behind AotW

This lovely photograph of Lieutenant William Francis Barrett, complete with Signal Corps kepi, was taken by T.M. Schleier, photographer, Nashville, Knoxville & Chattanooga, TN, and is in the massive Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress [online].

On 17 September 1862 …

He served through the war as a Signal Officer and mustered out in August 1865.

Sadly, William died not quite 3 weeks later of malaria or dysentery contracted on campaign, leaving a widow Ellen and small son Charles. He was 30 years old.

On the occasion of Jedediah Chase Paine‘s 85th birthday the Lititz (PA) Record of 10 April 1924 published this piece about his presence at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 when he was a Captain, Signal Corps, US Volunteers. He had been with the Army of the Potomac on South Mountain and at Antietam in September 1862 as a Lieutenant in the 57th New York Infantry and Acting Signal Officer.

Here’s a carte-de-visite of Captain Paine made at the Brady studios in about 1863. It was offered for sale by Dan Morphy Auctions in 2010.

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Some of the claims in the news clip above are a little confusing, possibly misleading. He was not really a staff officer – rather a Signal Officer. He was one of many officers – most of the Corps, in fact – who were commissioned into the Signal Corps when it was reorganized in March 1863. He was not actually in the Cavalry, but was assigned as Signal Officer to General Stoneman in 1863. He was awarded brevets (honorary rank) to Major and Lieutenant Colonel of Volunteers in 1865.

This lovely photograph is online in the MOLLUS Massachusetts Collection (Vol. 40, pg. 1994) at the US Army Heritage & Education Center. It was listed in the catalog for Photographic Incidents of the War; from the gallery of Alexander Gardner, photographer to the Army of the Potomac (1863) as having been taken in November 1863, though the MOLLUS mat notes say October.

It was also published in F.T. Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War (Vol. 8, pg. 327; 1911), which is where these men are identified:

Standing, left to right, Lt. Frederick E. Beardslee, Lt. William H.R. Neel, Lt. George J. Clarke, [unknown], Capt. Charles L Davis;
Seated, left to right: Lt. Charles J. Clarke, Lt. William S Stryker, and Lt. Adin B. Capron.

From their pictures in Brown’s The Signal Corps, U.S.A. in the War of the Rebellion (1896), I think the man seated at left is Thomas R Clarke, not Charles; Charles was wounded at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and discharged in March 1863. And the “unknown” officer may be Capt. Robert Patterson Hughes, much later Major General, USA.

Here are Clarke and Hughes from Brown:

Other sources have the man seated on the box as Lt Fountain Wilson rather than Stryker, and I agree. From Brown, again:

Of this group of 8 signal officers, two, Lieutenants George J Clarke and Fountain Wilson were on the Maryland Campaign of 1862; Lt Clarke was one of several signal officers and men on the battlefield of Antietam under fire on 17 September 1862.

Although probably not pictured with this group, Lieutenant William S. Stryker was also at Antietam.

After his service in 1861 as First Sergeant of Company C, Duree’s Zouaves, pictured here, Norman Henry Camp was commissioned a Lieutenant in the 4th New Jersey Infantry. He was on detail to the Signal Corps at Antietam in September 1862.

This photograph is online from the US Army Heritage & Education Center [CWP 189.66].

This Brady Studio portrait of Captain Joseph H Spencer was probably taken soon after he was commissioned Captain in the Signal Corps and assigned to the Office of the Signal Officer of the Army in Washington, in April 1863. He been a signal officer since being detailed from the First Minnesota Infantry in August 1861, and was on the Peninsular and Maryland Campaigns.

The original print is online from the Library of Congress.

Lieutenant Charles Henry Cary was an Acting Signal Officer in Maryland in September 1862, detailed from the 3rd Michigan Infantry. He was only 24 years old at his death in 1863, seen in this notice in the New York Times of 9 August 1863.

A clipping from the San Antonio Daily Express of 12 October 1910, online thanks to The Portal to Texas History.

Mentioned as the youngest attendee was Frank E. Yates. In addition to his history with the Zouaves, Yates was a First Lieutenant and Acting Signal Officer on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.

Joseph L Bartlett is seen in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies as a Captain in the Confederate States Signal Corps at both Manassas in August 1862 and near Harpers Ferry in September. He was surely a signalman, but it is more likely he was actually a Private in both places.

There are very few records of him, but I did find this voucher he signed when he bought a condemned CSA horse in May 1863.

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I first heard about Bartlett in a 2005 email conversation with David Winfred Gaddy, retired NSA cryptanalyst and historian, who clued me to the fact that he probably wasn’t actually a Captain as the Official Records compilers assumed.

I am sorry to have just learned that Dave passed in 2015; I think he would have been amused to see this scrap of paper.

Here he is on temporary duty in Vietnam in 1960, with NSA cryptologist Gene Raymond, in a photo from the 2017 edition of his translation of A History of the Cryptographic Branch of the People’s Army of Viet Nam, 1945-1975 (1994), online [pdf] from the Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency.

A clipping from the front page of the Seneca (NY) County Courier-Journal of 25 May 1916, online from NYS Historical Newspapers.

The Major in the center, John H. Fralick, was a Lieutenant and Acting Signal Officer on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, detailed from his regiment, the 34th New York Infantry.

Credited to Timothy O’Sullivan, but probably by Alexander Gardner, this photograph is titled Signal tower on Elk Mountain, Maryland, overlooking battlefield of Antietam, and was taken in late September or early October 1862, not long after the battle of Antietam. It is one of several taken of this place and these men.

Here’s a blow-up of the two officers seen in this view.

The man seated at the top is Lieutenant Aaron Brainard Jerome of the First New Jersey Infantry, detailed as a Signal Officer since March 1862. The other, with the telescope, is Lieutenant Edward Corbin Pierce of the 3rd Maine Infantry, a Signal Officer since December 1861. Not in this view was the third officer at this station, Lieutenant Frederick Wooster Owen, detailed from the 38th New York Infantry.

Standing on the ground at the left is Private Robert J. Morgan, on detail from the 3rd Maine, as is the flagman on top, Private Harrison Winslow “Harry” Gardner.

Although it was the site of a signal station the day of the battle, neither the log tower nor these officers were there on Elk Ridge on 17 September; the tower built afterward, Lieutenants Pierce, Jerome, and Owen assigned on September 20.

Here’s a lovely photograph of the group of signalmen on Elk Ridge, also by Gardner, titled Signal Corps Detachment, Elk Mountain, Md., October 1862.

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Notes

My copy of the top photograph is from the Library of Congress, online, as is the group photograph below.

Details about these pictures from William A Frassanito in Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day (1978).