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 connection: Unionville Civil War memorial

A huge American flag drapes a Civil War memorial in Unionville, Conn., 
before its unveiling on July 15, 1916. Photo courtesy of  Unionville Museum.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

On July 15, 1916, an enterprising photographer climbed into the steeple of a church in Unionville, Conn., and shot the dedication of a Civil War memorial that was called the "most beautiful G.A.R. monument in New England," according to the event program. A large American flag draped the 30-foot monument, which was largely funded by local businessman Nathaniel Hayden, a veteran of the Battle of Antietam. A captain in the 16th Connecticut, Hayden suffered a bullet wound in his left arm in farmer John Otto's 40-acre cornfield at Antietam. (See my interactive panoramas of the cornfield here.) Bits of bone oozed from the wound as late as May 1863. Hayden, who made a small fortune in the coal, feed and trucking business, died six weeks after the monument was dedicated. On June 13, 2013, an amateur photographer standing too close to a busy street shot the interactive panorama of what the scene looks like today. Click on image below for full-screen panorama.

Antietam: Connecticut connection to 'Lost Order'

Above: A post-Civil War photo of the Platner & Porter paper mill in Unionville, Conn.
Union School is on the site today. (Top photo courtesy Cliff Alderman/Unionville Museum)

In a quirk of history, the infamous "Lost Order" that could have led to the demise of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam was printed on paper made in a Northern factory, according to a Connecticut museum president.

A Northern factory in Unionville, Conn.

Samuel Porter
(Photo courtesy Cliff Alderman/
Unionville Museum)

Samuel Porter, an ardent supporter of Abraham Lincoln, owned the Platner & Porter paper mill in Unionville from 1848 until the late 1870s. The factory, which was torn down in 1933, printed high-quality writing paper that was often purchased by the U.S. government. Porter was one of the most prominent citizens in Unionville, a sleepy village along the Farmington River, about 15 miles west of  Hartford. In a glowing obituary in the Hartford Courant the day of his death on Feb. 22, 1903, the newspaper noted that "no (Unionville) citizen was ever more highly respected or more universally beloved than he."

Cliff Alderman, president of the Unionville Museum, answered a few questions about the mill, Porter and the Lost Order.

When did you first come across the Lost Order connection to Unionville and what was your reaction?


Alderman: I first came across the information on the Lost Order and that it was printed on paper embossed "Platner & Porter, Congress" when I was browsing for Unionville historical information online.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the reference to it.

Who was Samuel Porter, the owner of the mill?

Alderman: Samuel Quincy Porter (1821-1907) was a fascinating local figure.  A native of Lee, Mass., he came to Unionville in the late 1840s when he and his business partner, William Platner, purchased a Unionville paper mill.  He and Platner turned the business into one of the preeminent paper manufacturers in the country.  Porter was a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for president. He supported local abolitionist causes, represented Farmington and Unionville in the state legislature and was later a state banking commissioner.  During his term of service in the state legislature in 1869, he cast his vote in support of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed the voting rights of former slaves.  Porter's first wife died at a young age; his second wife, Frances Smith, was a first cousin of J. Pierpont Morgan, who at the time was considered one of the wealthiest men in America.

A post-Civil War view of the Platner & Porter paper mill in Unionville, Conn. The mill
is in the upper left. (Photo courtesy Cliff Alderman/Unionville Museum)

What do you know about the paper mill that printed the Lost Order?

Alderman: Porter and Platner purchased the Stone & Carrington paper mill in Unionville in 1848.  We know from James Cowles' essay on Unionville published  in John Hammond Trumbull's 1886 work, The Memorial History of Hartford County, that Platner and Porter leased additional power and within a few years built an additional mill. Cowles noted that the new mill and tenements erected by Messrs. Platner & Porter were models of neatness and good taste and that these gentlemen gave a tone and character to the village that up to that time had been wanting.  In 1860, they reorganized as The Platner & Porter Manufacturing Co. with a capital of $85,000 and were known as manufacturers of fine writing and book papers.  Platner left the mill in the 1860s, but Porter remained on as president until the late 1870s, when the mill was sold; it later became part of the American Writing Paper Co. The mill made fine writing and book papers and supplied paper to the U.S. government. Walt Whitman's handmade notebooks in the Library of Congress and some of Mark Twain's personal correspondence and manuscripts used Platner & Porter paper.

Are the any other notable Civil War connections to the paper mill?

Occasionally significant letters from Civil War era figures come up for sale at auction. Several years ago, a letter written by Confederate president Jefferson Davis on Platner & Porter paper was sold at auction for a high price.  Southern state government archives supposedly are full of documents written on Platner & Porter paper.

A copy of Robert E. Lee's infamous Lost Order, also known as Special Order No. 191. 
Discovered  by Union soldiers in an envelope with two cigars in a field on the Best Farm,
 near Frederick, Md., on Sept. 13, 1862, the order was turned over to Major General George McClellan.
"Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home,"  McClellan said.
 (Image Library of Congress site)

Antietam: An old soldier's smalltown triumph

A huge U.S. flag drapes the Civil War memorial in Unionville, Conn., before its unveiling on 
July 15, 1916. (Photos courtesy Unionville Museum)  

A crowd estimated at between 3,000 to 5,000 people turned out for a parade and the dedication of the memorial, according to an account in the Hartford Courant on July 16, 1915.

Antietam veteran Nathaniel Hayden, a captain in the 16th Connecticut, was the chief donor
 for the memorial. The frail 80-year-old man was greeted by "great applause" after he was 
introduced at the dedication, according to the Hartford Courant. 
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

As factory whistles blared promptly at 2:15 p.m. on July 15, 1916, one of the grandest celebrations in the long history of the village of  Unionville, Conn., began.

Captain Nathaniel Hayden's obituary
in the Hartford Courant on Sept. 2, 1916.

About 1,000 people in a mile-long parade wound their way to the small triangular green in front of the Congregational Church. The throng included 30 touring cars carrying members of the Burnside Grand Army of the Republic Post, schoolchildren, Boy Scouts, a man mounted on a gray horse dressed as a Tunxis Indian, the 25-piece Bristol Band and guests from nearby Hartford, Simsbury, Torrington and Southington.

In an apparent attempt to out-do each other, owners of local factories, which had suspended activities for the day, supplied brightly decorated floats. Riding on a float covered with flowers, young women from Charles W. House & Son  carried white Japanese parasols while the young ladies of J. Broadbant & Son, dressed as Red Cross nurses, rode on a red, white and blue one trimmed with roses. (1)

After the parade ended in front of the church, an enterprising photographer climbed into the steeple to record the scene below. A large crowd, including men wearing straw hats, women in long dresses and frolicking children, had gathered for the dedication of a 40-foot memorial for the 100 Unionville men who served in the Union army during the Civil War.

Although the Hartford Courant reported it was "pathetic to see the weakness of declining health holding him back," 80-year-old Nathaniel Hayden must have been pleased as he surveyed the grand scene that Saturday afternoon. (2) After a chorus sang "Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean" and an invocation by a local reverend, the Civil War veteran was greeted with "great applause." (3)

A highly successful local businessman, Hayden provided the inspiration and much of cash for the monument, which was described on the cover of the dedication program as "the most beautiful G.A.R. monument in New England." One can only imagine the thoughts that went through his head as the enormous American flag was slowly removed from the granite monument to reveal these words on the front of the base:

Unionville honors the earth that wraps her heroes' clay.

Civil War memorial in Unionville, Conn.

Nearly 54 years earlier, on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1862, in a cornfield outside a small western Maryland town called Sharpsburg, Hayden surveyed a much different scene.

"The Most Beautiful G.A.R. monument in 
New England," the program for the event 
on July 15, 1916 declared.
(Courtesy Unionville Museum) 

Rebel soldiers rose from behind a stone wall, blasting away at the 16th Connecticut, a regiment mustered in only weeks earlier.

Men were cut to pieces by bullets and shell.

Dazed and bleeding soldiers skedaddled for the rear. Some 16th Connecticut soldiers deserted, two fleeing all the way to England.

Perhaps Hayden watched in horror as 16th Connecticut Captain Newton Manross of Company K was struck in the left shoulder by grapeshot, exposing the 37-year-old soldier's beating heart.

Or maybe he saw another 16th Connecticut captain, 26-year-old Samuel Brown of Company D, riddled with bullets and killed.

Perhaps he heard 16th Connecticut captain Frederick Barber of Company H cry out as he was hit in the right hip, "Oh, my God. I'm killed! Goodbye, boys. You've lost your captain. Farewell! Farewell!" (4) His entire right leg amputated a day after the battle, the 32-year-old soldier died on Sept. 20 at a field hospital.

A captain of Company G in the 16th Connecticut, Hayden also suffered at the Battle of Antietam. Struck by a bullet or piece or shell, the 26-year-old soldier was severely wounded in the left arm, below the elbow. Discharged for disability on Jan. 17, 1863, Hayden dealt with small bits of bone oozing from the wound as late as May 1863 and was scarred for the rest of his life. (4).

But overcoming obstacles was nothing new to Nathaniel Hayden. Born on May 10, 1836, in West Hartford, he was one of eight children of Ransom and Hannah Hayden, who died at 41 when Nathaniel was only 5 years old. By age 10, Hayden was earning his own living, once holding a job making whiplashes from sheepskin.

Advertisement in the Hartford Courant on July 28, 1862,
 seeking men to fight in the War of Rebellion.
Nathaniel Hayden was listed as recruiting officer.  

As a young man, Hayden also worked in the liquor business in Winsted, Conn., but he quit because he was a teetotaler. According to one account, he was so eager to get a job as a clerk in Hartford dry goods store that he walked 22 miles in a snowstorm from Barkhamsted to Hartford to interview.

He was hired, beating out six other boys for the position. (5)

A clerk in a Hartford dry goods store of Pease & Foster when the war broke out, Hayden enlisted in the Union army on July 11, 1862. After raising a company of men, mostly clerks from Hartford County, he was elected captain and mustered in on Aug. 24, 1862. "He was an officer of decided capability," the Hartford Courant reported four decades after the war, "and his loss was thoroughly regretted by the men" after Antietam.

After the Civil War,  Hayden married Elizabeth Dodd of Jersey City, N.J., made a small fortune in the coal, feed and trucking business and dabbled in thoroughbred horse racing. Elizabeth enjoyed the ponies, too. When cars became fashionable, Hayden bought one, often taking his for long drives. Retiring in his early 50s, he frequently attended the many reunions of the 16th Connecticut Infantry, swapping old war stories but never partaking in a strong drink.

On Sept. 1, 1916, six weeks after the huge celebration in his adopted hometown, the 46-year resident of  Unionville died at his home on Main Street. After a funeral service there, the Captain was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, a little more than a mile from the soldiers' memorial that he championed.

After the Civil War, Nathaniel Hayden lived in this house in Unionville, Conn.,
 a short distance down the street from the Civil War memorial. It's now  the Ahern Funeral Home.

Nathaniel Hayden's gravestone in Greenwood Cemetery in Avon, Conn.

(1) Hartford Courant, Sept. 2, 1916 Page 9
(2) Hartford Courant, July 16, 1916, Page 7
(3) Hartford Courant, Sept. 2, 1916 Page 9
(4) 16th Connecticut private Wells Bingham's letter to his father, Sept. 20, 1862, Antietam National Battlefield research library.
(5) George Whitney Collection, Connecticut State Library.
(6) Ibid.

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.