behind AotW

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.

Young William G Hooker survived a wound at Antietam in 1862 and a term as a prisoner at Andersonville in 1864, and was mustered out of the 16th Connecticut Infantry at age 19 in June 1865. He was a printer in later civilian life, eventually owning his own shop in Meriden, CT.

By 1901 he was a Director of the Relief Gold Mining Company which developed claims near Phoenix in the Arizona Territory. Here’s a 1903 offer of shares:

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of such “investment” offers were made in the early 1900’s. Most were scams and very few were likely to ever make money.

The Relief Mine, however, seems to have raised enough money by mid-1904 to construct a processing mill of crushers and rollers, and actually produced some gold. In 1907 mine superintendent Hamlin reported they were running 12 hour shifts and had 14 men working, and in 1909 said they’d taken $60,000 in gold to date.

The Relief Gold Mining Company operated the mine until 1912 (others followed into the 1930s). We can only hope that Mr Hooker saw some benefits.

Born in Scotland, William Murdock came to America in 1855 and enlisted as a Private in Company B of the 14th Connecticut Infantry in 1862. He was slightly wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He should have a mark over his left eye from that wound, but I can’t see it … a flipped image maybe?

By the end of the war he’d been promoted through all the intermediate ranks to Captain of Company A. He looks like a serious young man in this fine photograph, probably taken when he was a Lieutenant in 1864. It’s in the MOLLUS-Massachusetts Collection at the US Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PA.

James Lockwood worked his way up in the printing business to become founding partner in 1836 of Case, Lockwood & Company, a publisher and printer in Hartford, CT. The company thrived in various forms into the 1970s.

His son William Henry Lockwood began in his father’s firm at age 17 in 1854, survived Antietam as a Lieutenant with the 16th Connecticut Infantry in 1862, and struck out on his own as an electrotyper after the war.

William was also something of a photographer.

When a freak blizzard hit Hartford in March 1888, he took his camera around the city and later made albumin prints of what he saw. Two of those are here: the imposing brick Case, Lockwood & Brainard building at Pearl and Trumbull Streets, and his own home on Niles Street. It looks to me like a small boy is trying to shovel a path to the latter (click to enlarge).

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William donated a leather bound album with 37 of his snow prints to the Connecticut State Library in 1916. It’s still there.

This is George S Merritt‘s obituary notice in the New York Times of 18 October 1925. George was an Antietam veteran of Company G of the 16th Connecticut Infantry.

Although it’s possible, it is unlikely this little story is really true.

Except for members of Company H, which had been detached, nearly all the men of his regiment were captured at Plymouth, NC on 20 April 1864 (Private Merritt does not seem to have been one of them). Company H, with the few men of other Companies who were not prisoners or had been exchanged, attached, was assigned to duty in North Carolina; from Roanoke Island in April 1864 to New Berne in March 1865, where the remains of the 16th Connecticut mustered out on 24 June.