Tag Archives: Civil War

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From Plow Blades and Horseshoes to Automobiles: A Metal-working Skill Lived On

Earlier this year I was researching Hingham’s Irish immigrant neighborhood in preparation for the launch of a Hingham walking tour tied to the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail.   As described in Not All Is Changed: A Life History of Hingham (1993, Hingham Historical Commission), “by the 1870s, Crowe’s Lane, Hersey near Elm Street, upper Elm, Emerald Street, and Bates Court, were an Irish village . . . .”  I spent time reviewing pages about these streets in the Loring Notebooks in our Society archives. These “notebooks” actually are binders filled with historic details about Hingham streets and properties, assembled by local historian Julian Loring (1899-1978).  The description of a property at the corner of Lafayette and Elm Streets — in the heart of the “Irish village” intrigued me.  Daniel Hickey, a blacksmith, and his family, lived on this corner from late 1889 until around 1910. I did some additional digging and felt rewarded for the effort:  the multi-generational Hickey family story that emerged paints a vivid picture of life in Hingham, and America, in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Daniel Hickey was born in Hingham to Irish immigrant parents. And it was with his father John that a metal-working family tradition began.

Irish immigrant John Hickey, from Kilkenny, met Bridgett Hackett, of County Cork, on Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. They arrived in Boston in 1832 and married there that November.  They had settled in Hingham sometime before 1835 when their first daughter, Mary, was born. John described himself as a laborer on his 1845 naturalization form but would soon develop far more specialized skills.

Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor, 1896. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society.

The Hickey genealogy in the 1893 History of the Town of Hingham tells us that John and Bridgett found a place to live on North Street near the harbor. Successive federal and state census records tell us that by 1850, John was employed as an “iron melter,” a “furnace man,” then an “iron screener” and, by 1860, a “moulder.”  Although no surviving record could be found, almost certainly John was working at the Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor.

John and Bridgett’s 9 children—5 daughters and 4 sons–were born in Hingham. (John died in 1866 and his wife Bridget in 1873.) Three of their four sons–James, born in Hingham in 1839; Thomas, born in 1841; and Daniel, born in 1851–followed their dad into hot metal work.

Their eldest son James became an iron screener and moulder as a teenager (likely joining his dad at the local foundry) and then took his trade into the Civil War, where he served in the 4th Regiment of the Massachusetts Cavalry—perhaps making cannon balls as well as horseshoes for his unit. After the war James married and moved to Canada.

Second son Thomas, described as a blacksmith when he joined the 1st Cavalry in 1861, later served in the 4thCavalry. His 4 plus years of service were eventful and admirable as related in The Town of Hingham the Late Civil War (1876, F. Burr and G. Lincoln.) He mustered out at the war’s end in 1865 as a second lieutenant. James and Thomas were among the 24 young men from Hingham who were in cavalry service during the Civil War.

Burr-Brown Tassel Factory, Fearing Road, Hingham, c. 1865. Hingham Historical Society

Thomas returned to the family’s Hingham home on North Street, where in 1865, he (aged 23) and 4 younger siblings were living with their parents. His 21-year-old sister Ellen worked at the nearby Burr, Brown Tassel Factory, a popular employer for young women from Irish immigrant families, and John Jr., 19, was a periodical dealer, perhaps selling reading material to commuters from the then-downtown train station. Thomas married in 1866. By 1879, records show that Thomas had a 2-man blacksmith business in Hingham. It is quite possible that the second blacksmith at Thomas’ shop was younger brother Daniel, who would have been in his 20’s by that time. By 1880, Thomas and his wife Mary Jane had a home on Cottage Street and three young sons. They moved to Quincy in 1883.

Daniel stayed in Hingham. In 1876, he married Margaret Hanley of East Weymouth, whose parents, John Hanley and Margaret Keane, were both Irish immigrants. John Hanley, a farmer, was born in Tipperary County. Perhaps Margaret met Daniel Hickey when he provided blacksmith services for her dad’s farm animals. After they married and started a family, the couple first lived on Ship Street. By 1892, Daniel and Margaret had 5 children — 3 sons and 2 daughters.

Detail from “A Bird’s Eye View of Hingham,” map published by A. F. Poole, Brockton, Mass. (1885). Hingham Historical Society

In November 1889, Daniel and his family moved to the corner of Elm and Lafayette, where the property included a barn suitable for horseshoeing. This excerpt from an 1885 illustrated map of Hingham shows the corner as it likely looked when Daniel bought the property in 1889, before the surrounding Maple Street neighborhood was developed, around 1900. Daniel also had a business location for his blacksmith business within walking distance, at 23 North Street. Daniel bought the corner property at 49 Elm Street from Alfred Howard, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, who may have built the home (c.1860) which still stands at this address. Alfred was the son of a blacksmith, Edmund Howard. Daniel had likely known the Howard family for years, as it was Alfred’s uncle, Charles Howard, inventor of the Howard Plow, who had started the Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor.

A horse-drawn open wagon passes the Cushing House on North Street c. 1896. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society

The late 19th century was a busy time for livery stables and the blacksmith trade as horse and buggy was a primary means of transportation.  In the 1860 census there were 14 blacksmiths doing business in town, as related in a fascinating program on the history of transportation in Hingham researched and presented by archivist Bob Malme (and now available to view on the Society’s YouTube channel.

But times were about to change. The first automobile in Hingham, arriving in 1902 according to Not All Is Changed, was owned by Francis Willard Brewer (1846-1907), an affluent local “gentleman farmer.” By 1912 Hingham had acquired its first motor-powered fire engine, replacing one team of horses. That year, with their family now grown and local blacksmithing businesses gradually being replaced by auto repair shops, Daniel and Margaret downsized to a home at 37 Elm Street. But the family interest in horses, and in metal work, continued with their sons Daniel Jr. and Herbert.

Daniel Hickey, Jr., born in Hingham in 1883, and later living in Boston, was, at age 34, a riding instructor, according to his WWI draft registration.  He worked for a time at Boston’s Park Riding School, which was operated by a J. B. Ferry.  Daniel was also described as an “automobile driver”—which suggests he worked as a chauffeur in early automobiles, in addition to teaching students to ride horses.

Hudson Motors dealership, Summer Street, Hingham, 1926. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society

Indicative of the changing times, Daniel’s oldest son Herbert, born in 1878, moved to Detroit sometime after 1910, and had a long career in the fast-growing auto industry. For a time, he was an inspector at the Hudson Motor Car Company, which had an early dealership on Summer Street at Hingham Harbor. Hudson Motor Company, founded in 1909, merged in 1954 to become American Motors Corporation.  It was fascinating to learn how the Hickey family’s livelihood evolved with changes in transportation, while the skills in metal work continued through the generations.

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Memorial Day in Hingham

Memorial Day arose in the aftermath of the Civil War, to honor the Union war dead.  It was frequently called “Decoration Day” because flowers were laid at the graves of those who had died for the Union cause.  The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union veterans which at its height had nearly half a million members, was influential in establishing one specific day—May 30—for commemoration of the North’s Civil War dead.  It is said that this day was selected because the flowers for decorating graves would by then be blooming throughout the country.  By the 1890s, all of the northern states observed Memorial Day each year on May 30.  (The states of the former Confederacy commemorated their war dead on a different date.)

In 1870, Hingham held an elaborate day of remembrance on June 17—the day the Town dedicated a monument to the memory of its Civil War dead. A thirty-foot obelisk of Quincy granite, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument stands on a hilltop in the center of Hingham Cemetery.  It bears the names of 74 Hingham men who lost their lives in the war.  Before the trees filled in, its site offered commanding views of the Harbor, World’s End, and Harbor islands, as can be seen from the early photograph and contemporaneous engraving above.

The details of the ceremony can be found in The Town of Hingham In the Late Civil War, by Fearing Burr, Jr., and George Lincoln, published in 1876.  A “procession” during the dedication ceremonies was elaborate and inclusive.  It was led by the Hingham police, two regiments of the state militia, the Weymouth Brass Band, and a drum corps.  There followed three “divisions,” each of which followed a different route through town, first to Agricultural Hall to hear an oration by local luminary Solomon Lincoln (1804-1881), and from there to the cemetery.  The procession included politicians, clergy, business leaders, schoolchildren, veterans, fraternal societies, police, firefighters, three brass bands, “citizens on foot,” “citizens in carriages,” and, poignantly, “orphans of deceased soldiers.

Solomon Lincoln was a well-known lawyer, Hingham’s representative in the General Court, and the author of Hingham’s first town history, published in 1827.  Lincoln opened his speech acknowledging that “[w]e have assembled to-day with mingled emotions of sorrow and joy—sorrow for the patriot dead who gave their lives to their country, and joy in the triumph of the cause for which they fought.”  Continuing with this theme, Lincoln added up the estimated 300,000 Union dead, 300,000 Confederate dead, and 400,000 “crippled or permanently disabled” to conclude that the war had a devastating personal impact on 1 million young men.  But, he noted:

notwithstanding these painful facts, carrying sorrow and calamity into so many families, and cutting down the flower of the young men of the land, we are permitted to rejoice in the success of the great struggle for which they gave their lives to their country. In the providence of God, the great cause of the rebellion was irrevocably removed, and every inhabitant of the land thus redeemed can enjoy the pure air of freedom. Our martyred president seemed to have been an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to purify this nation, and by his emancipation proclamation to breathe into it the breath of life, and to stamp his own with immortality.

Ever the local historian, Lincoln noted that he was speaking on the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill and evoked Hingham’s role in prior wars:

I have said that this is a historic day. The erection of the Monument to the memory of our soldiers and sailors in the place where it stands, has an appropriateness which harmonizes well with our local historical associations. It stands amid the graves of our ancestors, the first settlers of the Town, whose valor was displayed at an early date in our history, in defending our infant settlement from hostile attacks. The men who, in Provincial times, united with the forces of the mother country to repel the incursions of the French, repose almost beneath its shadow. The heroes and patriots of the Revolution, in considerable numbers, found their final resting-place within its limits. That distinguished general whose name is conspicuous in our annals, and who merited and enjoyed the confidence of Washington, rests in this consecrated ground. . . .  There, also, are the graves of many who bore arms in the war of 1812, by some called our second war of Independence.

Lincoln’s speech provides a hint that Hingham observed some form of Decoration or Memorial Day as early as 1870. When speaking of the Civil War graves near the new monument, he mentions that it has been “[b]ut a few days since the beautiful service was performed of decorating their burial places with flowers.”


No matter when Hingham started observing Memorial day, its services, speeches, and parades were well-established by the early 1900s, when we start to see photographic evidence.  The Hingham Journal described the events of Memorial Day 1918, occurring as it did while the United States was at war—World War I would not end until six months later, in November 1918.

MEMORIAL DAY, 1918, passed down into history as one of deep significance. Everything seemed permeated with a deeper feeling than usual. The speeches, the parade, the prayers, were all filled with things reminding us of the great world conflict. The courtesy shown by Commander Wallace in sending a detachment of Marines, and of Captain Edgar in sending a platoon of blue jackets, was appreciated, and helped to make the parade a success. It was the largest and best parade seen in the town for many years.

One of the “blue jackets” was Howard Henderson (1895-1982), a young man from Hingham who graduated college in 1917 and enlisted in the United States Naval Reserves.  Henderson exhaustively documented his life and his town in a series of photograph albums digitized and donated to the Society in 1996.  These albums include pictures of the 1912 Hingham Memorial Day Parade (above) as well as the 1918 parade, in which he marched with his unit.

World War I (with 116,000 soldier deaths) changed Memorial Day from a commemoration of the Union dead to a remembrance of all those who died in the military service of the United States.  This in turn transformed it into a holiday that was national in its appeal. In 1967, an Act of Congress made “Memorial Day” a federal holiday which one year later, in 1968, was moved from May 30 to the last Monday in May.

Camilla Roundtree and Mary Jeanette Murray, c. 2000
George MacKenzie, 1996

 

Hingham continues to observe Memorial Day every year and the 2022 ceremony will be held at Hingham Town Hall, starting at 11am.

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Hingham Sailors in the Civil War: Where the Wild Winds Swept Them

In August 1862, three young Hingham men enlisted in the U.S. Navy. At the Charlestown Navy Yard, they were issued uniforms and entered into the record: Benjamin Jones, twenty-nine, hazel eyes, dark hair; George Merritt, twenty-one, blue eyes, brown hair; Henry Trowbridge, twenty-one, blue eyes, light hair. Ranked as landsmen, they will earn $13 a month.1

Trowbridge Henry NavalRec 1862 copy

U.S. Navy, Enlistments at Boston in 1862.  Henry Trowbridge of Hingham.

The war was in its second year. The month before President Lincoln had put out an urgent call for additional troops, and the town had rallied to meet its quota. On July 25, 1862, the Hingham Journal printed a powerful appeal that included increased bounties:

Within days of the newspaper notice, our three Hingham Centre boys enlisted, and the village must have been a hive of activity as family and friends gathered to wish the young men well. Benjamin and Henry were first cousins and related to George through the old Massachusetts families.

098665501After several months of training in the north, the three young men left for the sounds of North Carolina aboard the USS Hetzel, a side-wheel steamer, chartered to maintain blockades on southern ports. In North Carolina, they transferred to the gunboat USS Louisiana, “five guns,”2 whose mission was to intercept blockade runners and support ground troops. The ship was crowded and damp, the weather humid and, in addition to the enemy, sailors fought the plethora of diseases that haunted ships. At some time that winter, George Merritt got sick. Suffering from intense fevers and chills, he was moved to a hospital in North Carolina. On February 7, 1863, he died of “swamp fever” and was buried “from the hospital.”2

George Merritt II

Hingham Civil War Monument, Hingham Cemetery

A letter or telegram carried the news north. Adding to his parents’ grief was the fact their son was buried so far from home. They would eventually place a memorial headstone in the First Parish Cemetery in Norwell,3  and George’s name would be inscribed on the Civil War Monument erected by the town after the war. The publication produced for the monument’s dedication, details his service and asks: “Is his sleep less sweet in the land where the wild wind swept him, than if soothed to rest at home, and kin and friends had wept him?”2

Benjamin and Henry remained aboard the USS Louisiana through the winter, and in April 1863, they took part in the sea and land battle at Washington, North Carolina. In August, their service complete, they were discharged and “granted passage home.”2 It must have been a subdued homecoming—of the three young sailors who had left the year before, only two came home. And Henry was ill. The Hingham Journal reports the homecoming:

September 4.

Henry Trowbridge has been confined to his father’s residence with fever, is getting better. Benjamin Jones has enjoyed good health since his return from the U.S. gunboat Louisiana, which were blockading Washington, N.C. The young and noble Merritt was one of the three from here in their company; his bones now rest on Southern soil, but his soul is in heaven.

At war’s end, Henry went to work with his father in a meat market in Hingham Centre. He married, moved out of his parent’s house on School Street, and built a house at the corner of Pleasant and Union streets. After the untimely death of his wife, Mary Ordway Trowbridge, he married Hannah Ferris, an Irish immigrant, and had five children. In addition to rebuilding the house at 51 Pleasant Street after it burned to the ground, he built two houses on Union Street, the one at 11 Union survives. Throughout his long life, he lived to be 87 years old, he was involved in the work of US Grand Army of the Republic post, which Civil War veterans started after the war.  When he died in 1930, he was remembered as “one of the oldest GAR men in the State.”4

Henry Trowbridge age 21

Henry Trowbridge, age 21. Hand-tinted dagurreotype from family collection.

Footnotes

  1. “United States Naval Enlistment Rendezvous, 1855–1891,” NARA microfilm publication M1953. Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Henry Trowbridge, Benjamin L. Jones, George H. Merritt, Aug 1862. FamilySearch. Web. Author note: Henry and George were actually both 20, not 21 as indicated in the records.
  2. Burr, Fearing, George Lincoln, The Town of Hingham in the Late Civil War. Includes biographical information Benjamin Jones, pp. 312–313; Henry Trowbridge, p. 313; George Merritt pp. 388–389.
  3. See photo of memorial headstone, George H. Merritt, First Parish Cemetery, Norwell, Plymouth County. Find a Grave website, findagrave.com
  4. Henry Trowbridge obituary: Daily Boston Globe, May 7, 1930.

About the author

Meg Ferris Kenagy is a freelance writer who grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts. She is the author of The House on School Street, Eight generations. Two hundred and four years. One family.

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The Songs of the Abolitionists

Jairus Lincoln of Hingham published his song book “Anti-Slavery Melodies: For the Friends of Freedom” for the Hingham Anti-Slavery Society in 1843.  Music was an important part of abolitionist meetings and rallies. In the foreword to his anthology, Lincoln noted the success that the temperance movement had enjoyed incorporating music into its message and urged the anti-slavery movement to follow the example: “[t]here are many who have not the gift of speech-making, but who can, by song-singing, make strong appeals, in behalf of the slave, to every community and every heart.”

Lincoln included the words and music to 57 anti-slavery songs, some original, some “standards” in the movement, and some taken from a previous anthology, “The Anti-Slavery Pick-nick.”  Many of the melodies are based on hymns that would have been very familiar to the audience, with lyrics based on anti-slavery poetry by John Pierpont, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others. (To our 21st century sensibilities, the absence of any music influenced by the rich music–spirituals and field tunes–of the enslaved peoples themselves is striking.)

A few songs stand out.  Lincoln included a sharp parody of a familiar patriotic hymn:

My country! ’tis of thee,
Stronghold of slavery,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Where men man’s rights deride,
From every mountainside,
Thy deeds shall ring.

My native country! thee,
Where all men are born free,
If white their skin:
I love thy hills and dales,
Thy mounts and pleasant vales,
But hate thy negro sales,
As foulest sin. . . .

One well-known anti-slavery anthem, “The Song of the Abolitionist,” was written by William Lloyd Garrison, to be sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”:

I am an Abolitionist! I glory in the name;
Though now by slavery’s minions hissed, And covered o’er with shame;
It is a spell of light and power, The watch-word of the free;
Who spurns it in the trial-hour, A craven soul is he.

I am an Abolitionist! Then urge me not to pause,
For joyfully do I enlist In Freedom’s sacred cause;
A nobler strife the world ne’er saw, Th’ enslaved to disenthral;
I am a soldier for the war, Whatever may befall. . . .

Words and music to "Song of the Abolitionist," from Lincoln's Anti-Slavery Songbook

Words and music to “Song of the Abolitionist,” from Lincoln’s Anti-Slavery Songbook

In From Abolition to Rights for All: The Making of a Reform Community in the Nineteenth Century, Professor John Cumbler writes that “[t]he social world of abolitionism also had its lighter side.”  The two examples with which he supports his assertion are close to home:  an 1844 meeting in Hingham, where New England abolitionists enjoyed a boat trip from Boston, the seaside, and the country air, and a “fishing party” to Cohasset during those same years. Perhaps after enjoying sunshine and a good meal, the abolitionists pulled out their copies of Lincoln’s “Anti-Slavery Melodies”–perhaps even the copy that is now in our archives.

A few years ago, a choral ensemble from Arizona State University recorded a number of the songs from Lincoln’s “Anti-Slavery Melodies.” Click here and scoll down the page to listen.

 

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Lincoln on Lincoln (and the start of the Civil War)

When John Barker, subject of two prior posts on this blog (“A Soldier Writes Home” and “John Barker at Gaines Mill”), went off to war in 1861, 15-year old Francis H. Lincoln of Hingham was a student at Derby Academy.  In two bound volumes, preserved in our archives, he minutely described his primary and secondary education.  The Academy’s rules (memorialized in these books) provided that “the writing of compositions be required of the scholars as often as once a fortnight during each term.”  Lincoln recorded each of his efforts in these volumes.

Two of Lincoln’s compositions written during his last year at Derby took current events as their subject–South Carolina’s secession from the Union, the election of a distant relation as President, and the coming of war.  In February 1861, two months after South Carolina seceded, he penned “A Fable on the Times”:

“Once upon a time” when the people of the United States elected their President, the South or Southern States, the inhabitants of which were mostly Democrats, generally outvoted the Republicans and other parties of the North; but in 1860 at the Democratic conventions, for nominating candidates for the Presidency they were unable to agree, and Republicans outvoted the other parties, and selected Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, President.

Mr. Lincoln being a man opposed to slavery, South Carolina, a miserable little State, tried to rebel against the Union, by seceding and making war, endeavoring to get some other small states to join her, and form what they intended to call the “Southern Confederacy.”

How this will turn out, nobody knows, but probably the Republicans will be masters of the Union.

“Haec fabula docet” that persons must not think that they can be masters of everything, that they must be sometimes willing to give way to others; and it is best to begin these habits in early life, for the child that is permitted to have its own way will grow up like South Carolina creating hatred, and perhaps war. Therefore, O parents, “lead up children in the way they should go;” therefore, O Republicans, do your best; correct South Carolina in her mad course, and “lead it up in the way it should go.”

Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, March 5, 1861. Photo from Lincoln Collection, Library of Congress

The next months were eventful.  Lincoln’s June 1861 composition was titled, “Fort Sumter”:

 This fort, which is situated upon an island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; was taken by Secessionists in the spring of 1861, shortly after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.

Although much might be said about Fort Sumter, I shall not confine myself to that in particular, but shall write concerning the present rebellion in general.

The Southern or slave-holding states, especially South Carolina, have probably desired to be separated from the Northern for more than twenty years; and until now have not had what they thought could be called a reasonable excuse. Once, I believe, during the administration of Andrew Jackson, they made an attempt at secession, but failed, as they must now.

They have now made the excuse, that Lincoln will interfere with their institutions, and do all in his power, to free their slaves; but this is nonsense; for Lincoln said in a speech before he was elected, “I shall not meddle with their institutions or slaves, but I shall certainly not permit them to extend slavery any farther than it has now gone.”

Persons who had sworn allegiance to the Government and Laws of the United States, have proved traitors, and have done all in their power to destroy the Union; and have done, also, to accomplish this object, the worst thing they could have done for themselves, that is, opened war upon us; and when Major Anderson (who was in command at Fort Sumter) and his handful of men, were nearly starved, opened fire upon him, and shame upon him, a Massachusetts man was the first to fire upon him.

The North should and will have revenge. “The Union must and shall be preserved.”  There are still at the South, many who would give all their property to preserve the Union, and such men should be delivered from the hands of those mean and cowardly scamps who are compelling them hither to die or fight for them.

But they will be freed, and their persecutors punished, and if the leaders, viz. Jefferson Davis & Gen. Beauregard and a few others escape with their lives they may congratulate themselves.

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John Barker at Gaines Mill

To follow up on our post about the stationery, envelopes, and postage on John Barker’s Civil War letters home, we’ll allow Barker to speak for himself, through a letter to his sister, preserved in our archives.  He describes his first serious battle, at Gaines Mill, a Union defeat during General George McClennan’s 1862 Peninsula Campaign:

. . . At about noon the skirmishers began to fire & kept it up till about 3 in the afternoon, when the fight commenced in earnest.  Our Reg’t was not engaged until 5 o’clock when the line in front were driven back.  They went to our rear & then came the tug of war for us & it came in earnest too.  Such roars of musketry I never heard although I thought I had heard it before when it sounded musical to some extent & the artillery above all this.

The Massachusetts 22nd, John Barker's regiment, at Gaines Mills. (Source: Parker, Henry Wilson's Regiment: History of the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry)

The Massachusetts 22nd, John Barker’s regiment, at Gaines Mill. (Source: Parker, Henry Wilson’s Regiment: History of the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry)

On they came and we were forced to retreat.  Just as the retreat commenced I stopped & layed down.  I had a hole through my right breast.  The ball entered my breast & passed through my lung came out just below my shoulder blade.  I bled dreadfully.  The blood completely soaked my clothes & I also bled inside a good deal but as narrow as my escape was I have lived through it.  The Reg’t was on the retreat when I was wounded, & in two minutes the Rebels were about me & as they advanced our artillery from the hills opened on them with grape and canister, which was scattered all around where I lay covered me with dirt & mowing the foe down in great numbers & killing some of our wounded left in the field.  The fight lasted till night then stopped when two of the Rebels came to me & helped me back to the woods close by where I was left till the next day afternoon.  I was in great pain all night.  It was with difficulty I could breath at all & did not know I should live to see morning again & at time was in so much distress I almost wished I were dead, but got through the night & the next day did not feel quite so bad.

In the afternoon I was taken & carried to a house close by where were 275 of our wounded men & I asked our Dr. who was taken also what he thought of my wound & his reply was that I might possibly get over it. But he could do nothing for it.  He told me to keep it wet with water & I tore one of pockets out of my pants & cut it in two, & put one piece on my breast & one on my back.  I kept it wet all the time. . . .

The first week at the house I layed out on the ground, after that got into an old hovel and stayed there.  For the first week they buried from 8 to 15 each day, after that not so many.  Our living was very poor but we made out to live some of us at least.

. . . [O]ne morning there came 30 or 40 baggage wagons & they piled us in & drove off.   Such groaning as that I should not hear again.  They drove us in wagons with no springs for 5 miles over a corduroy road of the roughest kind, then we were loaded off into the cars, what of us were not put on top.  Just as we got ready to start it began to rain & blow, which it did for the next hours in earnest & wet me nicely I being outside.

At night we arrived at the city of Richmond.  That night & till noon the next day stayed in the depot, then were taken to an old tobacco factory in which we stayed a week peeking through the grates in the windows & lying on the nasty floor.  There were 800 sick & wounded prisoners in that building & we had to live on rather short allowance I tell you. . . .

Barker was lucky that his stay at the notorious Libby Prison (the “old tobacco factory”) was short.  He was part of one of the first prisoner exchanges of the war and returned North after only one week.  He closed his letter to his sister, written from a Pennsylvania military hospital, with the report that “[t]he Dr. examined me this morning & says he thinks my lung will soon be nearly as good as ever.”  The doctor was right:  John Barker was back with his regiment for the Battle of Gettysburg, was injured again, and returned to Hanson.  He married and became a shoemaker, dying in 1903.  His name appears on Hanson’s Civil War monument.

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A Soldier Writes Home

Unlike 20th century soldiers, whose mail home traveled for free—or 21st century soldiers, with access to email—Civil War soldiers typically had to purchase their own stationery, envelopes, and stamps in order to write to their loved ones at home.  Our collection of letters which John Barker of Hanson sent home between December 1861 and January 1863—and their envelopes—help tell that story.  Writing materials and stamps were not always easy to come by.  In an 1862 letter home from East Point, VA, Barker wrote:

I suppose that the girls have begun their school.  I would wright them but I have only one stamp and the letters will not go without them now.   I should like to have you send me some if you have them for they cannot be got hear for love nor monney.

StampedBarker apologized for his poor writing materials when writing from camp (“Do not know as you can read this for it is poorly written and my pencil is short”) while in a later letter from a military hospital in Pennsylvania, he remarked upon the quality of his stationery (“I must stop now for I have filled this great white sheet of paper”).  A first-class stamp for a letter sent east of the Mississippi cost three cents.  The 3¢ stamp with Washington’s profile used on Barker’s envelopes was issued after Fort Sumter and used throughout the war.

Mixter EnvelopeStamps were not always available, as Barker notes.  Letters would be delivered if labeled “Soldier’s Letter” and accompanied by a soldier’s name and regimental information.  The postage due was stamped on the outside of the envelope, to be paid by the recipient.  Barker was taken prisoner in the summer of 1862 and after his commanding officer learned that he was well and would be sent North in a prisoner exchange, he wrote the family a letter.  Marked “Soldier’s letter” and inscribed with an officer’s name, it was stamped “Due 3” and delivered to the Barkers.  (Note the handwritten note, “Good news,” in the lower left hand corner of the envelope, a reminder of what a terrifying prospect a letter from a soldier’s commanding officer would have been in the circumstances.)

FrankedInterestingly, Barker did for a period of time have the opportunity of sending letters without buying stamps.  He served in the Massachusetts 22nd Regiment, which was organized by Henry Wilson, then a sitting United States Senator from Massachusetts (and later Vice President under President Ulysses S. Grant).  Barker’s first letter home, from training camp at Hall’s Hill, Virginia, has no stamp.  Instead it was “franked,” i.e., Henry Wilson’s signature appears in the upper right hand corner in place of a stamp.  Union military officers did not ordinarily enjoy franking privileges; presumably, Barker was able to send some early letters without postage because his commanding officer was a sitting member of Congress.

SlogansStationery companies met the demand for stationery and envelopes by manufacturing numerous designs and styles for the soldiers’ use.  Elaborate patriotic pictures and slogans were common.  John Barker wrote home on stationery and envelopes featuring portraits of General Burnside and Columbia; drawings of  flags, eagles, and the Masonic “all-seeing eye;” and slogans such as “One Flag, One Government,” “My God first, my Country next and then my Family,” “Victory,” and “Dedicated to the Gallant Defenders of our National Union.”Columbia