Podcast: Dr. Emilie Amt on 'Black Antietam'

In Episode 8 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," professor emeritus and author Dr. Emilie Amt joins co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan for a discusssion about her book, Black Antietam: African Americans and the Civil War in Sharpsburg. In her book, the experiences of Black Americans — enslaved and free — come to life in vivid detail, often in their own words. You may purchase Amt's book here. Read her blog here.

A native of Maryland, Amt is an emeritus professor of history. From 1998 to 2021. she held the Hildegarde Pilgram Chair of History at Hood College in Frederick, Md. She earned a B.A. in medieval studies from Swarthmore College and a D.Phil. in modern history from Oxford University.

Furniture with Antietam tie purchased by Hartford museum

The "Antietam" secretary in Harold Gordon's living room.

The front of the secretary includes the word "Antietam" and the date of the battle.

John Bingham (left) was killed at Antietam. 
His brother, Wells,  survived. 
 (Photos courtesy Military Historical Image Bank)

UPDATE: The Antietam secretary in this post was exposed in 2018 as a forgery.

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Three years ago, I visited a Massachusetts antiques dealer named Harold Gordon, who loved to talk about the Civil War and one of his recent purchases: a Victorian-era secretary with a direct tie to the Battle of Antietam. The unique piece of furniture was a gift from 16th Connecticut veterans to Wells Bingham in memory of his 17-year-old brother, John, a private in the regiment who was killed in the battle. Also a private in the 16th Connecticut, Wells survived Antietam unscathed physically.

In his cramped living room that day, Harold delighted in showing me details of the 8-foot antique secretary -- the beautiful clock atop it that includes the words "The Union Preserved" near the base; a small tin on the front that may have held a piece of the 16th Connecticut regimental flag that was at Antietam and a door that when opened played "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on a music box. Spelled out in cattle bone on the front of the one-of-a-kind gift are the words "Antietam" and "Sept. 17, 1862," as well as John F. Bingham's name.

Does this case on the front of the secretary
 hold a piece of the 16th Connecticut flag 
that was at Antietam? 

Only 16 at Antietam, Wells wrote of the news of his brother's death in a heart-rending, seven-page letter to his father that I discovered in the Antietam National Battlefield Library months after I visited with Harold. It was the first letter I saw in a stack of transcripts and other copies of letters from Connecticut soldiers about Antietam.  "John, poor, poor John, is no more," Wells wrote about his brother's death to Elisha Bingham in East Haddam, Conn. Added the teenager: "You can imagine my fealings [sic] better than I can describe them." I wrote about the Bingham brothers and the secretary in my book, Connecticut Yankees at Antietam.

Today, the story of the secretary came full circle for me when a reader of the blog pointed out that it had been purchased by Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum Museum from a Woodbridge, Conn., antiques dealer, who had purchased it from Gordon. I have no idea what the museum, which plans to display the secretary this summer, paid for it, but the asking price at a winter antiques show in New York was $375,000. Not a bad chunk of change.  I've lost touch with Harold since we inspected the 16th Connecticut flag at the Hall of Flags at the State Capitol Building in Hartford nearly two years ago during our small-time investigative effort to solve the mystery of whether a piece of it really was in the tin on his secretary. (Don't descend into that deep rabbit hole.) I imagine that he's quite pleased that the amazing piece of folk art that once dominated his living room will soon be seen by a much wider audience in the state where the Bingham brothers' story began.

Harold Gordon (right) inspects the 16th Connecticut flag at the Hall of Flags
 at the State Capitol Building in Hartford.

Antietam Up Close: President Lincoln visits George McClellan

 Acclaimed photographer Alexander Gardner took this famous image of 
President Lincoln's meeting with General George McClellan on  Oct. 4, 1862.
 (Library of Congress collection)

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The detail is remarkable in this Alexander Gardner glass-plate image of Abraham Lincoln and General George McClellan, taken during the president's visit near the Antietam battlefield in early October 1862. McClellan's tent was pitched on a hillside overlooking what today is Mills Road, about two miles from Burnside Bridge. (The site was first identified by Antietam expert and historian Dennis Frye.) A small home occupies the present-day site. (Click on all images to enlarge, and click here for the Antietam Up Close series on my blog.)

In this enlargement of Gardner's photograph, even the wick of a candle can be seen next to the top hat of the president, who nearly 18 months into the Civil War looks weary of it all ....

... on the early fall day, the president wore gloves ...

...meanwhile, on a desk next to the general, a hilt of a sword and a butt of a pistol are visible. On McClellan's uniform, stars are clearly seen on his shoulder board. (And so are two cracks in the glass-plate image.) ...

... and on the ground next to Lincoln lies a trophy of war, one of 39 Rebel flags captured at the  Battle of Antietam.

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

Antietam: A small piece of history returns to Sharpsburg

Private Horace Lay lay wounded in the German Reformed Church after the
Battle of Antietam. This envelope, part of my collection, was addressed to Lay in November 1862.

The wood floors beneath the carpeting creaked and groaned as I walked alone into the sanctuary of the Christ Reformed Church on a raw, rainy December afternoon. I have visited this small brick building on Main Street in Sharpsburg, Md., several times over the past three years, each time struggling to imagine the pain and suffering that took place here after the Battle of Antietam 151 years ago.

In October 1862, Irish-born surgeon Edward McDonnell cared for many of the horribly wounded men in this building, then known as the German Reformed Church. Later, he detailed in a casebook the treatment of 16 wounded men, including Horace Lay, a married father of an 11-year-old son named Horace Jr. A private in the 16th Connecticut, Lay suffered from wounds in both legs and his left femur was fractured. "Patient declining and must die unless … saved by an amputation,” McDonnell wrote in the casebook about Lay on Oct. 11, 1862. “His thigh being quite small, would seem to invite the knife, but I am sick today myself and cannot pursue active treatment."

Later, Lay presumably had his left leg amputated, but he died on Nov. 16, 1862, with his wife Charlotte by his side. Recently, I acquired an envelope, postmarked Nov. 2, 1862, that was addressed to Lay, perhaps by Charlotte before she ventured on an agonizing journey from Connecticut to Sharpsburg. Today, probably for the first time in 151 years, that envelope returned to the church where the 36-year-old shoemaker from Hartford breathed his last.

Antietam: Private Nelson Snow 'was brave enough to die'

A memorial and state-issued marker for 16th Connecticut Private Nelson Snow
in West Suffield (Conn.) Cemetery.

Nelson Snow, a 23-year-old private in Company D of the 16th Connecticut, was sick several days before the Battle of Antietam, but his illness didn't keep him from fighting. "[Snow] went into the fight for fear someone would call him a coward," wrote William Relyea, a comrade in Company D. "He was brave enough to die." (1) Snow, from Enfield, and 42 other 16th Connecticut soldiers were killed in John Otto's 40-acre cornfield on Sept. 17, 1862.

With the exception of Captain Newton Manross, who was killed early in the regiment’s fight and carried to the rear, the dead of the 16th Connecticut were interred near a large tree on the Otto farm that 16th Connecticut adjutant John Burnham marked on all sides. Snow was buried on the north side of that tree with his Company D comrades: corporals Horace Warner of Suffield and Michael Grace of Enfield and Private George Allen, also of Suffield. Privates Henry Aldrich of Bristol, John Bingham of East Haddam and Theodore DeMarrs of Cromwell and Sergeant Wadsworth Washburn of Berlin were also buried in the large trench. (Click here for my downloadable Excel spreadsheet of Connecticut Antietam deaths.)

"I have been particular to mention the precise locality of each (body)," Burnham wrote days after the battle, "so that in the event of the signs being displaced by the elements or otherwise, they may be found; and I trust that anyone who comes to the spot will be very particular and disturb none but those of whom they are in search.” (2) It's unknown, however, whether Snow's remains were returned to the state or re-buried in Antietam National Cemetery.

A state-issued marker and a memorial for Snow and his brother are in West Suffield (Conn.) Cemetery. Orlando Snow, also a private in the 16th Connecticut, was captured at Plymouth, N.C.., in April 1864 and died at Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp on Nov. 17, 1864. He's buried there, probably under a marker that reads "Unknown."

(1) Relyea, William Henry. “The History of the 16th Connecticut Volunteers,” MS 72782, Connecticut Historical Society
(2) Hartford Courant, Sept. 30, 1862

State-issued markers for brothers Orlando and Nelson Snow. It's unclear whether
the soldiers' remains were returned to Connecticut.

Isaac Rodman: Antietam hero's neglected final resting place

Brigadier General Isaac Rodman's grave marker is lost in the weed-choked family 
cemetery in Peace Dale, R.I. The tall memorial for Rodman, who was
mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam, appears in the background.
 (CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

The approach to the cemetery where Rodman is buried.

I.P.R, initials for Isaac Peace Rodman, on his gravestone among the weeds.

I placed a shiny penny, Lincoln side up, on Isaac Rodman's memorial today.

The date Rodman suffered his mortal wound at Antietam is incorrect on his monument.
He was mortally wounded in the left breast on Sept. 17, 1862. He died 13 days later in
 a Sharpsburg field hospital with his wife, Sally, by his side.

Isaac Rodman was only 40 years old when he died.

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Days after Brigadier General Isaac Peace Rodman died from a minie ball wound suffered at the Battle of Antietam, his body was returned to his native Rhode Island, where he was given a hero's funeral. On Friday, Oct. 3, 1862, flags in Providence were at half-mast and business in the state capital "ceased its harsh and discordant hum" as citizens mourned the highest-ranking officer from the state to die during the Civil War. A funeral service for the married father of six children was held at the State House, the first time it had been used for such a purpose.

Thousands viewed Rodman's body as he lay in state in the hall of the House of Representatives under a canopy of black and white drapery and an American flag. Evergreens and flowers covered the metallic casket that was inscribed with Rodman's age ("40 years, 1 month, and 16 days") and upon which rested the general's cap, sword and belt.

"Our country mourns his loss," an inscription on the north side of the hall read. Shields that included the names of all the battles Rodman participated in -- Bull Run, Roanoke, Fort Macon, Newbern and Antietam -- also adorned the hall.

Later that weekend, Rodman's coffin, escorted by the Pettaquamscutt Light Infantry and Narragansett Guards, was placed on a train bound for the general's hometown of South Kingstown, 35 miles south of Providence. At the railroad stop in South Kingstown, a half-mile procession of carriages and people on foot escorted Rodman's casket, which was covered with flowers and an American flag, to the Union general's house.

At Rocky Hill that Sunday morning, "the business acquaintances of the deceased, his friends and neighbors for miles around, came pouring in to mingle their tears of sympathy with those of the bereaved family." In all, nearly 1,500 people paid respects to the man who before the war ran a textile mill with his brother in South Kingstown.

In the afternoon, mourners gathered at the small Rodman family cemetery atop a hill in Peace Dale to bid him a final farewell. "Here, at the mouth of this opening grave, a voice is addressed to us which we must heed," a reverend reminded those who attended. "To this we all are coming. Dust to dust." Three volleys were fired over the casket before it was covered by earth that fall day, the sharp reports undoubtedly heard less than a mile away in the center of town.


"He is rather to be envied than pitied," an account of his funeral noted. "We have no further solicitude for him. No accident can now tarnish his fame. No temptation can assail human nature at its weak point. The seal of finished virtue is set upon him. Happy is he, and he alone, who has begun, continued and finished his course in virtue. As a Christian patriot, he has done his appointed work, and it now becomes a part of our national history."

Sadly, Rodman's final resting place today is in a state of neglect. (See my interactive panorama below.) Once surrounded by open pasture land, the small cemetery is now an ugly island bordered by a large, and noisy, sand and gravel operation. Weeds, briars and poison ivy choke the small plot of land that is surrounded by a thick, 2 1/2-foot stone wall. Many markers are toppled or broken. The general's gravestone, masked by vegetation, is simply marked with raised initials "I.P.R." On Wednesday, a tipped-over flower pot with a U.S. flag and an old, metal Grand Army of the Republic marker lay in front of a tall family memorial for Rodman. "His country called him," the inscription on it reads, "and for her he died."

UPDATE: The owner of the property said he will have his employees clean up the cemetery, according to this Providence Journal story.

Source: The Narragansett Times, Oct. 10, 1862.

                    Click on image for full-screen interactive panorama of Rodman cemetery.

Antietam: He aimed to 'save this land from misery and woe'

Corporal William Secor of the 2nd Vermont was mortally wounded at the 
Battle of Antietam. Buried in Clifton Park Village Cemetery in Halfmoon, N.Y., 
he died on Sept. 18, 1862.  The death date on the marker is incorrect. 
(Photo: David Whitaker)

William Secor and his identification disc.
(Photos courtesy Richard Clem)

Twenty-two years ago, longtime relic hunter Richard Clem of Hagerstown, Md., unearthed a small, brass identification disc about the thickness of a quarter in the shadow of a huge tree just north of Antietam battlefield. The rare Civil War relic turned into an obsession for Clem, who spent years researching the story of its original owner, Corporal William Secor of the 2nd Vermont. Mortally wounded near Bloody Lane, Secor died a day after the battle, on Sept. 18, 1862. He was the only member of his regiment to die at Antietam. Ten days after 21-year-old William's death, Lieutenant E.O. Cole of the 2nd Vermont broke the awful news to William's stepfather back in New York:

Dear Sir
It becomes my painful duty to inform you of the death of Corporal William Secor, Co. A. Vt. Vols. He was wounded in the battle of Antietam on the 17th and died on the 18th day of September. He was buried on the Smith farm near Sharpsburg. At the time he was wounded he was carrying the Colors of his Regt. Which position he had occupied for some time. He had many friends in his Regt. I saw the Chaplain that was with him in his last hours, and he said that it might be of consolation to his friends to know that he lived with a hope in Christ and was resigned to his fate. As a soldier, there was none better. He was always ready and willing. He had some personal property by him at the time of his death, a Testament, money and a diary, besides the things he had in his knapsack. They are at your disposal.

Secor's remains were returned to New York, where today he lies buried in Clifton Park Village Cemetery in rural Halfmoon, N.Y., about 40 miles west of Bennington, Vt. William, an apprentice to a carriage maker according to the 1860 U.S. census, had enlisted there on May 7, 1861. "I left my home and friends to battle with the foe," the words on his gravestone read, "to save this land from misery and woe." My thanks to friend of the blog Dave Whitaker, who helped complete this story for me by sharing the image above of Secor's final resting place.

Antietam: Private Henry Tracy found his wounded friend 'as white as marble' at German Reform Church hospital

The grave in Enfield, Conn.., of Henry Tracy. Right, Tracy in a  post-war image in a newspaper.

The stories of many who witnessed or fought in the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, have been pushed deep into the shadows of history, in many cases waiting to be uncovered in musty recesses of state libraries, archives, historical societies or family attics. One such story is that of  Henry Fitch Tracy, whose name popped up repeatedly during research for my book, "Connecticut Yankees at Antietam." This afternoon, I finally tracked down Tracy's final resting place in Connecticut. An old flower arrangement and a veterans marker, minus the American flag, lay next to the hollow zinc family monument near the graves of other Civil War veterans. Information on Tracy's life remains sketchy, but one incident at Antietam involving him is documented.

A private in Company C of the 16th Connecticut, Tracy was detailed to serve as a nurse after Antietam. The 24-year-old soldier, who missed the battle with a severe case of sunstroke, had already seen plenty of blood and gore as a member of a burial party after the fighting at South Mountain three days earlier. Tracy was stunned when his close friend, John Loveland of Company C, was brought to John Otto’s barn at Antietam with a gruesome battlefield wound: a fractured femur protruding two or three inches from his left leg, between the knee and hip.

Because Loveland was too weak from blood loss and exposure, surgeons would not dare risk performing an amputation, probably necessary to save the 23-year-old soldier’s life. In charge of 80 wounded men, including more than 40 from his regiment, Tracy gave special attention to his friend, a married man who earned his living as a barber before he joined the army. Over the course of the next several months, Tracy remained busy caring for sick, wounded and broken men.

Henry M. Adams, a private in
the 16th Connecticut,
became "fast friends" with
  Henry Tracy
(Photo: U.S. Army Military
History Institute)

When Loveland was transferred to the German Reformed Church hospital on Main Street in Sharpsburg, Tracy was sent there to help care for the many wounded from his regiment. (See my interactive panorama of the inside of the church here.) As he approached Loveland’s bunk early one October morning more than a week after his friend's leg finally was amputated, he noticed his face was “as white as marble.”  (1) Carefully lifting the bed cover, he discovered Loveland’s sheets saturated with blood. Suddenly, a gusher of blood spurted two or three feet in the air, the grisly result of Loveland’s leg artery disintegrating. Tracy frantically pressed hard with his thumb on the artery to stop the flow of blood, but the effort was futile. Loveland died a short time later. (In a chapter in my book, you can read much more on Connecticut soldiers who died at the German Reformed Church.)

Tracy befriended at least one other wounded Connecticut soldier during his experience at Antietam: Henry M. Adams, a private in Company G of the 16th Connecticut. After the war, the men became "fast friends," according to an account in the Hartford Courant, and Tracy attended Adams' 75th  birthday party in 1915. (2)

A little more than four months after Antietam, Tracy left the horror of the Civil War behind. On a train trip with wounded men from Harpers Ferry to Philadelphia in December 1862, he suffered from exposure and work stress during a heavy snowstorm. A broken man by the time he reached Philadelphia, he suffered from chronic diarrhea and was placed in a hospital. Tracy was discharged from the Union army on Jan. 27, 1863.

Nearly 57 years after Antietam, on July 17, 1919, 81-year-old Henry F. Tracy died. With members of the local Grand Army of the Republic Post in attendance, he was laid to rest three days later in Hazardville Cemetery in Enfield, Conn.

(1) National Tribune, Oct. 18, 1888
(2) Hartford Courant, July 20, 1919, Page 5

A circa 1890s image by J.H. Wagoner of the German Reformed Church, a Union hospital
after the Battle of Antietam. Henry Tracy, a private in the 16th Connecticut,
served as a nurse here after the battle. PHOTO: Courtesy Stephen Recker.

Faces of the Civil War: Rebel surgeon William S. Parran

Mortally wounded at Antietam, Rebel doctor William Parran is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in 
Shepherdstown, W.Va., which was part of Virginia during the Civil War. 

Close-up of William Parran's gravestone. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

The wives of at least five Connecticut soldiers who died at Antietam were pregnant at the time of the battle. Of course, Southern families weren't immune to such awful tragedy either. Mary Virginia Parran, wife of Confederate doctor William Sellman Parran, was pregnant with the couple's second child when her husband was mortally wounded at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.

The son of a doctor, William Parran was mustered in to
the Confederate army as a captain on April 17, 1861.
(Photo: Museum of The Confederacy, Richmond, Va.)

From Barboursville, Va., Parran was mustered into the Confederate army as a captain in Company F in the 13th Virginia on April 17, 1862, five days after the Rebels bombarded Fort Sumter. He became ill, apparently from jaundice, and resigned his commission and was dropped from the regiment's rolls by late April 1862. The son of a doctor, Parran rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia as an assistant surgeon later that year, and by the time of Antietam served with Courtney’s Artillery Battalion. After the Rebels captured the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Parran was detached and sent to Sharpsburg. As the Union army neared a breakthrough at Bloody Lane, Parran is believed to have helped man a short-handed battery of Washington Artillery on the Piper Farm. Apparently mortally wounded during the action, the 27-year-old doctor was taken across the Potomac River to Shepherdstown, where he died later that night.

"He was never backward in offering and rendering services whenever and wherever he thought they were needed and would be accepted," a friend wrote about Parran in November 1862. "He lost his valuable life while nobly working at another's battery, to which he had offered his services. He was a tender and affectionate father, and left a fond and devoted wife and a darling little daughter to mourn his untimely death. May the widow's God be her God, and a father to her fatherless!"

Parran's son, William S. Parran II, was born on April 19, 1863. His father lies buried in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in Elmwood Cemetery, where more than 100 other Confederates who were killed or mortally wounded at Antietam are also interred.

"Dr. Parran was ever an affectionate and dutiful son, a devoted husband and parent, a true friend, and an unswerving patriot," a short account of his life published in 1875 noted. "His genial social nature, his frank and manly qualities, made for him, wherever he went, hosts of friends, in whose memories and affections he has a monument to his honor more enduring and more to be coveted than brass or marble."

Remembering their ancestor, Civil War nurse Maria Hall

Visiting Connecticut for the first time, Barbara and Dave Powers stand by
 the memorial and grave for Lucas Richards in Hillside Cemetery in Unionville, Conn. 
Richards was Barbara's great-grandfather.  His wife, Maria, Barbara's great-grandmother, 
was a nurse who cared for wounded after the Battle of Antietam.

On a brisk October day, a couple from Michigan, a local historian and I stood in a parking lot that long ago was the front yard of a woman who knew Abraham Lincoln, marveling how we all connected. If anything, this Saturday afternoon proved that the Civil War really wasn’t that long ago and that Al Gore's invention is a pretty cool resource.

Nurse Maria Hall cared for soldiers at
 Smoketown Hospital, near the Antietam battlefield.
(United States Army Military History Institute)

A little background: About 10 months ago, Cliff Alderman, a longtime president of the Unionville (Conn.) Museum, told me about a Civil War nurse named Maria Hall, who moved to Connecticut after the war and in 1872 married a wealthy manufacturer named Lucas Richards. The couple had two daughters and a son, whom they raised in stately mansion in the village of Unionville, about 15 miles west of Hartford. Alderman, whom I first met through my blog, wondered if I wanted to include the story of Hall in my book, “Connecticut Yankees at Antietam.” After all, Hall had served as a nurse at Smoketown Hospital, a large tent hospital placed among a grove of oak and walnut trees about a mile behind Union lines at Antietam. Well into my research on Connecticut soldiers who fought at Antietam, I had only lukewarm interest. But the drip, drip, drip of information about Hall supplied by Alderman over several weeks last spring eventually piqued my curiosity.

There’s a legislative file on Hall at the National Archives in Washington, he pointed out, and there could be a trove of information in it. Connecticut Civil War veterans spoke highly of her, said Alderman, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of local history. “She served at the White House,” he gently reminded me during a visit to the small Unionville museum one night.

“She knew Lincoln.”

She knew Lincoln.

This, I thought, may be a story worth researching after all.

In this enlargement of a rare photo taken at Smoketown Hospital, Maria Hall 
tends to wounded soldiers. 
(Photo: Eli Collection, Edward G. Miner Library, Rochester, N.Y.)

In a first-person account in The Delineator magazine
 in 1921, nine years after her death, Hall wrote of her
 experience in the White House caring for 
President Lincoln's ill son.

An intense Internet search on Maria Hall revealed plenty of information, from a book published in 1866 that was digitized by Google to a 1921 magazine article that detailed her experience in Lincoln’s White House. Born July 1, 1836 in Washington, D.C., Maria was the only child of David Aiken Hall and Martha Maria Condit, who died a month after Maria was born. Her thrice-married 66-year-old father, a prominent lawyer, was much too old to serve in the army when the Civil War broke out in April 1861. But Maria, a staunch Unionist, did her part, taking in sick and wounded soldiers (including two from Connecticut) in the family home near the White House even before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861

At the beginning of the Civil War, young nurses were frowned upon by Dorothea "Dragon" Dix, the efficient but iron-fisted Superintendent of Army Nurses, who preferred they be over 30, plain-looking and wear drab, un-hooped dresses and forego cosmetics. Dix eventually took a liking to Hall, whom she recommended to help care for the Lincolns’ ill 8-year-old son Tad after the president's other son, 11-year-old Willie, died of typhus in the White House in early February 1862. At Smoketown, where Hall worked tirelessly until May 1863, she was praised by soldiers for her kindness. Hall later became chief nurse at a large Union hospital in Annapolis, where many Connecticut POWs were cared for after their release from Southern prisons.

Nine years after her death in 1912, The Delineator magazine published Hall's first-person account of her experience in the White House, which was in a state of mourning after Willie’s death. “…we went directly to Mrs. Lincoln’s room, and Miss Dix presented me to her,” Hall wrote. “And here was Mr. Lincoln standing before an open fire, his hands behind him and his tall, gaunt figure looming up as the center of interest. Miss Dix, introducing me, said: ‘You may feel she is too young to be trusted with your sick boy, but you will find her reliable.’

Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad, in a February
 1865 photograph  by Alexander Gardner.
 (Library of Congress collection)

“I looked up at him,” the nurse wrote, “possibly with an appeal for a fair trial, for he approached me so kindly. Extending both hands to me, he said: ‘Well. All I can say is I hope she will turn to right away, for we need the help.’ ” Hall wrote of dining in the White House (“table talk was naturally of current events”); taking care of Tad (“a patient, uncomplaining young man”); and even getting the president’s autograph. He signed it “A. Lincoln,” Hall recalled, because that’s the way he liked to write it best.

Alderman gave me possible contact information for a Hall descendant culled from the Internet, so I eagerly dived deeper into the story of the young Civil War nurse. An e-mail to a woman in Michigan confirmed that she indeed was related to Hall, but her mother was the key contact. Days later, I received an e-mail from Barbara Powers, a retired teacher living in Michigan, who had a keen interest in the story of her great-grandmother, Maria Hall. Pleasantly surprised that I had tracked her down, Powers said during a phone conversation that the family had a wealth of information on her ancestor, whose first name was always pronounced Mar-I-YAH by Barbara’s father.

The Powers had a small block of wood in which the word “Antietam” was carved by a Civil War soldier, who gave it to Hall. Embedded in it was a bullet that, according to family lore, narrowly missed Maria. The family had a fragile old flag, possibly from a Civil War hospital, in an old suitcase. And they also owned letters in which Maria described her short experience in Lincoln’s White House. Those letters became a fabulous addition to the chapter on Hall that I included in my book.

According to Powers family lore, the bullet in this piece of wood narrowly missed 
Hall during the Civil War. A soldier carved it and the word "Antietam" on 
the front, the Powers family  believes. A soldier also carved "Sept. 17, 62,"
 the date of the Battle of Antietam,  on the block of wood below.
 (Courtesy: Barbara Powers family)

Only these fragments exist of a flag that may have flown at a hospital where 
Maria Hall cared for wounded. (Courtesy: Barbara Powers family)

Today, the story of the 26-year-old nurse who cared for hundreds of wounded at a hospital near the Antietam battlefield came full circle for me. Barbara Powers and her husband, Dave, visited Connecticut for the first time this weekend. They stopped by the church where her great-grandmother and great-grandfather once worshipped. The stately mansion in which Hall raised a family has long since been torn down, replaced by a small building and a tiny parking lot. But Barbara Powers eagerly had her photo taken at the site where Maria and her three children probably played in the front yard so long ago. As the wind chased leaves in Hillside Cemetery overlooking Unionville, the Powers placed a pot of yellow flowers, courtesy of Alderman, near Lucas Richards’ grave. (Maria, who died July 20, 1912 at age 76, is buried in New Rochelle, N.Y.)

After the visit to the cemetery, Alderman, the Powers and I talked about their journey to discover more about their ancestor. “You can’t believe what this means to me and Barb,” Dave Powers said, thanking Alderman and me for helping tell Maria's story. And then I remembered a comment that Barbara recently posted on my Civil War blog Facebook page.

"My great grandmother, Maria," she wrote, "is smiling down on you."

No, the Civil War really isn't so far away after all.

Barbara Powers at the site of the mansion (below) where her great-grandmother, 
Civil War nurse Maria Hall, lived in Unionville, Conn. The house was torn down 
many years ago  and replaced by a small building and a parking lot. 

Photo courtesy Unionville (Conn.) Museum.

Antietam: A rare piece of history from Roulette farm?

Did Union surgeons operate on wounded soldiers on this table?

The interior of the Roulette farmhouse has
 changed little since 1862.

Friend of the blog Penny was kind enough to share a photo of the gate-leg table above that may have a tie to the Battle of Antietam. Penny is a descendant of William Roulette, the farmer whose fields were the scene of terrible fighting during the battle on Sept. 17, 1862. Roulette's barn, spring house and farmhouse were used as field hospitals during and after the battle. According to Penny's mother, who died in 1997, this table belonged to the Roulettes and was used for surgery at Antietam. Perhaps the table once was used in the Roulette room shown at right, photographed through a window during my visit to the battlefield in September. If only that table could talk, eh? Here's a terrific tour of the interior of the Roulette farmhouse over at Harry Smeltzer's fine Bull Runnings blog.

William Roulette's farmhouse today.

Antietam: Sergeant Frederick Eno's marker

Sergeant Frederick Reuben Eno's gravestone in Mountain View Cemetery
 in Bloomfield, Conn.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Either Frederick Reuben Eno was killed in action at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, or he died a day after the battle, telling those who found him shortly before he breathed his last that he would "die like a man." I imagine the fog of war often produces such confusion.

Eno, a 30-year-old sergeant from Bloomfield, Conn., served in Company F of the 14th Connecticut, which saw severe fighting on William Roulette's farm, near Bloody Lane. This 1868 account notes that after he was wounded in the abdomen, Eno refused assistance from comrades, sending them back into the fighting. But according to an account published in the Hartford Courant on Oct. 10, 1862, Eno was taken a short distance to the rear after he was wounded. Perhaps he received care at Roulette's farm house, spring house or barn, all of which were used as field hospitals during and after the battle.

Eno later dismissed his attendants, according to the Courant, and managed to walk two miles to another barn that was also used as a hospital. Barely alive, he was found there the next morning and asked if he had a message for friends back in Connecticut. "Tell them I have done my duty," he said, "and die like a man." He died a short time later. According to this 1891 account (see Page 61) , however, "Brave Sergt. Eno was killed outright" and documents in the soldier's pension file also note that he died on Sept. 17, 1862. (Click here for my downloadable Excel spreadsheet of Connecticut Antietam deaths.)

For Augustus and Sylvia Eno, their son's death was an especially cruel blow. The couple depended on the income of Frederick, who provided $120 yearly to his parents prior to his enlistment in the Union army on July 29, 1862. (1) One of seven children, Frederick had three other brothers, none of whom apparently served in the Union army although they all were of age. Plagued by rheumatism, Frederick's father was confined to his bed and unable to work to support his family for the final nine years of his life, a family physician noted after the war. (2) The 68-year-old man died on Sept. 9, 1863, almost a year after his son died at Antietam.

It's unclear whether Frederick's body was returned to Connecticut, but he has a marker in Mountain View Cemetery in Bloomfield, about 10 miles from where he boarded a steamship on the Connecticut River in Hartford and sailed off to war in late August 1862.

(1) Frederick Eno pension file, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.
(2) Ibid.

In this pension document, Bloomfield, Conn., physician Henry Gray noted that
 Frederick Eno's father was plagued by rheumatism in the last years of his life.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Antietam: Envelope addressed to a wounded private

This envelope contained a letter addressed to Horace Lay, a private in the 16th Connecticut who
was wounded at Antietam. He died nearly two months after the battle. (Author's collection)
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Lay died at the German Reformed Church Hospital in
 Sharpsburg on Nov. 16, 1862. Worship services are still held
 in the building, now called Christ Reformed Church.

On Oct. 5, 1862, nearly three weeks after he was shot at the Battle of Antietam, Private Horace Lay of the 16th Connecticut was admitted to the German Reformed Church Hospital with severe wounds in his right leg and left thigh. He had another bullet wound in the groin, probably suffered as he lay incapacitated after he was first wounded in John Otto's 40-acre cornfield a short distance from the village of Sharpsburg, Md. (See my interactive panoramas of Otto's cornfield.) A 16th Connecticut comrade who saw Lay at the church hospital in early November recalled that the 36-year-old soldier was “very low” and not expected to recover. A surgeon wrote in his casebook that amputation of Lay’s left leg was imperative because a bullet had fractured the soldier’s left femur. (1)

Also in early November, someone from Connecticut, perhaps Lay's wife Charlotte, wrote to the soldier who suffered in the small church 350 miles from the state. The letter writer may have inquired about the grievously wounded man's condition and perhaps offered a few words of encouragement for Lay, one of many soldiers from Connecticut who were treated in the small building on Sharpsburg's main street. Perhaps the letter writer also noted that Charlotte soon planned to go to western Maryland to help nurse her husband back to health and that Lay's 11-year-old son,

Private Horace Lay's 
gravestone, No. 1,100,  in
 Antietam National Cemetery

also named Horace, was concerned about his father. Sadly, the letter is lost to history, but the envelope for it survives. Postmarked Nov. 2, 1862 in Hartford and affixed with a three-cent stamp with an image of George Washington, it is simply addressed to Lay at the German Reform Church Hospital, Sharpsburg, Md. (See my interactive panorama of the church.)

The letter that the envelope contained may have briefly cheered Lay, who probably had his left leg amputated. But on Nov. 16, 1862, nearly two months after he was wounded, Horace Lay died with Charlotte by his side. Perhaps because she could not afford to transport her husband's body back to Connecticut, the private was buried somewhere in Sharpsburg shortly after his death. His remains were disinterred after the war, and today the shoemaker lies buried in the Connecticut section at Antietam National Cemetery under a weathered marker, No. 1,100, that simply notes his name, state and Civil War allegiance.

(1) Banks, John, "Connecticut Yankees at Antietam," Charleston, S.C., History Press, 2013, Page 62

Antietam Up Close: Battle damage at Lutheran Church

Sharpsburg's Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church was used as a hospital for the 
Union V Corps. The image was taken by Alexander Gardner on Sept. 21 or 22, 1862.
 (Library of Congress collection)

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As Alexander Gardner's bulky camera captured the image above of the village of Sharpsburg four or five days after the Battle of Antietam, Union wounded from the V Corps were being treated in the church that appears prominently at left.

Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, built in 1768, was one of three Sharpsburg churches that were used as hospitals after the battle. In enlargements of Gardner's image, heavy battle damage appears on the side of the church, which was used as a signal station by the Rebels and thus may have been a primary Federal target.

Upon close inspection of the image, gravestones in the Lutheran cemetery behind the fence and even four men in front of the church are readily apparent. (The cemetery is still preserved today.) The glass plate image is so sharp, in fact, that in the second enlargement below a window on the opposite side of the church may be seen through the window on the right.

About a quarter-mile down the main road in Sharpsburg, well out of view of Gardner's camera, more Union wounded, including many from Connecticut, were being cared for at the German Reformed Church. Privates Horace Lay and James Brooks of the 16th Connecicut and Private John Doolittle of the 8th Connecticut died there. Another church in Sharpsburg, St. Paul's Episcopal, which also suffered damage from Union artillery, was used primarily as a Rebel hospital. It may be seen in the background of another image that Gardner shot of Sharpsburg, also recorded on Sept. 21 or 22, 1862, according to research by William Frassanito in his excellent 1978 book, Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day. 

Mount Calvary and St. Paul's were torn down in the 19th century. The German Reformed Church, now called Christ Reformed Church, was renovated in the late 19th century and is still open for worship.

In enlargements of Gardner's famous image of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church,
 battle damage caused by Union artillery is readily apparent. Gravestones in the
 church cemetery, which remains today, may be seen behind the fence. 

In another enlargement of Gardner's Lutheran church image, four men, probably
 Union soldiers, sit in front of the church.

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Antietam: 'It was here we lost some of our best men'

A marker for brothers Philo and David Mix in East Farms Cemetery in 
Waterbury, Conn. David Mix, a corporal in the 14th Connecticut, 
was killed at the Battle of Antietam.

Three days after the Battle of Antietam, two officers in the 14th Connecticut wrote a letter to the Waterbury Republican detailing the fate of some of the soldiers in their regiment. In its first battle of the war at Sharpsburg, Md., the 14th Connecticut suffered 166 casualties, including 20 killed.

"After marching until 9 a.m., we began to receive the enemy's fire of artillery, their shells exploding in the trees above and around us," the letter signed by Company C Captain Samuel W. Carpenter and Lieutenant Frederick Seymour noted. "We had, up to this time, been marching by the flank, but were now ordered to march by the front, in line of battle. After marching some 10 to 15 minutes through the woods and some corn-fields (up to this time supported by the 130th Penn. Reg't, the 1st Delaware Reg't being in advance), and not knowing that the rebel infantry was so near us, we received a terrible fire of musketry at short range, they being in a line of rifle pits and ditches, and almost entirely concealed from view.

"It was here we lost some of our best men," the officers lamented.

Among the soldiers cut down by the Rebels, many of whom were well hidden in a well-worn road bed that later famously became known as Bloody Lane, was Henry Keeler, a 23-year-old corporal from Waterbury. A bullet entered his hip and passed through his intestines, mortally wounding him. "His loss was deeply regretted," the officers noted.

Private Michael Keegan of Windham, who had only recently transferred into Company C, was killed. The 33-year-old soldier left behind a wife named Mary and five children 11 years old and younger. Private John Jones of Waterbury was "dangerously wounded" when he was struck by a bullet in the small of the back. (He later died in a Hospital No. 1 in nearby Frederick, Md.) Color-bearer Thomas J. Mills of New London was mortally wounded.

After discharging his weapon and apparently hitting the enemy, Corporal David Mix of Waterbury shouted above the din of battle: "Stand up, boys, or you can't see the fun." But shortly thereafter, the 27-year-old soldier was struck by two bullets and killed instantly.

After the 14th Connecticut was ordered to fall back, the remains of Mix and other dead in the regiment were left on the field and recovered and buried there the next day. "The place of their burial is noted," the letter published in the newspaper noted, "in case their friends want to remove their remains in the future."

David Mix's occupation was listed as farmer in the 1860 U.S. census.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

For David's parents, Anna, 59, and John, a 61-year-old factory worker, their son's death was another terrible shock. In the spring of 1862, David's younger brother Philo, who served as a private with his brother in the 1st Connecticut earlier in the war, died of unknown causes. A three-month regiment, the 1st Connecticut filled its quota only 10 days after the Rebels had bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Like many in the North, neither David nor Philo probably expected the Civil War would last long. When their terms expired on July 31, 1861, Philo did not re-enlist; David, an unmarried farmer, was mustered into the 14th Connecticut as a corporal less than a month later.

Today, the brothers' names are barely legible on a well-worn marker in secluded East Farms Cemetery in Waterbury, Conn. It's unknown whether David's remains were ever returned from Antietam.