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Arthur F. Hascall, (c, 1861, NY State Military Museum)

I’m scrubbing through unit rosters, regimental histories, and many other documents as part of the Antietam Roster Project. Most of the listings are sketchy and dry, and when I have the chance, I like to dig a little deeper for more information to flesh out the individuals who were at Antietam.

An example of how this sometimes goes, with a bit of an unexpected twist, is the case of Sergeant Arthur Hascall of the 61st New York Infantry.

It started for me with the entry for him in the History of Antietam National Cemetery which lists burials for at least 1250 Union soldiers who were casualties of the 1862 Maryland Campaign.

Fairly basic, but a good start. I began to look more systematically at his Regiment, the 61st New York Infantry, using the New York State Adjutant-General’s report. It was published in 1901, and has at least minimal service information for nearly every soldier ever in the unit. Not perfect, but better. It got me this:

Service data for Arthur and his younger brother Ralph, who enlisted with him and was killed at Malvern Hill.

When I googled the brothers, I found a 2002 article in the Colgate University magazine. Ralph and Arthur were grandsons of Daniel Hascall, a founder of the Baptist seminary that later became Colgate. Both young men were reported to be buried in the tiny cemetery at the university.

If Arthur is buried in Hamilton, New York, he’s not at the National Cemetery. So now I’m not sure either way.

Google also found me the striking photograph at the top of this page. I think there’s a whole ‘nother post just on the circumstances under which that one and maybe a thousand other soldier’s pictures were nailed to the walls of the New York State Capitol in Albany.

So far, it looks like Arthur died of wounds received at Antietam. That’s the record from the AG, and that’s what his family put on his stone.

But that’s not exactly what happened to Arthur. He died of an injury received at Antietam, all right, but it was caused by a soldier in his unit, and probably an accident. I shouldn’t be surprised about this I suppose, but I’ve looked at thousands of soldiers killed or wounded at Antietam, and this is the first accidental death I’ve found.

The story is in a superb reference that is too frequently missed – The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion:

At Antietam, Maryland, September 17th, 1862, a soldier, employed in entrenching, struck another, on the left side of his head, with the edge of a spade. The wounded man fell, badly stunned, and, on examination, it was found that the blow had produced a depressed fracture of the left parietal bone. The patient was conveyed to the Smoketown Hospital, and was placed under the care of Surgeon B. A. Vanderkieft, U. S. V. He breathed with stertor, and had a slow pulse, dilated pupils, and the other signs of compression of the brain. The scalp was shaved, and an incision was made, through which a number of fragments of detached bone were removed. The patient lingered, in a state of stupor, until November 8th, 1862. The particulars of the case are not recorded in the register or in the reports from Smoketown Hospital; but the only death in the hospital from fracture of the cranium, at the date referred to, is that of Sergeant Arthur F. Hascall, Co. C, 61st New York Volunteers.

The fracture extends downwards from the sagittal suture three inches, and it is an inch wide at its lowest part. A few fragments are adherent to the inner table, and the edges of the orifice are carious. The specimen is represented in the adjoining wood-cut, (Fig. 21.) The contour of the aperture in the bone represents, with exactness, the outline of the edge of the spade. The specimen was forwarded to the Army Medical Museum by Surgeon Vanderkieft, by Hospital Steward A. Schafhirt, U. S. A. The latter states that a detailed history accompanied the specimen. A careful search has failed to discover this paper, and the registers of the Museum contain no indication of its reception.

The combined 61st and 64th Regiments, maybe 250 men total, were in the lead of General Richardson’s 1st Brigade (Caldwell’s), and came in behind and left of the Irish Brigade’s line in the attack on the Sunken Road position [map].  Colonel Barlow of the 61st brought them further left and got an enfilading angle on the Confederates in the Lane.  It was probably that deadly fire – combined with some command confusion in the road – that finally broke the line.

It doesn’t seem likely anyone in the 61st would have been entrenching during their assault on the Sunken Road, but it might have been earlier. There are any number of other reasons a soldier would have been wielding a spade on that day.

Our Sergeant was just as dead, no matter the circumstances, as the thousands of others whose lives were taken by hostile fire in that terrible battle.

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Notes

Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869.
The Cemetery History is beautifully presented online by the Western Maryland Regional Library on their WHILBR site.

State of New York, Adjutant-General, Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of New York for 1900: Registers of the 58th, 59th, 60th, 61st, and 62nd Regiments of Infantry, 1 of 43 Volumes, Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1893-1905, Issue 26 (pub. 1901), pg. 939

Barnes, Joseph K., and US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 6 books, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870, Part. I, Vol. II, pg. 57

Hascall’s photograph in the collection of the NY State Military Museum, found online through the New York Heritage portal.

Photos of the Hascall Brothers’ stone at Colgate and Arthur’s at Antietam National Cemetery are available from Findagrave.

Attached to this post is my first feeble attempt at a list of individual soldiers who died on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 – those killed or mortally wounded in action, or otherwise died as a result of their presence there. As far as I know there is no single, comprehensive list anywhere. This one is a start.

I have been motivated in part by the upcoming memorial reading of the names of the Dead of Antietam at the Antietam National Cemetery on Sunday, September 16.  ANB Ranger Alann Schmidt  is leading the effort, and put out a call for names to add to the lists of local burials he already has available (National Cemetery, Rose Hill,  Mt Olivet, and Elmwood).  I hope to be able to contribute some others.

The following nicely summarizes what we’re up against here, though. It’s from the folks at the Western Maryland Regional Library:

According to the Antietam National Battlefield website 2,100 Union solders were killed, 9,550 were wounded, and 750 were listed as missing or captured. Of the Confederate soldiers, 1,550 were killed, 7,750 were wounded and 1,020 missing or captured. The number of men who died of their wounds or the number of missing who had been killed is not known. A conservative estimate of 20% of the wounded dying of their wounds and 30% of the missing killed gives an approximate number of soldiers who died as a result of this battle at 7,640.

This doesn’t even consider the hundreds who died in other action and of other causes during the Campaign – on South Mountain, at Harpers Ferry, at Shepherdstown, and in all the skirmishes in between.

The initial list contains a little over 2,700 names – less than 1/3 of those who died.  I’m adding names to my database at a good clip, though, so the list will get larger over time. I plan to post new editions here periodically.

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The Current List

  [PDF 1.5M] Cover

  [PDF 52K] Introduction/Guide 

  [PDF 713K] The Dead List (4386 names)  v5.0 24 March 2013

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Older Files

[PDF 536K] The Dead List (3688 names) v4.0 6 January 2013

[PDF 484K] The Dead List (3316 names) v3.0 21 October 2012

[PDF 472K] The Dead List (3016 names) v2.0 9 September 2012

[PDF 472K] The Dead List (2722 names) v1.0 24 August 2012

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Notes

The iconic photograph here is by Alexander Gardner. He took it on September 19th or 20th, 1862 on the battlefield at Antietam, and titled it “A Lonely Grave“. Bill Frassanito did some masterful research for his book and identified the grave in question as that of Private John Marshall of the 28th Pennsylvania Infantry. I got my copy of the photograph from the Library of Congress.

The quote above from the Western Maryland Regional Library is on their fine WHILBR site in a page about Confederate burials on the campaign.

The number of people present on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 cannot be precisely known, but it must have been large. Ezra Carman estimated troops actually engaged on September 17th at about 85,000 (51,536 Union, 32,851 Confederate), with thousands in reserve and in support roles nearby. The armies’ mustering strengths in the first week of September were as great as 85,000 and 65,000, respectively. Adding in the Federal garrisons at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, along with local and detached units along the railroad and Potomac River, I think there were something like 160,000 soldiers on the Campaign.

I’d like to know all their names, and get them listed on Antietam on the Web (AotW) so their families, researchers, and other interested people can find them. I can’t possibly get them all, I know. No one could, but I’m working on it.