Antietam: 'Murderous fire' claims a young captain

Riddled with bullets, Captain Samuel Brown of the 16th Connecticut was killed
at the Battle of Antietam. The 26-year-old soldier was a teacher before the
Civil War. (Photo from George Whitney Collection/Connecticut State Library)

When Samuel Brown led his men of the 16th Connecticut into action in John Otto's cornfield during the Battle of  Antietam, the 26-year-old captain briefly came face to face with another soldier in his company.

Richard Jobes, a 36-year-old corporal in Company D from Suffield, never forgot that day --  or that moment.

"I was the tallest corporal in the Co. and that brought me at the head of the Co. with Capt. Brown," Jobes wrote in a letter to Brown's sister nearly four decades after the Civil War. "A cannon ball passed between him and myself, but very close to him, so close he thought it passed through his long and beautiful whiskers. It was a 6 or 12 lb. ball. He was pale for a moment, rubbed his face and whiskers, then went on coolly giving his commands." (1)

Born in Massachusetts, Samuel Brown graduated 
from Bowdoin College in Maine, the same college
 that produced Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence
 Chamberlain.  Brown appears  here in a Bowdoin College 
photograph, circa 1858.
(Photo courtesy Bowdoin College Archives, Brunswick, Maine)

Although Antietam was the first battle of the Civil War for the 16th Connecticut, Brown had already earned the respect and admiration of his men, who were mustered into the regiment in late August 1862. In fact, he didn't hesitate to admonish them, even using a profanity or two.

Like Jobes, Private William Relyea of the 16th Connecticut also never forgot Sept. 17, 1862. In a post-war account, the veteran wrote about forming in Otto's field, the moments just before the rebels opened a "murderous fire" on his regiment and the awful, deadly results of that musketry.

"We moved into the lot by the opening in the right-hand corner," Relyea, from Suffield, wrote in the recollection that included the map below. "We were then formed in lines directly in front of the opening and extending to the right a little beyond the pile of rails. Captain Brown was anxious that his company would give as good an account of themselves as any in this regiment -- he was cool but somewhat angry at us for not forming a line as we had been taught to do on dress parade and scolded at us some a few minutes after we had formed a little more to his satisfaction." (2)

According to one account, the captain urged his men on by saying, "Charge bayonets and come on, boys!," before the rebels rose up and fired through the corn from behind a nearby low, stone wall. But orderly sergeant Peter Grohman and Relyea  instead remembered Brown yelling at the men in language Relyea described as "emphatic." (3)

"I believe I swear too much for a man in battle," the soldiers recalled him saying. (4)

Minutes later, rebel fire shattered Company D, tearing apart Jobes' left arm (later amputated), severely wounding Corporal John Tate of Enfield (also lost his left arm) and killing Private George W. Allen of Suffield. But it was the death of  Brown -- who along with Newton Manross, John Drake and Frederick Barber was the fourth 16th Connecticut captain killed or mortally wounded at Antietam -- that was most keenly felt by the company. After being struck in the neck, hip and arm, he managed to crawl near the opening where the regiment entered Otto's cornfield. About six feet from that opening, Brown died.

Nearly 46 years after Antietam, Private William Relyea drew this map of where
 Samuel Brown's  body was found in relation to the 16th Connecticut monument. 
See my video below.  (George Q. Whitney Collection/Connecticut State Library)  
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Two days later, after Robert E. Lee's army abandoned the field and crossed the Potomac River into Virginia, Brown's body was discovered by Relyea and Grohman. "He lay on his back properly strait (sic), feet toward the gap," Relyea noted. (5)  (Watch my video above.)

Stripped by the rebels of all his outer clothing and shoes, Brown was temporarily buried on the field on the north side of a tree on Otto's property along with other men from Company D, including Allen and Private Henry Barnett of Suffield.  Privates Henry Aldrich of Bristol, John Bingham of East Haddam and Theodore DeMarrs of Cromwell and Sergeant Wadsworth Washburn of Berlin of the 16th Connecticut were also buried in the large trench. In late September or early October, Brown's body was disinterred by Hartford undertaker William W. Roberts, and his brother Louis accompanied the remains back to their hometown of South Danvers, Mass.

Like the deaths of so many other young men with great promise during the Civil War, the passing of Brown was especially tragic. "He was a man of great bravery," Jobes wrote to Brown's sister, "and no doubt if he would have been spared the war would have been much higher than a captain of a company."

 Brown's grave in Monumental Cemetery in Peabody, Mass.
(Photo: Jack Parker)

Born in Danvers, Mass. (now Peabody) on Feb. 16, 1836, Samuel was the son of Fanny and Samuel Brown, a stone mason, who helped build the Battle of Lexington monument on Washington Street in South Danvers. Young Samuel had seven other siblings, including a sister named Fanny, who greatly admired her older brother. A diligent student, Brown graduated in 1858 from Maine's Bowdoin College -- the same school that produced Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the lieutenant colonel of the 20th Maine.

Following graduation from college, Brown became a teacher in 1860 at the Edward Hall School for Boys in Ellington, Conn., about 20  miles from Hartford. After a short stay at the Ellington School, Brown taught school in Beverly, Mass., before returning to teach at Ellington in the spring of 1862. Although war talk stirred many in Connecticut at that time, Brown at first was hestitant to join the cause there.

"He found the town in a high fever of patriotism and inbibing deeply of the patriotic spirit, changed his mind and became ambitious to enter the service of the U.S.," according to a Brown obituary. Brown recruited 40 men in nearby Enfield and was commissioned a captain in the 16th Connecticut on Aug. 1, 1862. Originally intending to join the cause in his native state, Brown gave up his spot to another 26-year-old man  from South Danvers.

"You know I intended to enter the army and did get a chance as Lieut in the 19th Massachusetts Regiment in the course of the Fall (of 1861)," Brown wrote in letter to his family dated March 18, 1862, "but gave it to a friend of mine, a teacher in one of our public schools, who, having lost his young wife after a year of married life, felt so desirous of a change of scene and seemed so utterly miserable that I resigned in his favor."

Brown's friend, 2nd Lieutenant Charles S. Warner, was killed at the Battle of Fair Oaks on June 25, 1862. His funeral service was held at Old South Church in South Danvers. Nearly three and a half months later, Brown's funeral was held in the same church. During that well-attended service, Reverend William Barbour lamented the loss of a "professional man," a reference to Brown's profession before the war.

"The import of strife deepens around such an offering as this," said Barbour, pointing to Brown's casket. "And this leads me to hasten on by observing that we pay the highest price for principle when our educated men become the sacrifice for our country." (7)

After the service, Brown's casket was borne a short distance to Monumental Cemetery, where the young soldier was buried in a family plot, not far from the grave of his friend, Charles Warner.

(1) George Q. Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library, Richard Jobes letter to Fanny Brown, Feb. 10, 1909
(2) George Q. Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library, William Relyea letter to Whitney, Feb. 25, 1909.
(3) Ibid
(4) Ibid
(5) Ibid
(6) Hartford Courant, Sept. 30, 1862, Page 2
(7) Salem (Mass.) Evening News, Oct. 1, 1926

In 1912, this elementary school in Peabody, Mass., (formerly South Danvers) was named for
Brown, who grew up in the town near Boston. Right: Painting of Brown that hangs in the school's
 lobby. (Photos courtesy Captain Samuel Brown Elementary School principal Elaine Metropolis)

Faces of the Civil War: Captain Frederick Barber

Frederick Barber, a captain in the 16th Connecticut, was mortally wounded
at Antietam. He died three days after the battle, on Sept. 20, 1862.
(Photo courtesy Scott Hann)

The scene was ghastly, equal parts Dante's Inferno and sheer terror.

At the center of a barn, five overworked surgeons quickly determined how they should treat badly wounded Union soldiers brought to a bloody 12-by-20-foot table after the Battle of Antietam.

Slightly wounded men helped make beds of straw as cries and groans of  much more serious cases filled the air.

Reverse of the carte de visite above.
(Courtesy Scott Hann)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Amputated limbs were tossed out a window, filling as many as two cartloads within 48 hours.

In the center of this whirlwind of madness at a Third Division, Ninth Corps hospital near Sharpsburg, Md., badly wounded 16th Connecticut captain Frederick Barber lay, quietly offering encouragement to 25 wounded men of his regiment. The 32-year-old soldier in Company H from Manchester, Conn., did not expect to live long. (1)

In the chaos of the 16th Connecticut's poorly conceived attack on Sept. 17, 1862 (see video below), Barber was pierced by a musket ball near the top of his right leg. And like other men in the barn, he soon took his turn on the bloody table for surgery.

A post-war account described Barber's gruesome operation in cold, clinical language.

"On the morning of September 18th, the patient being anaesthetized by chloroform, Surgeon Melancthon Storrs, 8th Connecticut Volunteers, proceeded to make a straight incision four inches long passing through the wound of entrance," the  report published in 1869 noted. "The comminuted fragments of the neck and rochanter were extracted, the round ligament was divided, the head of the femur was removed, and the fractured upper extremity of the shaft was sawn off by the chain saw." (2)

Translation: Barber lost a major portion of his right leg.

"The edges of the wound were then approximated by adhesive straps and simple dressings were applied," the report continued. "But little blood was lost, and the patient rallied promptly from the operation, quite comfortable during the day."





Wracked by fever, however, Barber soon took a turn for the worse and the man "noticeable for his religious character, earnest convictions and high regard for duty" died two days later. Barber and Bristol's Newton Manross were among four captains in the 16th Connecticut killed or mortally wounded at Antietam. (3)

Storrs was considered a terrific surgeon, "quietly faithful, skilful, cool in peril, quick to see, and steady and calm in executing." In fact, Dr. Eli McMellan, a surgeon in the regular army in charge of the hospital at Fort Monroe in Virginia, called him "the most efficient surgeon ever on duty" at the fort. (4)  But the procedure of amputating at the hip joint was criticized after Antietam by medical people.

Frederick Barber is buried in Green Cemetery in Glastonbury, Conn.

“Surgeon General (William) Hammond and Col. Muzzy united in complaining about the conduct of some of the volunteer surgeons sent to Western Maryland by State authorities or benevolent associations, after the Battle of Antietam," the Indiana (Pa.) Messenger reported two weeks after the battle. "In too many instances they neglected the dressings of the wounded, and did not note even the slightest care of them.

"They also strenuously insisted on performing operations," the newspaper continued. "Their zeal for operations was not always according to knowledge. Many operations are performed without judgment and in a totally unjustifiable manner, frequently hastening the death of the patient. The Surgeon General intends to issue an order prohibiting amputation at the hip joint on the battlefield -- such operations invariably proving fatal, and being mostly abandoned by the English and French surgeons, as well as the best American.”  (5)

Front of the Civil War memorial on the town green
in Glastonbury, Conn.

Barber's body was soon returned to Connecticut, where a well-attended memorial service was held for the  captain at the Methodist Church in South Manchester. His coffin was then transported to nearby Glastonbury, where he married Mercy Turner before the war, and buried at ancient Green Cemetery.

On Memorial Day 1913, 51 years after Frederick Barber was mortally wounded in farmer John Otto's cornfield, a large crowd that included old soldiers gathered at the Glastonbury town green for the unveiling of a Civil War monument. The chairman of the town Memorial Day committee called for three cheers for Barber's 82-year-old widow, who paid for the memorial in honor of her husband and soldiers from Glastonbury who died during the Civil War.

"When your eyes are lifted to the flag, the brightest symbol of our government," the old woman told the crowd at the dedication, "may you be reminded of the cost of blood and treasure that preserved it, and cemented the Union forever." (6)

Mercy Turner Barber, who never re-married after Frederick's death, died at her sister's house in Providence, R.I., on Jan. 27, 1917. She is buried near her husband in Green Cemetery, about 45 yards from the monument in his honor.

(1)  History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, Hartford, The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1875, Page 19
(2) Excision of the Head of the Femur for Gunshot Injury, George C. Otis, War Department Surgeon General's Office, 1869, Page 22
(3) Ibid
(4) The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-65, William Augustus Croffut, John Moses Morris, Page 681
(5) Indiana (Pa.) Messenger, Oct. 1, 1862, Page 2
(6) Hartford Courant, May 31, 1913, Page 9

This Glastonbury Civil War monument was erected to honor Frederick Barber 
and soldiers from the town who died during the Civil War. It was funded by 
Barber's widow, Mercy. At left, the memorial at its dedication in 1913. 
(Left photo: Historical Society of Glastonbury)

A crowd gathers for the dedication of the Glastonbury Civil War monument on 
Memorial Day 1913. (Photo: Historical Society of Glastonbury)

Faces of the Civil War: Captain Newton Manross

"A man of exceptional learning and scholarship," Newton Manross, a 37-year-old captain
in the 16th Connecticut, was killed at Antietam. (Photo: Bristol Historical Society)

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Even decades after the Civil War, the memory of the gruesome death of Newton Manross -- a brilliant, bookish globetrotter from Bristol -- was seared into the brains of two Connecticut soldiers.

A 37-year-old professor, Manross enlisted in the Union army on July 22, 1862, telling his wife Charlotte "you can better afford to have a country without a husband than a husband without a country." (1) On Aug. 24, he was commissioned captain of Company K of the 16th Connecticut, comprised of men from Hartford County towns such as Canton, Avon, Glastonbury, Granby and Bristol.

Manross was among the many 16th Connecticut 
casualties at Antietam listed in the 
Hartford Daily Courant on Sept. 23, 1862.

Less than a month later, Manross and the  16th Connecticut -- many of the men had never trained extensively with their weapons -- were thrown into the bloody chaos of the Battle of Antietam. As Manross led his company into action into a 40-acre cornfield that terrible Wednesday afternoon, he was blasted in the left shoulder by grapeshot.

"I often think of that day, Sept. 17, 1862, and helping Captain Manross into the fence corner," Lester Taylor, a private in Company H of the 16th Connecticut, wrote 39 years after the battle. "I could look down inside of him and see his heart beat, his left shoulder all shot off.

"When I first saw him, he was trying to get up," Taylor added, "so I went to him and helped him to his feet, being assisted by George Walbridge of H Company.  ... we helped him a little way to the left and laid him down. The only thing I remember him saying was: 'I am bleeding inwardly.' " (2)

Jasper Hamilton Bidwell, a private in the 16th Connecticut from Canton, recalled in 1909 a dazed and bleeding Manross resting on his right elbow, his head up.  After he gave the captain water, Bidwell heard Manross moan, "My poor wife!" Although accounts from the period differ, Manross likely died shortly after receiving the terrible wound. (3)

Among four captains in the 16th Connecticut killed or mortally wounded at Antietam, Manross was anything but your typical citizen-soldier.

Survivors of Company K of the 16th Connecticut placed 
a memorial  for Captain Newton Manross near his grave 
at Forestville Cemetery  in Bristol, Conn.

One of nine children of prominent Bristol clockmaker Elisha Manross and his wife Maria, Newton was inquisitive even as a teenager. Taking refuge from the rain during a fishing trip near his home, Manross discovered what he thought was a white stone on the floor of cavern. Upon closer inspection, the "stone" proved to be a skull of an Indian. Manross returned the next day, unearthed the entire skeleton of the Indian and took the skull to his father's shop, where it was used as a grotesque holder for small parts for clock movements. (4)

Highly educated, Manross graduated from Yale in 1850 with a degree in geology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1852 and spent time in Europe exploring mines. Especially interested in mining engineering, he traveled the world in the decade before the Civil War, analyzing rocks and minerals in such far-flung places as Trinidad, Panama and Mexico.

Described as "a man of exceptional learning and scholarship," Manross received a patent in 1859 for a valve to retard and arrest the flow of gasses, and was so well regarded that his work frequently appeared in the prestigious American Journal of Science. (His obituary also appeared in the Journal in 1862.)

In 1861, before he enlisted in the Union army, Manross was named of acting professor of chemistry and philosophy at Amherst (Mass.) College. But like his brothers, Eli and John, he couldn't ignore the call of his country. (Eli, a sergeant in 5th Connecticut, was wounded at Chancellorsville in 1863; John, a private in the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, was discharged from the army because of  insanity and disease in 1865.)

Newton Manross' occupation was listed as mechanic in the 1860 U.S. census. His family
 apparently employed three servants. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

"He was a man of great promise in science and rare nobility of character," an 1873 history of Amherst College noted about Newton Manross.  "A great favorite with officers and students, he stood up boldly for the Christian faith, and used all his influence for the highest good of the students and the prosperity of the Institution."

Manross clearly left a lasting impression on Bristol, a manufacturing town 20 miles southwest of Hartford.

Manross was killed near the 16th Connecticut monument at Antietam.
The regiment suffered 43 killed, 161 wounded and 204 captured
or missing in its first battle of the Civil War.

Nearly thirty years after Antietam, the Bristol Herald published a long, glowing front-page article about its favorite son under a headline that read: "Soldier, Scholar and Gentleman in All Positions in Life." The article included an account of how Manross helped rescue his stranded party in the South American interior by making a boat from trees and floating upriver to the coast. (5)

On May 9, 1902, a crowd that included many veterans of the 16th Connecticut and Manross' only child gathered for a maple tree-planting ceremony in the captain's honor in the Forestville section of Bristol, where he had lived and gone to grammar school. After schoolchildren sang "The Gladness of Nature" and the superintendent of schools gave a "brief but interesting" speech, an old soldier delivered an address in honor of his long-dead friend. (6)

"From this little district school to the great institution of learning with which he was connected he kept in mind the resolve to benefit the world by his life and example," said 65-year-old William Relyea, a private in the 16th Connecticut. "...Captain Manross' mind grew stronger and his mind was a delight to all who knew him.

"Such a man we honor here today by planting a tree in his memory," Relyea added. "He was a man beloved by all us soldiers in the Sixteenth. The day when he marched into camp at the head of his band of sturdy Bristol boys he put new life into the old Sixteenth, for they had realized they had not only a man of deep learning among them, but one who was patriotic and sincere to all."

Newton and Charlotte Manross are buried side-by-side in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, not far from the house where he grew up. Several paces away, a monument in his memory was placed by survivors of Manross' Company K.

A contemporary marker replaced an older gravestone for Manross and his wife, Charlotte, who
died in 1874. "You can better afford to have a country without a husband," he told
his wife after he enlisted in 1862, "than a husband without a country."

In this photo taken in 1887, Civil War veterans from the Manross G.A.R. post gather by the
Newton Manross monument in Forestville Cemetery in Bristol, Conn. The monument was
placed there by survivors of Company K of the 16th Connecticut.
(Photo courtesy Bristol Historical Society via Tom LaPorte; CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

---

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SOURCES

(1) History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, Hartford, The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1875, Page 20.
(2) George Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library.
(3) George Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library.
(4) "Bristol, Connecticut, In The Olden Time New Cambridge, Which Includes Forestville," Hartford Printing Company, 1907, Pages 13-14.
(5) Bristol Herald, Aug, 11, 1892, Page 1.
(6) Hartford Courant, May 10, 1902, Page 15.