Charles L Taylor and Harriet W Tuttle (1862, c. 1848)
28 February 2022
Bristol, CT bookkeeper Charles Lyman Taylor enlisted as a Sergeant in the 16th Connecticut Infantry on 29 July 1862 and married Harriet Wenslow Tuttle (1840-1916) about 26 August. There was probably no honeymoon, as he and his regiment left for the war immediately after.
I’d guess these photographs were taken on the occasion of that wedding.
Below are Harriet and her family some years earlier. Harriet and younger brother Edward Hubbard Tuttle (1842-1868); mother Betsey Hubbard (1814-1888) and father Edmund Tuttle (1814-1886), a mechanic and deacon in Meriden, CT. Excellent images, both.
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The wedding pictures accompanied a very large collection of the couple’s letters sold at auction by Swann Galleries in 2016. Family genealogist Charles J Christenson shared that pair of Tuttle photographs to the FamilySearch database.
Pvt Gavette B Holcomb (c. 1862)
28 February 2022
In an 1863 letter home to his parents Private Gavette Burt Holcomb of the 16th Connecticut Infantry wrote
We are raising the flag to day and well we might for one year agoe was the day that we received a warm reception from those grea [gray]backs, such a one as, I never forget, that day was 17 Sept 1862. That day many of our brave Soldiers died.
He was a farmer in his hometown of Simsbury, CT for the rest of his life, and was for many years on the school board there. And he apparently owned one of the faster horses in the area, a mare named Belle of Kentucky.
The fairgrounds at Cherry Park in Avon, CT hosted a regional fair every September from 1883 to 1911, complete with horse racing on a dirt oval about 1/2 mile long. There was auto racing there in the 1930’s and 40s and a suburban housing development took over in about 1960.
Gavett is about 17 years old in that photograph, from Jim Silliman out of his collection. His 1863 letter is in the collection of the Simsbury Historical Society. The news clippings are from the New Haven Morning Courier and Journal of 6 September 1895, online from the Library of Congress.
Old Man Guest
21 February 2022
Benjamin Franklin Guest was at least 55 years old when he was killed in the battle at Sharpsburg in September 1862; a Private in Company F, 53rd Georgia Infantry.
His is indeed a hard-luck story.
Family history, supported by the US Census, says he lost his Madison County, GA farm and his family due to his drinking, and by 1860 was living alone, an overseer on a farm in Griffin, Spalding County, GA. In May 1862 he signed-up as a substitute for one R.A. McDonald (possibly Robert Alexander McDonald, 1831-1904) of Company F.
The family story says he was killed by a “sniper” on 16 September at Sharpsburg, which is somewhat unlikely, as the 53rd Georgia and the rest of the Brigade arrived at Sharpsburg from Harpers Ferry at sunrise on the 17th. His very brief military record says he was killed on 17 September.
I don’t have a birth year for every soldier killed at Sharpsburg, but among those I do have, Guest is the 2nd oldest. The oldest being Private Adam Burkel of the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry – who was about 57 years old at Antietam.
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The photograph of Semmes’ Brigade’s battlefield tablet was taken by Craig Swain for the Historical Marker Database (HMDB).
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