behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

Year: 2024

  • Charles Jackson’s left-hand penmanship

    Charles Jackson, a Private in the 8th Connecticut Infantry was not quite 18 years old when he was shot through the right wrist at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and captured there at the farthest advance of the Union Ninth Corps that day, nearly to the town of Sharpsburg.


    [Charles Jackson, c. 1865]

    The next day his hand was amputated at the forearm, probably by a Confederate surgeon. Two days later, left behind near the battlefield when the Confederate Army retired to Virginia, he was “recaptured” and put in the care of his own Army. He was sent home in February 1863 but returned that fall and served two more years, in the Veteran Reserve Corps, to October 1865.

    Which is probably when he saw an announcement like this one:

    On Christmas Day 1865 he wrote the organizer of the event, the Rev. W. Oland Bourne, describing his war experience, his wounding at Antietam, and his life at that moment and enclosing a sample of his best handwriting as his entry in the contest. He was the 221st of some 270 men to enter.

    He did not win any prizes, but certainly made a respectable showing.

    Just 21 years old at the time of the contest, Charles went on to a long and fruitful life, and was a letter carrier in Hartford for almost 50 years.

    Notes

    See much more about the penmanship contest and it’s sponsor, William Oland Bourne, in an exhaustive exhibit at the Library of Congress, source of the photograph and documents here; transcriptions below.

    At least 13 other amputee survivors of the Maryland Campaign of 1862 also entered the 1865-66 contest (Series 1) or the one that followed in 1867 (Series 2); viz:

    Capt. Charles A. Edmonds, Co. H, 7th Michigan Infantry, South Mountain, MD (9/14/1862); Ser. 1, #51 …

    (more…)

  • #22,000

    The Antietam on the Web database is now up to 22,000 individuals.

    The entry getting us to that number is for the man under this impressive stone in Colchester, CT: Henry A Ransom, late Corporal, 8th Connecticut Infantry. He was seriously wounded in the knee at Antietam in September 1862 and troubled by it for the remaining 20 years of his life.


    [photo by the late Frank Grimes for Find-a-grave]

    Onward!

  • Lt. Jacob Eaton (1862)

    The Reverend Jacob Eaton was a Congregational minister in Meriden, CT before the war and enlisted in the 8th Connecticut Infantry as a Private soldier in September 1861. He was appointed First Lieutenant in February 1862 – and probably sat for this photograph soon after.

    He was wounded in the leg at Antietam in September 1862 and resigned his commission in October, but returned to the field as the Chaplain of the 7th Connecticut Infantry in 1864. He died of disease in Wilmington, NC in March 1865.

    This fine photograph is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford.

  • Emily A Griswold and John M Morris (c. 1863)

    Emily Griswold and John Morris were probably engaged before he left New Haven for service as Chaplain with the 8th Connecticut Infantry in April 1862 and they married in December 1863, about three months after he returned home.

    Emily was from a large and prominent Connecticut family, her father a successful farmer at Wethersfield, near Hartford.

    Here she is in her wedding dress:

    I think it’s safe to say her husband was not the same man she knew in New Haven in the Spring of 1862, fresh out of Yale Divinity School.

    At Antietam, in particular, he’d been through some harrowing combat. He was with his regiment out in front of the Federal Ninth Army Corps in the advance above the Rohrbach (later Burnside) Bridge, nearly reaching the town of Sharpsburg by about 5 pm on 17 September 1862. Earlier in the day he assumed the typical Chaplain’s role of assisting wounded men to the rear, but by the end he’s picked up a rifle and “fights for life” himself.

    Sadly, Emily became a young widow in 1873 when John died of tuberculosis at age 36.

    Notes

    These photographs are from the Cabinet Card Album of Mary Helena Griswold, wife of John Leslie Welles, now held by the Welles Family Association, Wethersfield; shared to the FamilySearch genealogical database by Barbara Mathews.

  • Antietam Burnside Mann (c. 1915)

    Peter Mann married in his native Scotland in 1831, came to America in the next year or two, and had 10 children with his wife Isabella before she died in 1855. He married again, in 1857, Ann Martin Dyson, a woman who had also lost her spouse. They had a daughter Mary Agnes in 1858.

    In September 1861 Peter, then a 54 year old weaver in Enfield, CT, enlisted as a Private in the 8th Connecticut Infantry. A year later he was terribly wounded in battle at Antietam, and died there on 27 September 1862. Four months later his widow Ann had their second daughter and named her Antietam Burnside Mann (1863-1943).

    Antietam never married, but did not lack the company of children.

    That’s her, back row at left, with her sister Mary Agnes Mann Richardson (1858-1929), back right, in about 1915. Mary Agnes’ oldest, Annie Elizabeth Richardson Breyer (b. 1877) is just in front of Antietam; Annie’s son Leland Eugene Breyer (1898) is top center. In front, left to right are 3 of Mary Agnes’ other daughters and a grand-daughter: Florence Richardson Goddu (1885), Inez Bingham (later Mansur, 1908), Inez Viola Richardson (later Allis, 1894), and Vera Antietam Richardson (later Huntley, 1895).

    This lovely photograph was contributed to Antietam’s memorial by descendant Owen C Waggoner, Jr., who also identified all of those faces for us.

    I’m guessing the date of the photograph from the apparent ages of the subjects, particularly Inez Bingham, who looks about 7.