Austin Fuller: 'Expired suddenly ... expectedly'

Austin Fuller, a private in Company C in the 16th Connecticut, died at home in 
Farmington, Conn. on Jan. 8, 1865. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in nearby Avon, Conn.

On a late December day in 1864, 23-year-old Austin Fuller, a private in the 16th Connecticut Infantry, received what should have been a welcome gift: a 30-day furlough.

On a typical army furlough, Fuller probably would have enjoyed a visit with his wife, Martha Jane, whom he married in September 1859 when the couple were in their late teens. If it were Fuller's first visit back to Farmington since the Battle of Antietam more than two years earlier, he could have recounted the awful details of a fight that cost his regiment 43 dead and 161 wounded.

After he was exchanged along with other sick and injured 
soldiers,  Austin Fuller received a 30-day furlough in late 
December 1864.  According to this furlough document, he was 
expected to return to his regiment on Jan. 25, 1865, 
"or be considered a deserter."

Perhaps Fuller, a wood turner before the Civil War, could have reconnected with family and friends who worked at his trade in Farmington, a manufacturing town of nearly 3,200 about 10 miles southwest of  Hartford.

Or maybe he could have simply relaxed in his home state until he was expected to report back to his regiment on Jan. 25, 1865 -- "or be considered a deserter," according to the furlough document.

But Fuller's return to Connecticut was anything but a normal army furlough.

On April 20, 1864, the 5-foot-8 soldier with a light complexion, blue eyes and brown hair was among hundreds of soldiers in the 16th Connecticut who were captured at Plymouth, N.C., and sent to prisoner-of-war camps in the South. Fuller eventually arrived at Andersonville, the Civil War's most notorious POW camp, where Wallace Woodford of nearby Avon and scores of other Union men from Connecticut suffered from starvation and disease. Henry Way of Bristol, a 19-year-old private in Company K of the 16th Connecticut, was one of 13,000 Union soldiers who died in the squalid camp in southwestern Georgia.

In his excellent book on his imprisonment published in 1865, Robert H. Kellogg, a private in Company A in the 16th Connecticut, described the camp's terrible, crowded conditions.

Martha Jane Fuller received an $8-a-month
widow's pension commencing Jan. 8, 1865.

"I ... wished that the President, under whose banner we had fought, could look in upon our sufferings, for surely the sight would move him to help us, if anything could be done," Kellogg wrote. "Live worms crawled upon the bacon that was given us to eat. 'It is all right,' we said; 'we are nothing but Yankee prisoners, or, as the rebels usually speak of us, 'damned Yankees.' " (1)

When Fuller left Andersonville and was exchanged along with other sick and wounded soldiers in December 1864, he was a shell of the man who enlisted in the Union army on Aug. 7, 1862. In fact, after he finally arrived in Farmington the day after Christmas 1864, he "was taken immediately to his bed, which he never left." (2).

"I was called to attend him professionally and found him greatly emaciated with very severe cough and diarrhea, attended with fever and great prostration," Dr. William Sage recounted. (3)

Never regaining his health, Fuller, his wife likely by his side, died on Jan. 8, 1865. He "expired very suddenly and expectedly," Sage recalled in February 1865, "very much as I am told many of the men died at Andersonville during the last summer." (4)

After her husband was buried, a grieving Martha Jane Fuller filled out the paperwork necessary to obtain a widow's pension. After some wrangling with government bureacracy over such petty issues as her middle name, she was granted an $8-a-month pension, retroactive to the date of her husband's death.

Austin Fuller's final resting place is in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, just off a busy Route 177 that once was a rural farm road. Near the bottom of his weathered, gray tombstone are these words:

The strife is ended

And he is at rest

(1) "Life And Death In Rebel Prisons," Robert H. Kellogg, 1865, Page 166 

(2) Widow's pension document, Feb. 20, 1865

(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.

Weathered U.S. flag at top of Austin Fuller's gravestone.

Close-up of plastic Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) marker next to Fuller's gravestone.

Civil War under my nose: A hero's grave



Congressional Medal of Honor winner Patrick Scanlan is
 buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Avon, Conn.

Civil War graves are often marked by
plastic G.A.R markers such as this
one on Patrick Scanlan's grave.
G.A.R. stands for Grand Army of the Republic.

A hero lies buried slightly more than a mile from my house.

Born in Ireland, Patrick Scanlan was a bootmaker from Spencer, Mass., a small town about 45 miles from Springfield. Irishmen served both sides of the Civil War, of course. In their terrible assault on Dec. 13, 1862, at Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, Va., Union boys of the famed Irish Brigade were cut down by Irishmen from Georgia.

After enlisting in the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry in December 1863, Scanlan sailed from Boston to Hilton Head, S.C., aboard the steamer "Western Metropolis" on March 20, 1864. The 25-year-old private arrived in Hilton Head on April 1, but the 4th Massachusetts was assigned mostly picket and outpost duty.

In late May, Scanlan and his comrades finally "saw the elephant."

This sign at St. Mary's Cemetery in
Avon, Conn.,  marks the row for
Patrick Scanlan's grave.

As the steamship "Boston" made its way up the Ashepoo River on May 24, 1864, with nearly 400 soldiers aboard, it came under heavy fire from a Confederate shore battery. Stranded Union troops on the "Boston" were rescued by Scanlan and four other soldiers who volunteered to bring them to shore. For his bravery, Private Scanlan was finally awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1897.

Scanlan, whose name is misspelled "Scanlon" on his gravestone, died in Farmington, Conn., on Sept. 5, 1903. He was 64. His final resting place is among other Irish graves at St. Mary's Cemetery, a rolling plot of land in Avon, Conn., that slopes toward the Farmington River.

Civil War under my nose: Unionville

Dedicated in 1916, this Civil War memorial was funded largely by a Civil War veteran. 

Close-up of the memorial in front of the First
 Church of Christ Congregational, near Route 177.

I pass this Civil War memorial every day on my way to work. Many people probably don't think much about it,  but when it was placed on what was then the Unionville village green in July 1916, it was a big deal. According to the Connecticut Civil War Monuments web site, 3,000 people, floats, 75 Civil War veterans and 20 cars were part of the celebration. The memorial, which honors Civil War veterans of the area, was largely funded by Nathaniel C. Hayden, a local businessman, who as a captain in 16th Connecticut Infantry was severely wounded at Antietam. He died a few weeks after the memorial was dedicated. It stands today in front of the First Church of Christ Congregational. I'm not sure if it's in Unionville or Farmington. As you can see by the photo at right, it's a nice work of art.