'Blown out of existence': The 1862 Hazard Powder Co. disaster

A circa-1910 postcard view of Powder Hollow in Hazardville, Conn., where Augustus Hazard produced gunpowder during the Civil War. (Dexter Photo | Public domain)

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On the morning of July 24, 1862, readers of the Hartford Daily Courant awoke to an eclectic mix of news in Connecticut's leading newspaper: a brief item announcing the appointment of the cantankerous Gen. Henry Halleck as commander in chief of all Union land forces; a dispatch from Virginia reporting that "many officers" in the battered Army of the Potomac had tendered their resignations; and, closer to home, the tale of a "rum-crazy individual" who stepped off a train downtown, punched a policeman on Asylum Street and promptly landed in jail.

 

By January 1864, Augustus Hazard's
Connecticut mills were producing
 12,500 pounds of gunpowder a day.

But the day's most riveting story came from aptly named Hazardville, about 20 miles north of Hartford. At about 3 p.m. the previous afternoon, five thunderous explosions ripped through the Hazard Powder Co. mills, killing 10 people, nine of them employees. The victims included a man relaxing in a bath and another leading his mule.

Sixty-year-old Augustus George Hazard, a politically well-connected businessman whose friendship with Confederate president Jefferson Davis raised eyebrows in the North, owned the company. Colonel Hazard's mills produced thousands of tons gunpowder for the Federal war effort — more than any Northern company except one. In the opening salvos of the war on April 12, 1861, Rebel gunners used Hazard's gunpowder in their pummeling of Fort Sumter.

Born in Rhode Island in 1802, Hazard was the son of a sea captain. After his family moved to Connecticut, Augustus worked on a farm in Columbia, Conn., until he was 15, learned the trade of house painting and eventually settled in Savannah, Ga, where he became a dealer in paints and oils.

While in his adopted state, Hazard may have even joined the Georgia militia, earning the rank of colonel — a title that stuck with him the rest of his life. Highly successful, he became part-owner of a coastal shipping company that did a brisk business between New York and Savannah. The Colonel took a deep interest in one product: gunpowder.

A circa-1909 image of Augustus Hazard's mansion in Enfield, Conn., miles from Hazardville.
 The mansion was destroyed in a fire in 1969 when it served as an inn. 
(Enfield Public Library | CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

By 1843, Hazard had assumed full ownership of a gunpowder company in Enfield, Conn., naming himself president and general manager.

"Shrewd, energetic" and with deep interest in politics, the ardent Democrat became one of the state's wealthiest men. Hazard and his wife, Salome, settled in Enfield, where he raised a family and built a mansion on Enfield Street, a few miles from his rapidly growing company. In Enfield, the couple entertained such notables as gunmaker Samuel Colt, statesmen and lawyer Daniel Webster and Davis, the U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce from 1853-57.

As U.S. Secretary of War,
Jefferson Davis visited
Augustus Hazard in Connecticut. 
He later became  president 
of the Confederacy. (National Archives)

When the czar of Russia needed gunpowder during the Crimean War, he turned to Hazard and the leading U.S. supplier., the E.I. duPont mills in Wilmington, Del. In 1849, Hazard made a mint supplying miners with gunpowder in the California Gold Rush.

In the late 1840s, the makers of Magical Pain Extractor used the well-known gunpowder producer as an endorser for their product, which supposedly cured sore throats, ulcers, hemorrhoids and ringworm and soothed the debilitating effects of barber's itch, frosted toes and even burns. Hazard claimed Magical Pain Extractor "saved the life and cured a person dreadfully burnt by a powder mill explosion."

By the outbreak of the Civil War, the sprawling Hazard Powder Co. in Enfield covered over 400 acres and included massive infastructure: rolling and granulating mills, woodworking, ironworking and machine shops, packing houses, magazines, hydraulic presses and more. In all, there were nearly 125 buildings.

Power to operate the mills' 25 water wheels and three stream engines came from the nearby Scantic River. Canals carried water to the complex, where Hazard also made gun cartridges and fireworks. In a vote, employeees named the factory zone "Hazardville" in the Colonel's honor.

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Know more about Hazard Powder Co. explosion? Email me at jbankstx@comcast.net

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Work at Hazard's company proved to be difficult and often dangerous. In April 1855, Hazard's eldest son, 23-year-old Horace, was mortally wounded by a gunpowder explosion at his father's mill. Later that year, a wagonload of powder exploded, killing a teamster and his two horses, injuring a young girl and damaging the roof of a powder mill. The next year, three workers died after suffering horrible burns in another explosion. In September 1858, a blast at the factory instantly killed the superintendent and three workmen.

The company mandated strict safety rules. Fearful of sparks setting off gunpowder, Hazard banned iron and steel tools. For obvious reasons, he also banned pipes and matches. Workers wore shoes made with wooden pegs instead of iron nails, and large, stone blast walls separated buildings. Even Hazard, though, couldn't plan for unexpected mischief by Mother Nature: In late April 1861, a lightning strike on kegs of powder produced an explosion heard as far away as Hartford. That blast, thankfully, didn't injure a soul.

A bird's-eye illustration of the sprawling Hazardville, Conn., complex in 1880.
(Office of the State Historian and CTHumanties)

During the Civil War, Augustus Hazard advertised in the Hartford Daily Courant for workers.

But Hazard's company suffered its deadliest day in late July 1862. In the immediate vicinity of the mills, the explosions of tons of gunpowder produced an otherworldly landscape of dead cows and horses, uprooted trees, toppled fences and acres of grass that looked "as if heavy rollers had passed over it."

Blasts shattered windows and damaged roofs at least two miles away. Ten miles away, in Springfield, Mass., "houses were jarred as if by an earthquake." Residents "distinctly heard" the rumble of explosions as far as Northhampton and West Brookfield, Mass., roughly 50 miles distant.

Marker in Old Hazardville (Conn.)
 Cemetery for Arthur Beach, who
 was "blown to atoms" with five others
 in the press room at the
 Hazard Powder Co. (Find A Grave)

Thousands came to view the horrific scene. "One of the most appalling calamities that has occurred in this vicinity for many years," the Boston Journal reported. Newspapers called the cause of the blast a "mystery," one apparently unsolvable because of the deaths of most of the witnesses.

The human toll, of course, was heart-rending. James Beach, who worked in the fireworks building, was washing in a brook after his shift when blasts rocked the grounds. Responders found the 28-year-old's body in the water with a heavy rock upon it. Beach had started work at the company only days earlier.

The only remains found of the six men who worked in the 20-by-30-foot press room, where the disaster probably originated, was a detached foot discovered about a quarter-mile from the blast zone. Arthur Beach, James' 40-year-old brother and the married father of seven children, worked there. So did luckless Patrick Fallon, who was on his first day on the job, and Henry Clark, a married father of five. Leno Monsean, another press room victim, had only recently been married.

The blast nearly obliterated a man crossing a bridge over a nearby stream with his mule. The force of the explosion tore apart the animal, the Courant reported, "one half being thrown across the stream and the other into a field several hundred feet distant."

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'Human gore': More on deadly Civil War explosions on my blog

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The initial explosion almost instantaneously triggered four more at surrounding buildings. Tossed into the air by a blast, a timber or large piece of iron struck Celia Smith, fracturing her skull and mortally wounding her. The niece of a grocer on Main Street in Enfield died hours later. To escape injury, Smith's panic-stricken colleagues in the cartridge-making building burst through doors and leaped through windows.

James Beach worked in the
 Hazard Powder Co. fireworks
building.  He was bathing in a stream
when he was killed in the explosion.
He's buried in Old Hazardville Cemetery
 near his brother, Arthur, who also
was killed that day. (Find A Grave)

The catastrophe could have been worse. A building packed with coarse, unground gunpowder suffered damage, but it didn't explode. Hazard stored enough gunpowder in another building, the Courant reported, "to have destroyed the whole village" if it had exploded.

"It is remarkable," the newspaper wrote, "that there were no more lives lost."

En route home via train from New York, Hazard received word of the disaster at a stop in Berlin, Conn. His financial losses were estimated at $15,000 — $12,000 for the roughly 10 tons of gunpowder that exploded, $3,000 for five wooden buildings destroyed. But the disaster merely dented Hazard's booming business.

"The loss will not interfere with the operations of the company," the Courant reported, "as there are 75 mills left."

Hazard began re-building almost immediately. Orders for the Federal Army would be filled on time. By January 1864, the Hazard Powder Co. was producing 12,500 pounds of gunpowder daily, nearly a quarter of the Union total.

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-- Have something to add, correct? E-mail me at jbankstx@comcast.net

 SOURCES

• Boston Journal, July 24, 1862
• Brooklyn Evening Star, Dec. 5, 1855
• Enfield (Conn.) Historical Society
• Find A Grave
• Hartford Daily Courant, Sept. 17, 1858, April 25, 1861, July 24, 25, 1862
• The Memorial History of Hartford County Connecticut 1633-1884, edited by J. Hammond Trumbull, Boston, Edward L. Osgood Publisher, 1886
• The New York Evening Post, March 22, 1849
• The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, July 25, 1856.

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Connecticut-based reseacher Dan Hayden contributed to this post.

Meet 'The Patriot Printer Boy,' whose image turned up on eBay

12th Connecticut Private Howard Hale died in Louisiana in 1863. (Courtesy George Bittner)

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During a research trip to the National Archives in Washington in 2015,  I found in a pension file a terrific cache of letters written by Howard Hale, an 18-year-old private who served in the Deep South with the 12th Connecticut. Eloquent and lengthy, the letters were a joy to read. But there was a major gap in Howard's story: a photograph of him. No image of the teenager turned up at the Connecticut Historical Society, Connecticut State Library archives or any of the other usual places I look.

Then came an e-mail Monday morning. Ebay seller George Bittner told me he discovered a CDV of Hale, with distinctive bushy eyebrows, among others in an album he had purchased at an auction. On the back of the photograph, perhaps a copy of an earlier image of Howard, Hale is identified as "The Patriot Printer Boy." Looking the part of a freshly minted soldier, the eldest son of David B. Hale of Collinsville, Conn., wears a fresh kepi and a serious expression. (Perhaps the image will somehow make it back home to Collinsville.)

Not surprisingly, Hale's father worried about his son and prized news from him throughout his army journey.  The pension file also included a letter from David Hale himself -- a letter that sadly proved prophetic.

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

While camped near steamy New Orleans with his 12th Connecticut comrades, teenager Howard F. Hale delighted in writing long letters to his father, who lived 1,500 miles away in Collinsville and missed his eldest son desperately.

An engaging writer and highly literate, Howard wrote sarcastically about “our beloved [Pvt. Marcus] Edgerton,” the “man with one lung, who has done no duty since leaving Hartford” and was due to be discharged.  In another letter, he wrote how pleased he would be if older sister Anna could make a frame for his photograph out of the sea shells he picked out of the sand “one awful hot day” at Ship Island, the desolate barrier island off the coast of Mississippi where the 12th Connecticut was stationed in early spring of 1862.

Striking a serious tone, he also worried whether the army would “make something of me” during his three-year enlistment.  “I very often wonder what I was ever destined for,” the teenager wrote to his father, David, on August, 19, 1862, “and whether I am ever going to be good for anything or not. I get so overly discouraged a … great many times. You must write me a good cheering fatherly letter, and advise me in my troubles of mind, not of the body.”

Back of CDV of Howard Hale,  killed in Louisiana in April 1863.
The image may be a copy of another photograph.
(Courtesy George Bittner)

And Howard Hale also wrote about pests.

For soldiers from Connecticut, the Deep South was a strange, and often exotic, place.  After operations in Mississippi along the Mississippi River, the 12th Connecticut on May 1, 1862, became the first Union regiment to occupy New Orleans, camping its first night in the city in Lafayette Square. The regiment was later based at Camp Parapet, a former Rebel fortification about 10 miles upriver from the city. Especially during the wretched summer months, insects and other pests made life more miserable there than the Rebels, who never counter-attacked the fort after the Yankees assumed command and expanded it.

Howard and his friend, John Phelps, a sergeant from Simsbury who liked to swear, built a bed a foot and a half high over which they spread mosquito netting. It allowed the soldiers, Hale wrote, to “safely bid defiance to the bloody-thirsty wretches, whom we can hear buzzing outside, as if in rage.”

Flies were “thick enough in all conscience,” the private noted, and red ants, as “thick as were some of Pharaoh’s pests,” would get into anything edible -- even soap, which they would eat all the inside out into fine crumbs. “Then if you dare dispute ownership with them,” Hale wrote, “they invade your person and bite like the d-----d!” Lizards would often drop from trees onto soldiers, startling them before the little reptiles dropped to the ground. “Hadn’t I better try to bottle one up in spirit to take home?” the young soldier wondered. “I believe I could do it.” Camp Parapet even exhibited three alligators -- one that was “six or eight feet long.”

An envelope Howard Hale used to send money to his father in Collinsville, Conn.

Howard Hale's name appears on a monument in Collinsville, Conn., among the names 
of other soldiers from the area who died during the war.

A bigger worry, of course, was disease. In June 1862, Hale’s friend Phelps ate “anything and everything” although he had a bad case of diarrhea, which along with malaria often crippled the regiment.   “He’ll have to reform his ways,” Hale wrote in a letter home about Phelps, “or he’ll take his ‘six feet by two’ in the ‘Louisiana Lowlands’.”  Joseph Toy, the 12th Connecticut’s captain, had been sick since the regiment’s stay on Ship Island, wracked with the fever. He later died and his body was shipped back home to Simsbury strapped to a chair placed in a cask of liquor to preserve his remains. In mid-September 1862, Hale was given a “delicious does of castor oil” for his own bad case of diarrhea and later was prescribed quinine and even morphine, which he figured would make him sleepy.

In 1862, the 12th Connecticut bounced from bayous to sugar cane fields, destroying railroad bridges, hunting bushwhackers and destroying  Rebel camps. Writing that September that he was hopeful that he could be home at the expiration of his three-year enlistment in November 1864, Hale noted: “I won’t ‘crow before I am out of the woods,’ though.”  On October 27, 1862, the regiment saw its first fight, dislodging Rebels led by Gen. Dick Taylor, the son of former President Zachary Taylor, at Georgia Landing, near the La Fourche Bayou, about 60 miles upriver from New Orleans. In January 1863, the regiment helped destroy the Rebel gunboat “Cotton” on the Teche River.

The conclusion of one of Howard Hale's Civil War letters to his father.

On  Feb. 12, 1863, David Hale encouraged his son to preserve his 1862 diary and   other keepsakes: 
"Soon you may be sick or killed." (National Archives)

Worried about his son, David Hale urged him to preserve his 1862 diary -- “I should prize it highly,” he wrote on February 12, 1863 -- and all the letters he received from home. “You may sometime be called suddenly to move and lose or leave some of your things, which you would like to preserve,” Howard’s  fifty-one-year-old father noted. “If you and your comrades have things which you would like to send to your friends, I wish you would now or very soon  get together such things as you would like to send.

“… Talk the matter up now, do it at once,” David Hale emphasized. “Soon you may be sick or killed, and all will be lost. Act now.”

On April 9, 1863, a large force of Yankees that included the 12th Connecticut crossed Berwick Bay to attack the Rebels behind entrenchments at Centerville, in western Louisiana.  Four days later, the Federals led by Gen. Nathaniel Banks attempted to cut off  Taylor’s army near Brashear, Louisiana, at Fort Bisland, an unfinished, earthwork fortification with a ditch that “scarcely offered an obstacle to the advance of an army.” Sometime during the fighting, Howard Hale was shot in the abdomen. He died nearby two days later. His final resting place is unknown.

The first page of Howard Hale's letter home from Camp Parapet, near New Orleans, on June 15, 1862. 
"I joyfully take the present time to write and let you know how I  am progressing," he wrote. 
(National Archives)

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

SOURCES:

Howard Hale pension file, National Archives and Records Service, Washington
--Hale letters home, June 15, 1862, August 19, 1862, September 11, 1862.
--David Hale letter to Howard Hale, February 12, 1863.

-- New York Times, April 22, 1863.

In images of cemetery chaos, a search for deeper meaning

A fallen tree trunk suspended over the grave of PFC John Bensenhaver (left), who's buried 
next to a Civil War veteran in Maromas Cemetery.
(CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

A mini-hurricane of destruction: The gravestone at left did not survive a direct hit. 

Pine branches and tree limbs scattered about Maromas Cemetery, near Middletown, Conn.

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In a small, seldom-visited Connecticut cemetery, turmoil reigned. A massive tree, a victim of old age or a recent storm, had collapsed, scattering branches and limbs and wreaking havoc throughout the grounds.

Struck by a direct hit from a large limb, an ancient, slate-gray tombstone proved to be an unworthy adversary. The marker was split open near its base, exposing pearl-white stone. Nearby, another gravestone stood defiantly despite a well-aimed strike. Pine branches, a secondary victim of the grand tree's demise, littered Maromas Cemetery, the eternal home of several Civil War soldiers.

In the eye of this mini-hurricane of destruction, feet from an old stone wall, another gray marker drew my attention on a winter afternoon. A fraying American flag, barely attached to its staff, was planted next to the grave. As if stopped by some unseen force, the fallen tree trunk was suspended about two feet above the slightly tilted slab of stone. The death date on the marker was familiar: June 6, 1944, D-Day.

The marble tombstone marked the grave of PFC John Edward Bensenhaver, a 34-year-old block of a man with hazel eyes, brown hair and a ruddy complexion, who served in the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment during World War II. Bensenhaver, who stood 5-8 and weighed 240 pounds, was killed in the assault on Utah Beach during the Normandy landings to liberate Europe. He was the son of Sarah and William Bensenhaver, a farmer from Middletown who died of lockjaw in 1916.

As I examined these images Sunday, I wondered about deeper meaning. Perhaps these photographs of cemetery destruction are a metaphor for state of our country on Memorial Day 1944: chaotic, hopeful, fragile, resilient.

Perhaps those words apply today, too.

34-year-old John Bensenhaver of Middletown, Conn., was killed on June 6, 1944, D-Day.

SOURCE: WWII draft registration card, National Archives, Washington D.C. via fold3.com.

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Video: Two minutes at the Connecticut grave of 'Uncle John'

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On May 15, 1864, six days after he was killed at Spotsylvania Courthouse, Va., Union Major General John Sedgwick was buried here in Cornwall Hollow, Conn. "The ceremonies were simple, orderly and in appropriate taste," a witness wrote. "Two or three eloquent and soul-moving addresses, suited to the occasion, were made by the clergymen present, and then, after the immense throng had been indulged with a look at the manly face of the noble soldier, his remains were borne to their final resting place by a respectable company of gentlemen from among his fellow townspeople without ostentation ..."

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SOURCE

-- Hartford Courant, May 18, 1864

In Middletown, holiday cheer, grim news from Fredericksburg

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

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

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

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

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

Where 14th Connecticut cross the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd Lieutenant 
David Canfield
(Middlesex County
Historical Society)

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

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

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

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

At least he had a marked grave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two teens in Company B also died at Fredericksburg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES AND SOURCES:

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

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.

Paying respects to teenager William Hall, killed at Antietam

Lonnie Schorer cleans the marker of her ancestor, 11th Connecticut Private William Hall, 
in Chaplin, Conn. (Photos courtesy of Lonnie Schorer)

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At the Battle of Antietam, scores of teenagers on both sides became casualties.

Shot through the side, George Crosby died of his wounds at his parents' house in Middle Haddam, Conn. The 14th Connecticut lieutenant, a student at Wesleyan University, was only 19. Marvin Wait, a 19-year-old lieutenant in the 8th Connecticut, was riddled with bullets and killed near Harpers Ferry Road. "His death brings a peculiar and poignant sorrow," noted his hometown newspaper, The Norwich (Conn.) Daily Bulletin.

Somehow Dwight Carey of Canterbury, Conn. — killed at Antietam — persuaded his parents to allow him to join the Union Army. He was 15. Wrote his local newspaper:

"In September, 1861, while yet but fifteen years of age he entered the service of the United States, as a private, in the Eighth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers. This act originated in no rash, impulsive enthusiasm, impatient of restraint and headstrong for excitement and novelty, but was the result of calm discussion with his parents and friends, who unwillingly gave their assent on account of his extreme youth."

The 11th Connecticut suffered 139 casualties during
its attack at Burnsde Bridge on the
morning of Sept. 17, 1862.
(Library of Congress collection)

A private in the 11th Connecticut, Daniel Tarbox suffered a wound through the abdomen at Burnside Bridge. The 18-year-old died the next day.

William H. Hall, Daniel's comrade in the 11th Connecticut, was also killed at Antietam, almost certainly in the attack at Burnside Bridge. It's unclear if his body, like the remains of Tarbox, made it back to Connecticut or if the 17-year-old rests in the national cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md., or elsewhere. Years ago, I found a marker for Hall in Bedlam Road Cemetery in rural Chaplin, Conn. Tree branches, weeds, briars and grime covered his slate-gray, state-issued stone. 

In 2016, Antietam guide William Sagle told me about a battlefield tour with a descendant of a soldier from Connecticut. He wondered if I knew the soldier's name.

"Ever hear of William Hall?

"He was killed at Antietam. His descendant really wants to find his grave."

"There," I said, "is your William Hall." I pointed to a post on my iPhone.

And so I started corresponding via e-mail and over the phone with Hall's descendant, former Connecticut resident Lonnie Schorer, who lives in Virginia. It was a  moving experience for her to stand by the 11th Connecticut monument, near Burnside Bridge, and see Hall's name etched on the granite marker among others killed there. I explained that William may not be buried in Chaplin and told what little I knew of her ancestor. No image of the private or wartime correspondence from Hall are known to exist.

On a trip to Connecticut in 2016, Schorer and her husband Dave stopped at Bedlam Road Cemetery. Using toothbrushes, water and determination, they cleaned Hall's out-of-the-way marker. Swarms of mosquitoes couldn't spoil the moment or the view of the cemetery grounds dotted with wildflowers. .

"We had our own Memorial Day service when we finished," Schorer told me, "thanking William for his courage and his life — and letting him know that his family remembers."

A close-up of William Hall's marker in Bedlam Road Cemetery in Chaplin, Conn.

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

What 14th Connecticut Lt. Theodore Stanley left behind

14th Connecticut Lieutenant Theodore Stanley's inscribed Smith & Wesson revolver.
(Photos courtesy of current owner)

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Shot through the lungs at the Battle of Fredericksburg, 14th Connecticut Lieutenant Theodore Augustus Stanley was transported across the Rappahannock River for treatment in a makeshift hospital. The 29-year-old officer didn't expect to live long -- in fact, he told his men to leave him on the battlefield after he was wounded during the disastrous charge on Marye's Heights on Dec. 13, 1862. But Stanley, from a prominent New Britain, Conn., family, survived the battle's immediate aftermath and what must have been an excruciating journey north to Armory Square Hospital in Washington.

Built earlier that year, Armory Square was one of many Washington hospitals that handled a flood of wounded soldiers from battlefields throughout Virginia. The 1,000-bed complex consisted of 12 pavilions and overflow tents spread on the National Mall, across from the Smithsonian Museum grounds and a short distance from the White House. Wounded arrived from nearby wharves in southwest Washington after sailing up the Potomac River aboard hospital ships or other vessels. President Lincoln himself often visited Armory Square, telling the most seriously wounded soldiers "God bless you," according to a nurse who served there.

There's no known record that the president stopped to visit the bedside of Stanley, who died on New Year's Eve 1862 after 18 days of suffering, "much of which was intense." (According to the Dec. 27, 1862, Washington Chronicle, the president and his wife visited Washington hospitals on Christmas Day.) Stanley's body was returned to New Britain, where a funeral service was held at a packed South Congregational Church followed by burial with military honors at Fairview Cemetery.

"Lieutenant Stanley was very quiet and reticent with strangers," a regimental historian wrote of the Company F officer, "and was not well known to many in the regiment, but his Colonel truly said: 'He was always found to the front,' and the officers and men of his own company testify to his uniform regard for their comfort and welfare."

Stanley's sidearm, a Smith & Wesson revolver, survived the war. It was purchased decades ago at a Civil War show by the same collector who owns the sidearm of Perkins Bartholomew, another 14th Connecticut lieutenant who did not survive the war. Judging from the wear on the weapon, it may have been carried by Stanley in the "storm of shot, shell, grape, and canister" at Fredericksburg, Va., more than 153 years ago.

(Do you have a photograph of Lieutenant Theodore Stanley? If so, e-mail me.)

Armory Square Hospital in Washington. 14th Connecticut Lieutenant Theodore Stanley
died here on Dec. 31, 1862. (Library of Congress collection)

Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital in 1865.
(Library of Congress collection)

Meet "Hidden History of Connecticut Union Soldiers" author

I will speak at the Avon (Conn.) Free Public Library on Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 p.m. about my newly released book, "Hidden History of Connecticut Union Soldiers." Stop by and say hello. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. (Even Mrs. Banks will attend!)

A visit to grave of first Union general killed during Civil War

General Nathaniel Lyon was buried in his hometown of Eastford, Conn., on Sept. 5, 1861. 

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No day in rural Eastford, Conn., may ever surpass the late summer day when the body of native son Nathaniel Lyon — the first Union general to die during the Civil War — made the trip home for burial.

"The funeral brought together more people than the town ever saw convened within its limits before or will again for many years to come," the Hartford Daily Courant reported.

Nearly four weeks earlier, on Aug. 10, 1861, the commander of the Army of the West had died from a bullet wound to the chest at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri. A West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran, Lyon was only 43.

Throughout the North, citizens mourned the general. In St. Louis, where Lyon's remains arrived on Aug. 26, "the whole city seemed buried in the profoundest grief." In Cincinnati, thousands passed by Lyon's body as he lay in state Aug. 29, and in New York, flags hung at half-mast throughout the city after the arrival of his remains.

Lyon suffered three wounds at the
 Battle of Wilson's Creek. 
A bullet to the chest proved fatal. 
(Library of Congress)

When attendants transported Lyon's body from the train station in Hartford to lay in state at the Senate Chamber, the bell of the State House tolled and soldiers fired minute guns. Two days later, on Sept. 4, 1861, Lyon's remains traveled by special train to Willimantic, Conn., where flags hung at half-mast, bells tolled and "every balcony and windows [were] filled with people."

During the four-hour, 12-mile journey from Willimantic to Eastford, mourners lined the roads to view the 300-wagon procession. In a poignant moment, mourners carried a physically challenged girl from her house to the roadside to witness the historic event. At about nightfall, men, women and children, some carrying lamps or candles, followed Lyon's hearse as it arrived in Eastford.

At sunrise the next morning — a "bright and cool" Thursday — "people began to pour into the village in continuous streams," noted an observer. "For miles around, the principal roads were filled with long and nearly unbroken lines of conveyances."

At the 10 a.m. memorial service at the Eastford Congregational Church, thousands gathered while notables gave speeches from a booth set up on a slope. The governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island governors attended the service, as did an ex-governor of Connecticut, a U.S. Senator, the mayor of Hartford, army generals and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania, an Eastford native.

"Windham County opened hospitable doors," the Daily Courant reported, "and the extraordinary tax upon the capacity of the community was duly honored. All the guests were well cared for by willing people, with willing hearts."

Atop Lyon's coffin in front of the pulpit lay the general's hat and sword. A "banner which he had followed so devotedly, and upheld so gloriously," wrote an observer, "threw its graceful fold over the head of the sleeping warrior."

Lyon's casket remained closed, no doubt a wise move given the time elapsed since his death and the treatment of his remains after his death. After the battle, doctors tried to preserve the body with injections of arsenic but apparently had little success. (The U.S. Army twice lost track of Lyon's body, which had first been placed in an outdoor cellar and covered with straw on the farm of a staunch Unionist. Later, the woman had the remains buried on another part of her property. Thankfully, the Union Army eventually took custody of the body.)

For the 2 1/2-mile journey from the Congregational Church to Phoenixville Cemetery, attendants placed Lyon's body in a hearse trimmed with American flags and built by noted Hartford undertaker William Roberts. The cemetery grounds formed a "perfect amphitheater," a witness wrote, for a crowd estimated at up to 15,000 people. Pall bearers that afternoon included Connecticut Gov. William Buckingham, Rhode Island Gov. William Sprague and two generals. While attendants lowered Lyon's coffin into a family plot, the Hartford City Guards fired a three-volley salute.

"When the last echoes of the musketry over Lyon's grave rattled through the ravines of Windham County," the Daily Courant reported, "there was not one of all the throng who did not leave the sacred place with a sadder, even if not a better and more patriotic heart."

(See below for the complete account of Lyon's funeral in the Hartford Daily Courant on Sept. 6, 1861.)

An illustration in Frank Leslie's Illustrated, a popular Civil War newspaper, depicts 
Lyon's wounding at the Battle of Wilson's Creek on Aug. 10, 1861. Lyon is on horseback.

Hartford Courant, Sept. 6, 1861

The escort accompanying the body of Gen. Lyon left Hartford, by special train, at 12 1/2 o'clock Wednesday noon. In addition to the special escort detailed from the Army in Missouri, and the friends of Gen. Lyon, which we mentioned Tuesday, there were present at this time the Hartford City Guard, Capt. Prentice, with 60 men, and Colt's Armory Band; the Hartford Light Guard, Lieut. Kipplin, with 40 men; Col. Burnham, of the First Regiment Connecticut Volunteers; Capts. Gore and Durivage, and Lieut. Merrills, of the Second.

The train arrived in due season at Willimantic, and found the people gathered there by thousands. All the buildings in the vicinity of the depot were covered, and every balcony and windows filled with people. The flags were dressed in mourning and drooped at half-mast, and the bells of the village were tolled. The procession started at 3 1/2 o'clock for Eastford, which was reached in about four hours.

From the time the body left Hartford, to the hour when it was deposited in the Congregational Church in Eastford, all classes and conditions of people paid it, in sundry ways, some token of respect.

A  service for Lyon was held at the
Eastford Congregational Church
on Sept. 5, 1861. Thousands gathered here
to pay  their respects to the general.

It was nearly dark when the procession wound over the hills in the vicinity of Eastford, and found the flags in sable trimming plentifully displayed. The groups which had been a feature of the route, now grew more frequent. At one house, a young woman who has been an invalid for fifteen years, was brought out upon the bank by the roadside, that she might see the train go past. As the village lights were seen in the distance, the military formed in line and preceded the corpse to the centre. Here it was followed by the crowd, men, women and children, some carrying lighted lamps, and some lighted candles, up the hill to the church, where the body was laid for the night.

Windham County opened hospitable doors, and the extraordinary tax upon the capacity of the community was duly honored. All the guests were well cared for by willing people, with willing hearts.

Thursday was bright and cool, a beautiful day being promised -- a promise which was fulfilled subsequently. Soon after sunrise the people of the County came flocking in, and a continual stream of carriages continued for hours. The churches and some of the other buildings of the town were covered with black. A booth for the speakers and invited guests was erected on the slope east of the Congregational Church, and in front of and around this the thousands gathered. Col. Sabin came in with a company of one hundred horsemen from Woodstock. The Tiger Engine Company, of Southbridge, preceded by a band, and the Home Guard, of the same place, were among the organizations present. Among the guests were Gov. Buckingham, Adjt.-Gen. Williams, Senator Foster, Hon. A.A. Burnham, M.C. from the Third District; Major-Gen. Pratt, Mayor Deming and Postmaster Cleveland, of Hartford; Major Warner and Lieut. Holcomb, of the Third Connecticut Regiment, and Lieut.-Col. Young, of the Second, from Connecticut; Gov. Sprague and Staff, Col. Gardiner, Col. Frieze, Col. Harris, Col. Sprague, Col. Knight and Attorney-General Burges, from Rhode Island; Adjt.-Gen. Schouler and Lieut.-Col. Witherell, of Gov. Andrew's Staff, from Massachusetts; Hon. Richard Busteed, of New-York; Hon. Galusa A. Grow, of Pennsylvania; Col. Casey, of the U.S. Army, and Paymaster Adams, of the U.S. Navy; Lieut. J.B. Dunlap, Thirty-eighth New-York Regiment; Hon. J.B. Colt, of Missouri.
At sunrise a gun was fired by a detachment of the Hartford City Guard, and this was followed by a signal gun at 9 o'clock. At the time the multitude, arriving on foot, or by all manner of conveyances, begun to gather on the slope in front of the church. It was nearly 11 o'clock when the City and Light Guards came from the direction of Danielsonville, towards which they had gone to meet Gov. Sprague and suite. The exercises of the day commenced soon afterwards, Ex-Gov. Cleveland presiding.

The choir sang the hymn, "Hark from the tombs a mournful sound."

A West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran, Lyon
was 43 when he died at Wilson's Creek.

Rev. Mr. Willians, of Chaplin, made a prayer; the choir sang "America;" and Judge Carpenter, of Killingly, was called to the stand. He gave a brief review of the life and character of Gen. Lyon.

Hon. Galusha A. Grow followed. He eulogized Gen. Lyon as a true patriot and brave man.

In a similar strain, Gov. Buckingham, Gov. Sprague, and Judge Colt, of St. Louis, spoke. Remarks were also made by Capt. Edgar, Maj. Conant, and others of the Army in Missouri, and by Messrs. Deming, Busteed, Schouler, and Senator Foster. After the speeches, the exercises of the forenoon were finished. The military and guests were marched to a grove and collated.

In the afternoon, the line was formed and marched to the grove. The body was conveyed in the splendid hearse of Roberts, of this city. The vehicle was decorated with silver trappings, trimmed with American flags, surmounted by plumes, and drawn by four black horses. By its side walked the citizens who came with the body from St. Louis, and whose mission was now coming to a close, and the honorary bearers designated by Ex-Gov. Cleveland, consisting of Gov. Buckingham, Gov. Sprague, Gen. Pratt, and Gen. Casey. As the procession neared the grove, the detachment of the City Guard fired a National salute from a high hill near at hand.

After arrival at the grave, the Episcopal burial service was read by Rev. C.C. Adams, the Methodist Clergyman of Eastford. The body was lowered into the earth, the City Guard fired three volleys over the place, and the vast assembly dispersed.

Gen. Lyon was literally buried with his fathers in the family burial-ground, in the town of Eastford, near the Ashford line. The funeral brought together more people than the town ever saw convened within its limits before, or will again for many years to come. The estimation in which Lyon was held by all patriot people, amounting almost to idolization, was shown by the multitude who gathered to pay this last tribute of respect and affection to his remains. It is estimated that 15,000 were present; and when the last echoes of the musketry over Lyon's grave rattled through the ravines of Windham County, there was not one of all the throng who did not leave the sacred place with a sadder, even if not a better and more patriotic heart.

The date the monument was placed in old Phoenixville Cemetery is unknown.

When he was shot at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, Lyon was on horseback, leading Iowa troops.
This is a close-up of the front of the memorial.

Another close-up of the front of Nathaniel Lyon's memorial in Eastford, Conn.

Crossed swords and cannons and a shield on the front of Lyon's monument.

General Lyon Cemetery was formerly known as Phoenixville Cemetery.

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-- Have something to add, correct? E-mail me at jbankstx@comcast.net