behind AotW

Here are DeWitt Clinton Smith and his family in an ambrotype photograph probably taken as he prepared to leave his home in Minnesota for the war in the east.

He’d married Melissa R. Shepard (1827-1905) in Michigan in 1847 – they were both from his hometown of Barre, NY – and their son Eugene Adelbert Smith (1850-1914) was born in Somerset, MI, where DeWitt was a Daguerrean photographer. They moved to Hennepin County, MN in 1857 and by the time the war came in 1861 he had worked as a farmer, newspaperman, shoe salesman, county land registrar, and school teacher, and was concurrently a county commissioner and postmaster.

He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant of Company D, First Minnesota Infantry in April 1861, and was Captain of his Company when he was seriously wounded in the hip at Antietam in September 1862. The bullet lodged in his pelvis and was never removed. Disabled for further service in the field, he sought appointment as an army paymaster, a largely clerical, non-combat job. He had the support of nearly all the officers of his regiment, who sent an impressive petition to President Lincoln on his behalf in January 1863:

Nothing happened quickly, though, so in October 1863 Smith resigned his commission and returned to Minnesota.

Finally, in April 1864, an appointment as Additional Paymaster and Major, US Volunteers came through for Smith, and he went to St Louis, MO. Unfortunately, 6 months later he was killed by Confederate “guerrillas” while returning by steamboat from making Army payments in Memphis in October 1864:

The picture at the top, as Melissa R. Smith, Eugene Adelbert Smith and DeWitt Clinton Smith, family portrait, copyprint of ambrotype, may be found online from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Melissa re-married 20 years later in Minnesota – a dentist named Lent Bristol Bradley (1820-1900) who had 3 grown children of his own.

The Lincoln petition is among the Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1861-1870 at the National Archives, online from fold3. Among the signers was Captain William F. Russell of Company D, who commanded the 2nd Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters at Antietam.

The story about his death on the Mississippi is from the St. Paul Daily Press of 10 December 1864, also online from the Minnesota Historical Society.