behind AotW

This fine photograph was contributed to John Henry Burnham‘s memorial by Chris Van Blargan. It was taken in Hartford, CT by Bartlett & Webster, probably soon after he was commissioned in August 1862.

Burnham was Adjutant of the 16th Connecticut Infantry at Antietam on 17 September 1862, and had the sad task of accounting for the field burials of the soldiers of the regiment who were killed there.

While researching her 2014 book about the regiment, Dr Lesley Gordon compiled a roster after my own heart, including pre- and post-war details not usually found in military records. She shared a spreadsheet containing her data on her book’s page. I’ve posted a copy here in the event that page ever goes away.

Here’s how she describes it:

This database of men who served in the regiment originated with the state of Connecticut’s Adjutant Generals Office Reports from 1862, 1869, and 1889. As I accumulated more (and sometimes conflicting) information, I filled in gaps and made corrections (especially birth and death dates, and postwar occupations) from the biographical materials collected [by] Ira Forbes and George Whitney … Death and birth dates seemed to have had the greatest inconsistencies in the various sources, and I tried to confirm these by cross-checking the U.S. census, bound regimental records, pension records, obituaries, local histories, as well as a comprehensive unit roster compiled by Scott Holmes. Thus, readers should be alerted that some discrepancies still remain here …

There may be discrepancies or minor issues, but it’s fantastic that she posted this online for anyone to use; it’s a rare and beautiful thing. Huzzah, Dr Gordon!

And I wish I’d found this earlier. It would have saved me untold hours with its clues to some of the more elusive men of the 16th at Antietam.

Orators at many alumni gatherings have spoken of the gallantry of Lieutenant Samuel Hopkins Thompson, the young Civil War hero, who led his men to the charge at Antietam and died crying, “Form on me, boys, form on me.”

— Claude Moore Fuess in Phillips Academy, Andover in the Great War, a talk at Yale, New Haven, CT in 1919 [online]

Well, no, it probably didn’t happen that way.

A former Phillips Academy student, Samuel H Thompson, the First Lieutenant of Company H, 16th Connecticut Infantry died at home in Connecticut on 22 October 1862. He was 19 years old.

It’s not clear what killed him, though lots of literary and genealogical references – even his grave marker – attribute it directly to the battle of Antietam. His military record does not mention his being wounded in the combat there and he’s not on the usual hospital lists. An undocumented wound? An illness he caught on the Campaign?

Something of a mystery.

See also: his good friend and possibly romantic interest, best selling author Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.

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This photograph of his grave marker was contributed to his Find-a-grave memorial by Jim Bancroft.

This fine image is from the collection of John Claudius Buchanan‘s great-great-great-granddaughter Sarah Boye. Buchanan enrolled as First Lieutenant in 1861 and was promoted to Captain of Company D of the 8th Michigan Infantry on 1 September 1862.

20 years later he very succinctly described his part and that of his Company in the 1862 Maryland Campaign to his son Claude:

This is from Claude Robinson Buchanan’s 1882 diary, in which he recorded his father’s War Records. Transcription thanks to Sarah Boye. The original is in the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

There are several stones in the Antietam National Cemetery for men who were actually buried elsewhere.

Readers occasionally ask about this, and I can never find them when I want them, hence this list.  It will evolve as I learn more.

 
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The photo of Henry Struble’s marker is from his Find-a-grave memorial, and was contributed by user John in Maryland.

19 year old Private Wallace R Andrus was promoted to First Sergeant of his Company, “B” of the 16th Connecticut Infantry, on the field at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

He was First Lieutenant of Company I by April 1864 when he was captured, along with most of his regiment, at Plymouth, NC. He ended up with many other officers of the 16th in the “prison pens” in Columbia, SC before being paroled and sent north in December 1864.

The clipping here is an excerpt from a massive 8-column list on page 2 of the New York Times of 6 February 1865, transcribed through OCR online, and in images from the Timesmachine [subscription required].

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The officers of the 16th listed as Columbia prisoners were:

Maj. Dewees, 6th Conn.[?]

Capt. H. Hintz, Co. C, 6th [sic] Conn. [paroled 10 March 65]

Capt. N. [M] C. Turner, Co. D, 6th Conn. [escaped 15 Feb 65]

Lieut. John B Clapp, Adjt. 6th Conn. [paroled 30 Nov 64]

Lieut. Geo. A. Bowers, Co. A, 6th Conn. [paroled 28 Feb 65]

Lieut. Geo. Johnson, Co. B, 6th Conn. [paroled 30 Nov 64]

Lieut. H. Landon, Co. D, 6th Conn. [escaped 15 Feb 65]

Lieut. A.G. Case, Co. E, 6th Conn. [paroled March 65]

Lieut. E.E. Strong, Co. F, 6th Conn. [paroled 2 March 65, Northeast Ferry, NC]

Lieut. Wm.G. Miller, Co. G, 6th Conn. [paroled 10 Dec 64, Wilmington, NC]

Lieut. A.A. Dickerson, Co. H, 6th Conn. [escaped 3 Nov 64]

Lieut. W.R. Andrus, Co. I, 6th Conn. [paroled 10 Dec 64]

Lieut. H. Bruns, Co. K, 6th Conn. [paroled 10 Dec 64]

Lieut. B.F. Blakeslee, Co. G, 6th Conn. [escaped 3 Nov 64]

Capt. T.F. Burke, Co. A, 6th Conn. [escaped 3 Nov 64]

Capt. [C.] W. Morse, Co. E, 6th Conn. [escaped 14 Feb 65]

Capt. T.B. Robinson, Co. K, 6th Conn. [escaped 3 Nov 64]

Major William Dwight Sedgwick was Assistant Adjutant General to General John Sedgwick at Antietam on 17 September 1862, where both men were wounded. The General recovered to return to duty, but the Major died in Keedysville, MD on 29 September.

This photograph is in the MOLLUS-Massachusetts Collection at the US Army Heritage & Education Center.

Corporal Hiram Warner of Company C of the 2nd United States Sharpshooters was killed in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

His older brother Horace Warner was later First Lieutenant of his Company, and was with him at his death.

A somewhat fanciful tale came down in the family afterward:

Mr. [Horace] Warner was one of the best sharpshooters in the Union Army. He was with his brother Hiram Warner, after whom the Wilcox G.A.R. first was named, when the latter was killed in Antietam and he carried his dead body with him for three days in the hope of sending his brother’s body home. Being surrounded by rebels, he was at last compelled to bury the remains and dug his grave on the southern soil with a bayonet.

Hiram and Horace were two of the 4 Warner brothers who served during the War. Here they are together in mid-1862 in Washington, DC.

From left to right: Lt. Robert Warner, Lt. and Quartermaster Horace Warner and Pvt. Hiram Warner of Berdan’s 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, and Pvt. William Warner of the 42nd Pennsylvania Infantry “Bucktails.”

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Notes

The quote above is from Horace’s obituary in the Ridgway (PA) Advocate of 18 January 1893.

Hiram’s magnificent photograph, a sixth-plate hand colored tintype, is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and was published in curator Jeff L. Rosenheim’s Photography in the Civil War (2013).

The photo of the Warner brothers is or was in the collection of Harry Roach, founder of Military Images Magazine, and it graced the cover of his first issue in 1979; his caption used here.

These are pictures of Doctor Nehemiah Nickerson as a youth, then early and late, respectively, in his medical career.

The first is of him at about age 17 (c. 1850). In the US Census of that year he was living with his parents and siblings in Bristol, Massachusetts where his father was a dresser tender. Young Nehemiah was listed as a card guider. Both are jobs operating machines in a textile mill. Within a year or two he was a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

This next one shows him in uniform as Assistant Surgeon of the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, probably taken less than a month before he found himself under fire on the battlefield at Antietam in September 1862. It’s from the Connecticut State Library.

The third is from 1900 or later, after he had been a practicing physician in Meriden, CT for about 40 years. The first and third photographs are thanks to great-granddaughter Cindy Wales-Murphy.

Nathan Mayer, Assistant Surgeon of the 11th Connecticut Infantry treated wounded soldiers under fire at Antietam on 17 September 1862. Here he is after being promoted to Surgeon and Major, and transferring to the 16th Connecticut in January 1863 to fill the vacancy left when Surgeon Abner Warner resigned.

Thanks to Chris Van Blargen for sharing that photograph.

Dr Mayer had two observations on his experience at Antietam. The first was that even untrained men could be trusted to use chloroform safely. The second

… that all the wounded came in, exalted in spirit, full of patriotic fire, anxious for the battle, the defeat of the rebs, and complaining hardly of their own injury. This was quite remarkable on that day. Whether the whiskey which was given to the wounded man at once — and needed in the collapse of serious gunshot wounds – contributed to this exaltation I know not. But I have still in mind some badly wounded boys that fiercely demanded the fate of the battle before they cared about themselves, and the beautiful resignation with which others awaited their certain death.

This is not romance. I saw it and it is realism.

Doctor Mayer had a long and distinguished medical career and was in addition a poet, novelist, and critic of some note. Here he is in about 1890. This picture is in the collection of the Hartford Medical Society, of which he was President in 1906. It was published by Janice Mathews to accompany a piece about him in the Spring 2007 issue of Connecticut Explored magazine.