a picture of my wife, but I couldn’t stop then.” Lt. Col.William Wooster, the 20th Connecticut’s commander, was among those who were captured.

Two months later at Gettysburg, Warner was terribly mangled when a fragment of an artillery shell fired from Federal batteries on Baltimore Pike or Powers Hill struck his right arm as the 20th Connecticut made its way up the south side of Culp’s Hill early on the morning of July 3, 1863. The regiment was attempting to re-capture earthworks it had constructed the previous day. The fragment severed the arm a few inches below Warner’s shoulder, shockingly carrying the limb several feet from him; another fragment, perhaps from the same round, struck the thirty-one-year-old private’s left arm and forearm, lacerating the soft parts badly and breaking bones. Warner also suffered severe flesh wounds on his scalp and left knee.

Post-war image of George and Catherine Warner and six of their children. 
Mrs. Warner holds a cannonball. (Bob O'Brien collection)

Incensed by the toll his army’s own artillery took on his men, Wooster, released by the Rebels after Chancellorsville, threatened to turn his regiment on the Union battery responsible. “He [Wooster] was not only required to keep the enemy in check, but encountered great difficulty, while resisting the enemy, in protecting himself against the fire of our own artillery, aimed partly over his command at the enemy in and near our intrenchments,” 1st Brigade commander Archibald L. McDougall of the 123rd New York recalled. “His greatest embarrassment was the farther he pushed the enemy the more directly he was placed under the fire of our own guns. Some of his men became severely wounded by our artillery fire.” Another officer threatened to personally shoot members of the battery responsible.

Circa-1910 image of Warner and his wife,
Catherine. (Courtesy Bob O'Brien)

An hour after he was wounded, Warner’s left arm was amputated by regimental surgeon J. Wadsworth Terry. Initially unaware that he had lost both arms, Warner soon came to a sober realization: "Why, surgeon, I've lost my right arm too," he told Terry. "I thought I had only lost my left!"

Nearly a month after his wounding, a Soldiers’ Aid Association volunteer observed Warner in a XII Corps hospital near Gettysburg, noting the private had “both arms off” and was also wounded in the legs, but was “apparently doing well.” On July 29, 1863, a doctor wrote that Warner’s condition was good and that he slept well and took long walks about the grounds of the hospital. His wounds, the doctor noted, were “quite open and discharging freely.” Three months later, at an army hospital in Philadelphia, a surgeon wrote the obvious: “He is unfit for Invalid Corps.” Catherine traveled from Connecticut to escort her crippled husband home.

Not surprisingly, shortly after Warner applied for a pension in 1863, it was quickly granted. He received $8 a month in October 1863, with an increase to $25 a month in 1864, $50 a month in 1878 and later another increase to $100 a month in 1889. In 1918, Warner sought another increase, noting in a letter to the Bureau of Pensions that he had “been told that all Civil War veterans are getting an increase in pension and [I] would like to know if I benefit by it.” Already receiving the maximum allowed by Congress, he was denied more government aid.

“In the hospital, they treated me fine, too. I couldn’t have asked for anything better."

-- George Warner, recalling his treatment during the Civil War
Despite what the war did to him, Warner said he didn’t regret his service. “I was treated good and had plenty to eat all the time… although there wasn’t much strawberry shortcake,” he said shortly after his 90th birthday. “In the hospital, they treated me fine, too. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

Outliving his wife and five of his eight children, Warner died October 12, 1923. The 91-year-old veteran was laid to rest next to his wife in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, where he lived for fifty-eight years.

SOURCES:

-- George Warner pension file, National Archives and Records Administratoion, Washhington D.C.
-- Hartford Daily Courant, July 30, 1863
-- Hartford Courant, June 17, 1905
-- New Haven Morning News, June 18, 1887
-- New Haven Journal-Courier, May 26, 1981
-- New Haven Register, May 21, 1922
-- “Program For The Dedication of a Soldiers Monument, First Light Battery and the Sixth, Seventh and Tenth Connecticut Volunteers Monument Association”, 1905
-- The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1901
-- Storrs, John W., The Twentieth Connecticut, A Regimental History, Ansonia, Conn., The Press of the Naugatuck Valley Sentinel, 1886

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Decades after Battle of Bentonville, a Connecticut vet suffers

In a photo probably taken shortly after the Civil War, Jesse Rice, a private in the
 20th Connecticut, poses in the studio of a photographer in New Haven, Conn.
 (Photo: Blogger's collection)

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On March 19, 1865, less than a month before Lee surrendered to Grant, Jesse Hull Rice suffered a gunshot wound to his right arm at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.). The 20th Connecticut private's limb was amputated nearly two months later, but the surgeon apparently botched the operation, leaving Rice with a painful, lasting reminder of his 38 months in the Union Army.

After the war, Rice twice tried to be outfitted for an artificial arm, but a physician wrote it was not possible “for reason that end of bone is so sharp & and whole stump is so painful." The veteran had trouble sleeping because of the amputation.

A New Haven, Conn., physician noted a litany of maladies for Rice, all largely due to the “nervous shock from loss of [the] arm and the disadvantage to which this loss put him.”  Rice, only 53 at the time, suffered from “severe constipation,” dizziness, a double hernia, frequent attacks of diabetes, “great pain in defecation,” and an “inability to properly digest food,” among other ailments. Once weighing about 185 pounds, Rice only had 140 pounds on his 5-foot-11 frame.

“His condition in a general way is as bad as it could be and but for a strong will and superior intellect he would be absolutely helpless,” wrote a doctor, adding, “If  [Rice] long survives it must be through constant and daily medical attention and judicious nursing.”

In 1895, another doctor wrote in a pension affidavit for Rice that his patient suffered from attacks of severe retching and vomiting that would continue for two or three days and then recur a day or two later. “It appears to have become a chronic condition for him,” noted the physician, who  attributed Rice’s awful health to his war wound.

In a post-war diary in which he recorded the weather, deaths in the neighborhood, the assassination of President Garfield and the butchering of his 428-pound hog, Rice barely made mention of the Civil War. Perhaps it was just easier to forget.

“18 years since Bentonville,” the married farmer simply wrote in 1883 on the anniversary of his wounding.

When he died in 1915 at 71, Rice, who lived in Cheshire, Conn., was on government rolls for a $55-a-month war pension.

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

SOURCES:

-- Jesse Rice pension file, National Archives and Records Service, Washington D.C.
-- Jesse Rice diary, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn.

'Everyone feels sad': Connecticut captain died in freak accident

 20th Connecticut Captain Henry C. Smith.  (Connecticut State Library)

Adapted from my latest book, Hidden History of Connecticut Union Soldiers. E-mail me here for information on how to purchase an autographed copy.
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Bundled up during a blizzard, Henry Smith was oblivious to the danger as he walked down a path near the camp of the 20th Connecticut in Stafford Courthouse, Va., on Jan. 28, 1863. In the process of cutting down a tree, soldiers in the regiment tried to alert the 20th Connecticut captain, but they were too late. As the tree tumbled to the ground, a heavy limb struck the 25-year-old officer from Hartford squarely in the chin, breaking his neck and killing him instantly.

Smith’s demise made an already gloomy day “much more gloomy,” according to another soldier in the regiment. “Not one hour before he was talking with the Boys,” Corp. Albert Platts recalled, “and now he is gone. He was beloved by all. Everyone feels sad.”

“... The best and only tribute which his fellow officers could now pay,” Lt. Col Philo Buckingham wrote, “was to gather up his remains and forward them to his sorrow-stricken wife … that he might be buried among friends, and not in the land of the stranger." An assistant foreman at Neptune Engine Co. No. 2 in Hartford, Smith also was survived by a one-year-old son.

At Smith’s funeral service at Hartford’s St. Paul Church on Feb. 3, 1863, the main aisle was reserved for mourners and firemen. After the service, the officer’s sword and photograph were taken from atop the coffin and the lid was removed so firemen and other friends could get one last look at Smith. “The mark of the death blow was plainly visible upon the face of the deceased,” the Hartford Courant reported the next day. “Otherwise it looked quite natural.”

A close-up of the engraving on Smith's sword, which,  according to family lore, was bent
 along with the scabbard by the falling limb that killed the captain.
(Courtesy of Smith descendant)

SOURCES:

20th Corp. Albert Platts letter to parents, January 31, 1863, The Totoket Historical Society, Branford, Conn.

Storrs, John Whiting, The Twentieth Connecticut, A Regiment History. Ansonia, CT: Press of the Naugatuck Valley Sentinel, 1888, Page 278

Five neat soldier discoveries at the National Archives

A trip to the National Archives in Washington is often like a trip to Las Vegas. You "bet" big, hoping the soldiers' pension files you pull during a two-day stay have an outstanding payoff, perhaps a letter from a soldier documenting his battle experience or a note from father to son about army life in the Deep South. Your time is limited -- the Archives is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week --  so you want to make the most of your stay. In the end, it's often a crap shoot, with some files revealing little to nothing about a soldier's war experience or post-war life. A recent research trip to the massive building not far from the White House yielded lots of great info. Here are five cool things I found:

1. AN AMPUTEE'S TINTYPE IMAGE

A private in the 20th Connecticut from Cheshire, Jesse Rice suffered the amputation of his right arm after he was shot at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.) on March 19, 1865, in the last stages of the war. "His most serious difficulty at the present time," a doctor noted in Rice's pension claim, "consists of a severe form of nervous irritability produced by the condition of the stump of the right arm."

2. THREE-PAGE LETTER IN GERMAN

Four days before he was wounded at the siege of Petersburg (Va.) on August 16, 1864, 20-year-old August Freitag wrote a letter in German to his parents in Collinsville, Conn. “One must always pay attention and make sure that the ink jar is not taken out of his hand by a bombshell,” he complained, “because, large or small, the balls are whistling through here day and night.” He died of his wounds on August 26 at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, only nine months after Henry and Rosa Freitag went with their son to Hartford for his enlistment in the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery. 

3. ENVELOPE ADDRESSED TO A FATHER

While camped near steamy New Orleans with his 12th Connecticut comrades, 19-year-old Private Howard Hale delighted in writing long letters to his father, who lived 1,500 miles away in Collinsville, Conn., and missed his oldest son desperately. Howard sent $35 home  to his father in this envelope. On April 13, 1863, Hale was mortally wounded in the abdomen at the Battle of Fort Bisland (La.) and died two days later.

4. EVIDENCE OF A PRIVATE'S PAIN

On May 2, 1863, Private Michael McMahon, an Irish-born soldier in the 14th Connecticut, was wounded in the left side at the Battle of Chancellorsville (Va.) and hospitalized for 10 months. In an application for a pension, it was also noted that he was shot in the belt plate, resulting in a rupture that apparently plagued him the rest of his life. 

5. A SOLDIER'S SIGNATURE

Milo Freeland was a private in the 54th Massachusetts, the famed black regiment whose experience was brilliantly told in the movie "Glory." After the war, he moved with his wife and children from Massachusetts to East Canaan, Conn., where he died of pneumonia in 1883. Believed to be the first black soldier to enlist in the Union army, he was only 43.

Connecticut's Photographic 'Album of the Dead'



Left: Captain Charles Tennant of the 16th Connecticut was mortally wounded in battle
near Suffolk, Va., in 1864. Captain Henry C. Smith of the 20th Connecticut was
 killed by a falling tree. (Photos: Connecticut State Library archive)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Private William T. Loomis died a gruesome death, crushed by railroad cars near Alexandria, Va.

Private Charles Comstock met his demise on the Washington turnpike, shot by a civilian "residing near the road."

Captain Charles Tennant and Lieutenant Charles Greenleaf were mortally wounded in battle, each dying far from their homes in Hartford.

Sergeant George H. Marsh was killed by the concussion of a Rebel artillery shell.

Captain Henry C. Smith was the victim of a falling tree.

Photographs of each of these soldiers appear in a small, fragile Civil War-era album, its front cover barely attached, found in the Connecticut State Library archives. Clearly, this is no ordinary family photo album. Rather, it's an “Album Of The Dead” -- an effort by its long-ago owner, whose name is lost to history, to memorialize a few of the more than 5,000 soldiers from Connecticut who died during the Civil War. A short newspaper account of each man's demise is pasted under many of the images, mostly carte de visites. Poems about death and remembrance are glued inside the front and back covers.

Oh comrades dead, whose spirits bright

Are gazing from the skies above

You've bravely done your deeds of might

Gaze down upon your work of love

The millions, whom ye freedom gave,

Hold equal rights eternal lease;

The land that you have died to save

Rests in the glorious light of peace

Comrades, each year these graves will still increase

And every year our numbers will be less

Until in distant times, with tottering knees,

The last survivors, bent with age's distress

Will throw a handful of the springday flowers

Upon our graves -- while yet they may --

But the memory of these deeds of ours

Will never, never, pass away!

Photos of dead soldiers from Connecticut are found in this tattered, old photo album in the 
Connecticut State Library archives.

During the Civil War, a constant drumbeat of death was reported in Connecticut newspapers, especially the Hartford Courant and Hartford Evening Press. Usually under the headline "Military Items," the Courant published reports of funerals and lengthy lists of the dead and wounded after major battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Drewry’s Bluff. Connecticut soldiers died of disease, wounds suffered in battle or, in the case of William T. Loomis of Hartford, by accident.

"Young Loomis was an excellent soldier and was much liked by the members of his company," notes the blurb under the album image of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery soldier, who was killed Jan. 28, 1863. Only 23 years old, he was stationed at Fort Blenker, one of the many defensive fortifications ringing Washington.

A little more than four months later, Loomis’ Company A tentmate, Charles Comstock, suffered the same fate. He was killed instantly when he was shot by an Alexandria civilian named Isaac Welburn, who was quickly arrested by military authorities. Whether by accident or malice, the circumstances of Comstock’s death are unknown. “The company have thus been deprived of two of their much loved friends,” the Courant reported, “and fellow soldiers who deeply mourn their loss.” (1)

When the prayer was said, and the requiem played;

In the bosom of earth the warrior laid,

About the spot the soldiers pressed

Where the bones of their comrades were put to rest

And eyes grew dim, and tongues were mute,

As they fired their thrice farewell salute,

That meed was his due, and they paid the "brave,"

And then left him alone in his soldier grave

After he was wounded the right leg in battle near Suffolk, Va., Charles Tennant “expressed a strong desire to see his mother,” who traveled from Hartford to Fortress Monroe  on the southern tip of Virginia peninsula, where her son’s health was rapidly failing. The young man's wound had been probed up to 8 1/2 inches, but the bullet couldn't be found. (2) Tennant, who replaced Samuel Brown as captain of Company D of the 16th Connecticut after Brown was killed at Antietam, died May 24, 1863. His church service in Hartford was so well attended – 50 soldiers arrived on the noon train from Knight Hospital in New Haven -- that many were forced to stand outside.

“There has not been a burial in this city since the war began of one of its heroes,” the Courant reported. “which called out a larger number of people than were attended on this occasion.” (3) Under Tennant’s image in the photo album is a crinkled report, brown with age, of his death. "He was but about 23 years of age,” it notes, “and was a highly esteemed member of the North Baptist church."

Left: Private Charles Comstock of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery was killed
by a civilian near Alexandria, Va. Charles Greenleaf, a lieutenant in the 5th New York
Cavalry, was mortally wounded at Kearneyville, W.Va. He was from Hartford.
(Photos: Connecticut State Library archives)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Enlisting on April 18, 1861, as a private in the 1st Connecticut, Charles Greenleaf was among the first from the state to join the Union army. After his three-month term of service elapsed, he re-enlisted in a cavalry unit and was later transferred to the 5th New York Cavalry, also known as the Ira Harris Guard. Three days after Antietam, Greenleaf viewed the horrors of that battlefield. “On our way here we marched through that part of the field where the right wing fought,” he wrote in a letter home on Sept. 20, 1862. “ I have been in the service a year but I never knew what war meant till to day. All along both sides of the road for two miles dead rebels lay piled up like cord wood. They have lain there two days in the sun and are all bloated.... I was also up to one of the hospitals and saw over a hundred arms and legs in the yard." (4)

A little more than two years later, Greenleaf also became part of the grim Civil War body count. Wounded in a skirmish near Kearneyville, W.Va., the 22-year-old soldier died at U.S. General Hospital in Sandy Hook, Md.., on Aug. 27, 1864. "The funeral of Lieut. Greenleaf will take place from the residence of his father, Henry Greenleaf, on North Main street to-morrow (Sunday) at 1 o'clock," the newspaper account beneath his photo notes.

May heaven spread amaranths over each grave

Or plant these some evergreen tree;

May corals grow round and anemones wave

Where they’re lying down in a deep sea

May billows dash lightly against the lone shore,

And sing a low, mournful refrain;

May flowers of spring-time bloom evermore

And be wet by the tears of the rain

Left: William T. Loomis, a private in the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery, was killed in
a railroad accident near Alexandria, Va. George Marsh, a sergeant in the 8th Connecticut,
was killed at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.
(Photos: Connecticut State Library archives)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

If he had to meet his maker, Captain Henry C. Smith, a member of the Hartford Fire Department before the war, probably would have preferred a glorious death in battle. Never in his dreams could the 20th Connecticut soldier have expected what happened to him on Jan. 28, 1863, while camped near Stafford Court House, Va.  A tree fell on him, killing the man whom "everyone with the regiment loved and respected."

"A spirit of gloom was thrown over all by the sudden death of Captain Henry C. Smith of Co. C.," according to a regimental history. "He was a genial companion, a devoted friend, a thorough soldier, and his loss was severely felt by all. ... The best and only tribute which his fellow officers could now pay was to gather up his remains and forward them to his sorrow-stricken wife and children that he might be buried among friends, and not in the land of the stranger." (5)

Ill but determined to fight, George Marsh was resting about sunrise on Sept. 17, 1862, as the 8th Connecticut prepared for battle. Suddenly, Rebel artillery across Antietam Creek lobbed three solid shots into the regiment, wounding four and killing three -- including Marsh.

"He was lying on the ground when a ball entered the ground in front of him and came out of the earth a few feet from where he lay," notes the newspaper account below his photo in the "Album Of The Dead." "The concussion caused his death, as he was not hit by anything."

In late September, Marsh's brother-in-law traveled to the battlefield to retrieve George's remains. Marsh's body arrived back in Hartford on Sept. 30, and a funeral service was held at his father's residence at 77 Main Street at 3 p.m. (6)

"He died a trusty soldier with a spotless reputation," a post-war history noted about Marsh, one of scores of Connecticut victims at the Battle of Antietam. (7)

(1) Hartford Courant, March 9, 1863, Page 2
(2) Hartford Courant, May 23, 1863, Page 2.
(3) Hartford Courant, May 29, 1863, Page 2
(4) Charles Henry Greenleaf letters, Civil War Manuscripts Project, Connecticut Historical Society
(5) The Twentieth Connecticut, A Regiment History, John Whiting Storrs, Ansonia, Conn, Press of the Naugatuck Valley Sentinel, 1888, Page 278
(6) Hartford Courant, Sept. 29, 1862, Page 2
(7) The Military and Civil History of Connecticut: The War of 1861-1865, W.A. Croffut and John M. Morris, Ledyard Bill, New York, 1868

Faces of the Civil War: George Warner (continued)

Double-amputee George Warner,  his wife and six of his children pose for a photo, probably
in the early 1870s. Right, Warner and his wife, Catherine, in old age. Bottom right: Headline
 in New Haven Sunday Register noting Warner's death in 1923. (Photos courtesy Bob O'Brien)

Catherine Warner holds her baby and
a cannonball.

Former New Haven (Conn.) prosecutor Bob O'Brien, now retired, has really dug into the remarkable story of George Warner, a private in the 20th Connecticut, who lost both his arms to friendly fire at Culp's Hill at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. O'Brien kindly supplied the two photos above, the one on the left showing Warner posing with his wife and young children and the other showing the double amputee with his wife, Catherine, probably about 1910. In the photo at left, Catherine holds baby Ruby and a cannonball that, according to O'Brien, may have been of the type that severely disfigured her husband. After the Civil War, the enterprising Warner supported his family in part by selling carte de visites of himself. Interestingly, Warner outlived five of his eight children and his wife, who died in 1913. The old soldier, who unveiled two Civil War monuments using his teeth, died in 1923 at age 92. He's buried in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven.

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FACES OF THE CIVIL WAR: Read my extensive thread.

Faces of the Civil War: Private George Warner

Private George Warner of the 20th Connecticut lost both his arms to friendly fire at Gettysburg.
(Photo courtesy Mary Falvey via Connecticut State Library George Washburn Collection)

Empty sleeves of his coat dangling by his side, a forlorn George Washington Warner posed for this photograph several years after he was discharged from the Union army because of disability on Oct. 17, 1863.

The carte de visite image, taken in Henry Peck's studio in New Haven, is compelling, disturbing, shocking -- and a sad reminder of  a civil war that not only killed at least 620,000 Americans but also maimed thousands of others. Warner's inspiring story has been told often over the years, including here, here, here and most recently here. But until Connecticut Civil War researcher Mary Falvey, a friend of the blog, e-mailed me the photograph of Warner, I knew nothing about the double-amputee from Bethany, Conn.

Colonel William Wooster

A 31-year-old private in the 20th Connecticut, Warner had his arm blown off by friendly artillery fire on Culp's Hill at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. His other arm, probably shattered by the same shell, was amputated an hour later. As the story goes, 20th Connecticut colonel William Wooster was so incensed by the incident that he threatened to turn his regiment on the Union artillery battery responsible for maiming Warner.

According to the 20th Connecticut regimental history, Warner was unaware that he had lost both arms until he came under the care of a Surgeon J. Wadsworth Terry. "Why, surgeon, I've lost my right arm too," he said. "I thought I had only lost my left!"

A report in Warner's pension file nearly a month after the battle provides interesting details:

July 29th: General condition good. Walks about the grounds. Patient was wounded July 3. Was sitting at the time by a tree when a shell burst directly over him. One fragment struck the right arm a few inches below the shoulder -- entirely severing it from the body and carrying it several feet from him.The shell was from a Federal Battery. Another fragment struck the left unit and forearm lacerating the soft parts badly and breaking the bones. Amputation made an hour after receipt of injury. The wounds at this date quite open and discharging freely.

20th Connecticut monument dedication at Gettysburg on July 3, 1885. Can you find
 George Warner? CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. (Photo courtesy Bob O'Brien)

George Warner, sitting on rock, in close-up of photo of 20th Connecticut monument
dedication. (Photo courtesy Bob O'Brien.)

At the dedication of the 20th Connecticut monument in Gettysburg on July 3, 1885, Warner, well liked by his war comrades, was given the task of raising the veil from the monument. A special pulley was constructed that allowed him to do the honors by simply moving backward with a rope tied around his waist. Warner was called upon to do the unveiling honors again for the dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors monument in East Rock Park in New Haven on June 17, 1887. A crowd of perhaps 175,000 people, including Civil War heroes William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, looked on as Warner, again using a special pulley and a rope, removed the drapery covering the monument ... with his teeth!

Married with five children before the war, Warner fathered three more children after he was discharged from the army. After his death at age 92 on Oct. 12, 1923, the New Haven Sunday Register ran a front-page story under a large headline and photo of the old soldier.

"On account of the loss of his arms and the handicap that he suffered, the government allowed him a pension of sufficient amount to enable him to have such service and comforts and conveniences that his crippled condition demanded," the newspaper obituary noted. "He was a man of soldierly appearance and was a familiar figure for many years since the civil war days in Memorial Day parades ..."

This front-page headline in the New Haven Sunday Register noted Warner's death in 1923.