NEWBURY, MASSACHUSETTS,
CAMPTON AND LACONIA,
NEW HAMPSHIRE
1805-1880
His Life and Civil War Service
DON W. WOODWORTH
Published at Sun City, California,
November 1, 2013
woodworthdw@yahoo.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Coral Richardson Theberge for finding the
proofs of Thomas J. Hale’s service in the Civil War. Her extensive reading in
New Hampshire Regimental records made clear how important Thomas J. Hale’s
story would be.
To the casual observers who noted the gravestone of Thomas
J. Hale in Laconia’s Union Cemetery, it was clear he had military service, but
they might well have assumed that Thomas, born in 1805, was too old for Civil
War service, and perhaps guessed that he had served in the peacetime militia.
In fact, however, he was not too old, but, rather, was deeply patriotic and
determined to serve.
As we shared this discovery, we found that one branch of the
family already knew the story. Indeed, Edwyna (Hale) Chapman, a
great-great-granddaughter, has preserved the drum that Thomas Hale carried and
that had been handed down to her father, Edward Hazen Hale.
At the Laconia Historical Museum, Charles E. Tucker located
the Grand Army of the Republic record that is the only known document that
shows Thomas enlisted as a drummer rather than “musician.” For this discovery,
I am deeply grateful.
At the Campton (NH) Historical Society, Walt Stockwell,
Curator, and Robert Mardin, Librarian, provided important 1884 newspaper
accounts of Sylvester Marsh’s memories of life in Campton when Thomas was a boy
there.
Edwyna Hale Chapman provided photographs of Thomas’s drum
and located documents about the military service of two of his sons. Additional documents were
provided by Anne Woodworth Richardson and Cora Hale Kimball.
Casey A. Waters of Exeter, NH provided from his collection a
digital copy of an 1860s tintype of three cobblers.
At the Tilton Public Library, Roberta Burke, Librarian,
provided research material and technical support to Ms. Theberge.
My sister, Ruth Woodworth Criger, put a wealth of
genealogical information about the Hales and allied families into accessible
formats for the first time.
My son, Bayard Weston Woodworth, provided encouragement,
technical assistance and a website for the family’s history.
My dear wife, Barbara Townley, provided good advice and warm
encouragement.
INTRODUCTION
The remarkable life of Thomas
J. Hale deserves a place of honor in the long memory of the Hale family. Dedication, hardship, and tragedy
marked the life of this courageous man, a shoemaker in a small New Hampshire
village who rose from his bench and tools to answer the President’s call for an
army, going out with his drum at age 55 to set the cadence for the troops as
they mobilized to preserve the Union.
In
pursuit of his fierce commitment to the Nation through four enlistments, he
faced prolonged hardship and came home to tragic losses. We have attempted to make an account of
his life to share throughout the family.
 |
| Signature of Thomas J. Hale, from a document, June 19, 1866. |
THOMAS HALE’S LIFE AND CIVIL WAR SERVICE
Origins,
family, and early life
Thomas
J.7 Hale (Amos,6 Daniel,5 Daniel,4 Thomas,3
Thomas,2 Thomas1) was born in Newbury, Massachusetts 17
September 1805, the son of Amos and Elizabeth (Plumer) Hale.1 He was of the seventh generation in descent from
Thomas and Thomasine (Dowsett) Hale, the immigrant ancestors who were in
Newbury probably in 1637.2
Thomas
married at Boston, Massachusetts, 16 October 1828 Mary Ann F. Paxton, the
daughter of English immigrants, born perhaps in England about 1813.3
However, in one record we are told she was born “on Atlantic Ocean enroute from
England.”4 And in
the U.S. Census of 1860, she is recorded as born in Massachusetts.
They
had eight children born in Massachusetts and New Hampshire between 1830 and
1850.5
Children,
surname Hale (date and place estimated from the 1850 and 1860 U. S. Census
records if not otherwise proved):
i.
Edmund A., b. between 25
July 1830 and 24 August 1830, Boston, MA. In 1870 Census, enumerated in Woburn,
MA.
ii.
Elizabeth A., b. c.
1834, Boston, MA. Married names Bailey and Benitez.
iii. George W., b. 9 March 1841, Campton, Grafton, NH;
d. 14 March 1900, Laconia, Belknap, NH.
Not married.
iv. Charles L., b. c. 1842, Campton, Grafton, NH, d. 22
May 1866, Laconia, NH. Not married.
v.
Thomas A., b. [13?] June
1844, Campton, Grafton, NH
vi. Mary J., b. c. 1845, Campton, Grafton, NH; d. 5
September 1876, Laconia, Belknap, NH.
vii. Edward Dolan, b. 23 April 1849, Campton, Grafton, NH;
d. 22 May 1922, Laconia, Belknap,
NH.
viii. James P., b. c. 1850, Meredith, Belknap, NH.
Homesteading in New Hampshire
Thomas was eight when his father and mother, Amos and
Elizabeth, moved the family from the pleasant surroundings of Newbury to the
wilderness of Grafton County, New Hampshire. Amos had been 12 years in settling
his father’s estate, and, at some point, had decided to find land in central
New Hampshire, a hundred miles north of Newbury. In Campton, Amos purchased 30
acres from Nathaniel Tupper, Jr. on March 1, 1813. From Nathaniel’s father,
Amos bought 240 acres the next day, land that the elder Nathaniel Tucker had
accumulated in the 1780s. The purchases involved cash payments of $160 and
$2,100,6 likely from the proceeds of the estate of Deacon Daniel
Hale.
Their move required courage and powerful motives for
such a break with the familiar streets of Newbury. The crowded conditions in
the old seaside towns settled first in the 1630s and the division of family
lands among five generations of descendants meant that many families would
choose to move from familiar scenes and start over in remote and thinly
populated places. Such was the place Amos chose.7 In addition, the
ending of French and British colonial claims to New England and the
establishment of a national border made expansion into Maine and northern New
Hampshire more attractive.8
Before the snow melted in his woods, Amos likely was
cutting trees, probably with hired men skilled in logging and who owned teams
of oxen to move the logs to the house site Amos had chosen. The raising of the
log cabin probably would have fallen to volunteers from the community, glad to
have a new family arrive. For his older boys, Charles, then 15, and Daniel, 18,
there was work -- stacking firewood, piling branches to make a fence for the
cow, burning trees to make fertilizer, and, when June came, planting maize,
beans, pumpkin, peas, oats, and potatoes among the stumps that covered as much
as five acres that first year.9
Mary and the younger children could have been on the
land once the cabin was up, perhaps by late summer of 1813. The baby of the family,
Washington, would have been 5, Thomas, 8, Amos, 11, Charles,
15, and Daniel, 18. If Lydia, 22,
and Ebenezer, 26, were part of this trip into the New Hampshire woods, they
would have been important support for Amos and Elizabeth, now 53 and 48. It was unavoidable that the clearing
and planting would go on for six or seven years until the land could more fully
support the family and the animals it required.
Campton is in central New Hampshire on the
Pemigewasset River, well north of Lake Winnipesaukee and 100 miles north of
Newbury. It had 873 residents, a public meetinghouse, an ordained minister,
three grain mills, three sawmills, one oil mill, two mills for cloth dressing,
and two carding mills.10
The meetinghouse and minister mark the presence of
community and religious life, powerful allies for a family starting a new life
in the wilderness. The three grain mills, powered by water carried in flumes
from the river, converted wheat and corn into flour. The carding mills cleaned
and combed wool from the sheep that foraged in the rough lands of the farms.
Sylvester Marsh, born in Campton in 1803, and a
resident there until 1823, was just two years older than Thomas, and probably
well acquainted with him. Marsh, sixty years later, described to a Senate
committee11 the life of the town of his early years in Campton, and
so opens a window to the place that Amos, Elizabeth, and their children called
home.
My
memory extends back to about 1809, or 1810, when I was about 7 years of age. We
then clothed ourselves by raising our own sheep, taking the wool to a
carding-machine, tied up in blankets, on horseback, and having it carded into
rolls. That was carried back to the house, and there the women spun the wool
and wove the cloth—altogether by hand-loom, of course. Then as to linen for
shirts, &c., every farmer [grew] a piece of flax, and got out his own flax,
dressed it as well as he could, and that was spun and woven by the women and
made into shirts and sheets.12
The
farm’s surplus, if there were any, could be sold or bartered. The
cloth-dressing mills smoothed and trimmed cloth, preparing it for family use or
for trade in neighboring towns. Some animals and milk, cheese, and eggs might
go to market. But because the roads were few and rough in those distant
counties, the likely markets were the grocers and butchers in towns closest to
Campton.
The
older boys, when the labors of spring planting were done, might be allowed a
measure of freedom, including a long walk to Boston to visit family and to have
a taste of life in the city. Marsh recalled the trek to Boston:
We young fellows always came afoot, as there was no stage route, and if
there had been we would not have had the fare money. We used to make a pack of
our clothing and walk to Boston. I walked it four times. It was about 100
miles, and the journey took three days; we could easily walk that.13
For Amos, Elizabeth and the family, the labor of
clearing the land, cutting firewood, enlarging the house, and caring for
children and animals filled their
days. But in their third year on the land, this all became more difficult. The
Spring of 1816 opened cold and cloudy. In April and May, when the plowing and
sowing should have begun, North country towns waited for the cold to end and
the ground to warm. In Campton and surrounding villages, as weeks went by, the
food stored for winter and summer began to dwindle. The root cellars slowly
emptied of the long-lasting vegetables saved from the previous harvest to carry
families through to the next. Men and boys went to snaring rabbits and
squirrels and hunting deer, though they knew the meat was not as heavy on these
animals that had struggled through winter. There were fish to be netted from
the river until the ice closed those waters. The family cow gave some milk. But
farming was hard. In May, crops planted in a thaw were ruined by a hard freeze.
In many places, a second crop was planted and froze twice in June under snow.
In Danville, Vermont, the newspaper on June 15 reported the cold of the week
before:
Some account was given . . . of the unparalleled severity of the weather.
It continued . . . from the 6th to the 10th instant -- freezing as hard five
nights in succession as it usually does in December. On the night of the 6th,
water froze an inch thick [in the horse trough] and on the night of the 7th and
morning of the 8th, a kind of sleet or exceeding cold snow fell, attended with
high wind, which measured in places where it was drifted, 18 to 20 inches in
depth. Saturday morning the weather was more severe than it generally is during
the storms of winter.14
Planting
time ran out as June passed. In some areas, famine took over from hardship as
the months passed without crops. Little food could come any distance, and
little from nearby hard-hit towns. Strangely, brilliant sunsets became
commonplace when the weather cleared, but were small reassurance to people who
wondered if the cold was a punishment.15
*
* *
Some of Amos’s neighbors likely waited until July or
August, then packed a wagon and headed west for better land and weather (if
either could be found) in upstate New York, Ohio, and Indiana. But Amos, now 56
and living on land he and Elizabeth and the children had cleared, decided he
would stay.
Thomas
turned 11 in September 1816 as the hard times got worse. Starting another
winter with little food in storage, both animals and people were more and more
dependent on forage. Cows and horses browsed in the snow on the newly cleared
land and the people searched further and further from home for deer and bear.
It was a hard and dangerous winter. It was the kind of constant hardship that
could break men and women, or leave them hardened for a lifetime of resistance
to cold and fatigue and reversals of fortune. Thus was Thomas, as a boy, made
tough and resilient for the life ahead.
*
* *
Amos
likely had orders for shoes, and in the winter months would carry leather to
customers’ houses where their feet would be drawn in outline. Then he would
return to his workshop to make the shoes. He probably also made harness,
gloves, and hats, knowing that barter would be his way to be paid. Amos must
have pressed Thomas, at 13 or 14, to learn the rudiments of the shoemaker’s
trade, so that when Thomas could shape leather into useful goods, he would have
work anywhere.
At some point, Amos likely decided to send Thomas to
Newbury as an apprentice to a shoemaker there. This would have placed Thomas
where work was more plentiful than in the backwoods of New Hampshire. Amos,
with his strong family connections in Newbury -- the late Deacon Daniel Hale16
and four previous generations of
Hales had been prominent in the town -- would have been able to place Thomas in
a reputable and busy shop there.
Starting
out, the boy would have been a most menial servant in the shop, the newest
arrival, handy with a broom and quick with errands. Later, he would have a
chance to show he had skills he had learned from his father, perhaps heating
the irons that were used to smooth the tops of finished shoes. He would be set
to cutting leather, at first on pieces he could not ruin. Once he had proved
himself skilled with knives, he would be set to cutting more valuable pieces
and gaining a feeling for the handling and grading of leather. Once he was
adept at cutting, sewing, and pegging, he would finally build entire shoes.
 |
|
“Three Cobblers,” enlarged
from a tintype, circa 1860, showing (l. to r.) scraping leather, sewing with a
harness-maker’s vise, and pegging a shoe. Courtesy Casey A. Waters, from his
collection.
|
We know little about how his life developed when he was in his twenties and accomplished in his trade. If he stayed in Newbury or Boston, as seems likely, he might have been employed in an established shoe shop or factory where the work of cutting the parts fell to several hands and the building of the shoes fell to others. To be done with piecework, he might well have opened a shop at his home. This was a common practice for shoemakers, a way of having an income without the cost of renting space in the village.17
The
courtship of Thomas and Mary probably took place in Boston in 1827 and 1828.
They published their intentions in Boston on September 9, 1828, and were
married there on October 16.18
Their first two children, Edmund and Elizabeth, were born in
Boston between 1830 and 1834. When Thomas’s father died on August 30, 1839,
Thomas moved the family to Campton, probably to care for his mother and to
manage the farm she had inherited. They were in Campton before March, 1841 when
George was born. Charles, Thomas, Mary, and Edward were also born there (or in
young Thomas’s case, perhaps in nearby Thornton). After a decade had been spent
in Campton, their last child, James, was born in Meredith about 1850, well
south of Campton, close to Gilford and Laconia in Belknap County where the
family settled. These moves suggest how difficult it was for Thomas to
establish himself and his sons in their trades in the rural north. In Gilford,
they were closer to the early factories on the Winnipesaukee River in Lake
Village (later Lakeport) and Laconia where skilled men and women were employed
in greater numbers.
In
the decade of the 1850s, the family raised the youngest children and sent the
older ones to work. At the Census of 1860 for Gilford, Thomas was 54, Mary, 46.
They owned real estate valued at $400, situated near neighbors who were a
blacksmith with real estate worth $600, a gardener, $1000, and a dyer of yarn,
$500.19 Eight of their
nine children were at home, recorded by the census taker in June 1860. Only
Elizabeth was absent, having married John Bailey at Gilford, December 25, 1858.20 Edmund and George, 28 and 22, had
become shoemakers, trained by their father, one may assume. Charles, 20, did
not have a trade listed, but two years later, at enlistment, was recorded as a
mechanic, that is, a machine operator.21 Of the four youngest children -- Thomas, 17, Mary, 15,
Edward, 13, and James, 10 -- the last three had been in school in the previous
year.22
*
* *
The
War Years
The
Civil War opened with the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. President
Lincoln issued a call to arms on April 15, 1861. Thomas, age 55, responded, and
by May 4 had joined Captain George Gillis’s Company as a drummer.23 His unit guarded Fort Constitution, a
fortification at Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire, where shipbuilding
facilities made a target presumed to be vulnerable to Confederate attack from
the sea. Captain Gillis likely drilled his men each day, Thomas keeping the
cadence. Additional work would have included guard duty and improving the
fortifications. Thomas left the unit on July 12, having served more than two
months as a “90-day man.”24
 |
| Snare drum carried by Thomas J. Hale. Reduced about eight inches in depth by an unknown hand, probably before 1930. Photo courtesy Edwyna Hale Chapman. |
On September 18, 1861, the day after he turned 56, Thomas began a second enlistment, this time in Co. D of the Fourth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry.25 From his enlistment papers, we know he was 5’8”, blue-eyed, and light-haired.26 Recorded as “musician,” he was again the company drummer. Also present in the regiment in Company H, marching to Thomas’s drumbeat, was Wallace Eastman Woodworth, and the two would later be grandparents of the Hale and Woodworth families in Laconia.
This
time they were headed for more distant places, as the Fourth Regiment joined
the expedition to Port Royal, South Carolina to establish a blockade of the
southern states and the coastal cities where supplies for the Confederacy were
being delivered. The regiment boarded the Baltic, part of an armada gathered at Fort Monroe off the
Virginia coast. For most of the men, this was their first time on the ocean. As
they headed south, a heavy storm struck the armada and raged for three days,
threatening to sink the ships and driving the Baltic onto Frying Pan Shoals off the North Carolina coast.
Rising tides lifted the ship out of the sand, and it moved on, but now the
ships were widely separated. When the Baltic arrived at Hilton Head on November 7th, five gunboats
had already taken positions and begun firing on the two forts that defended
Hilton Head and Port Royal Bay. The soldiers from New Hampshire watched while
five gunboats circled in a long oval formation in front of the forts, firing
into the forts and presenting only moving targets to the enemy’s cannon. It was
a remarkable assault and by nightfall, the forts and Hilton Head were in Union
hands.27
 |
|
Two Union warships exchange
cannon fire with two forts in the distance defending Hilton Head. Steel
engraving, about 1866.
|
Over the next three months, about 30,000 men of the Union army were gathered on Hilton Head as the army prepared an assault on the Confederate strongholds of the Southern coast. At Hilton Head, Thomas soon became ill, spending in November and December “49 days too ill to serve.” He was discharged at Hilton Head on January 12, 1862. His discharge papers provide two diagnoses by company and regimental surgeons.28 The first, “Consumption disability—no constitution,” indicates—in modern terms—Tuberculosis. The second, “Incipient Phthisis Pulmonalis” confirms the first, indicating early stage Tuberculosis and locating it in the lungs (as opposed to other possible sites, the brain or bones). Such a diagnosis must have caused him great sorrow and fear, but his subsequent enlistment and return to service four months later show that he suffered from pneumonia, not tuberculosis, and recovered at home with good care, rest, and the passage of time.29
He enlisted for the third time on May 15, 1862, to return to Fort Constitution in a company organized for this location. Again, they would watch for attacks on the shipyard at Portsmouth. After three months his unit was taken into the Ninth Regiment NH Volunteers.30
Thus, from August 6 to October 20, 1862, Thomas
marched with Company E of the Ninth
New Hampshire, one of the few
veterans in a regiment mostly filled with new recruits from many towns. The regiment was drilled heavily in July and left on
August 25, 1862 with 975 men and nine commissioned officers.31 Historian William Marvel recreates the departure of the Ninth Regiment
from Concord:
Men marched to the depot that refreshing morning who had
been alive during the Lewis and Clark expedition, elbow-to-elbow with young men
who would live to comment on the New Deal. Some of them were only hours from
death, and though they did not know it this was the glorious climax to their
lives; to others who had scores of years to live, this was nonetheless a grand,
unforgettable event which, half a century and more beyond, they might still
perceive as the watershed of their experience. Symbolic of this tie between the
old and new America, between the innocent past and the frightening future, were
the two musicians at the head of Company E, Thomas Hale, at fifty-five the
oldest man in the regiment, side-by-side with fourteen-year-old James Moore, the
youngest.32
When the Ninth Regiment left Concord,
the train ran through Providence to Groton, Connecticut. The steamer Commonwealth carried them overnight to Jersey City (for most,
their first time on a ship). They moved by train to Philadelphia, that night to
Baltimore, and to Washington on
August 27.33 Edward O. Lord gives the impressions of the new
soldiers in a composite diary constructed from soldiers’ letters and journals.
On arriving in Washington, Lord’s “typical soldier” writes about his disappointment:
Everything
appears either unfinished or so antique as to be fast going to
decay. My ill
feelings may have something to do with giving me these
impressions, but
I am sure I should never regard the droves of speckled,
black, and
brindled hogs, which I saw on the sidewalks, nor the dead horse
which I saw in
the street, as an ornament to any city. Did not have time to visit the public
buildings, which we are informed are the glory of the city.34
They
marched the next day to the Potomac and crossed the Long Bridge into Virginia.
For eight days, to September 5, the
men of the Ninth drilled, dug earthworks, and cut trees to clear a field of
fire, preparing to resist the advance of Lee’s army toward Washington and
Baltimore. The Second Battle of Bull Run was in progress and from the roadside
they watched the veteran and tattered Second Corp passing on its way to the
battle. One soldier’s new understanding of the real face of war comes from his
diary:
They looked
weather-beaten, worn out, and ragged.
Some are almost destitute of shoes. They are in the lightest marching
order possible, not one in a hundred having a knapsack; and yet they marched on
toward the battle-field, whence could be heard the roar of artillery at this
place, with apparent cheerfulness.35
The
New Hampshire men remained behind, held in position to block the expected
Confederate advance. But now they had a clearer sense of what war did to men,
and might do to them.
On
September 6, just 13 days from home, the Ninth, with others, was transferred to
General Burnside’s command, and broke camp for a new location. The Ninth
Regiment, now part of the Ninth Corps of the Union Army, moved across Virginia
toward the battles of South Mountain (September 14, 1862) and Antietam
(September 17). In both battles the Ninth fought aggressively in the face of
heavy Confederate fire.
It
was at Turner’s Gap where the principal struggle in the Battle of South
Mountain occurred, the assault being made by the right wing [in which the Ninth
NH was located] of the army, under General Burnside. From early morning till late at night there was a sharp
struggle and a stubborn defense for the possession of the rocky heights. In General Reno’s first attack, the
crest of the mountain held by the Confederate forces under General Garland was
wrested from them before noon; but here the Union advance was checked, till
Hooker’s corps, climbing the mountain sides in the face of strong opposition,
secured a position which commanded the pass proper. Just as the union forces were in a position to secure the
fruits of their persistent efforts, night came on, and in the morning the enemy
had withdrawn, having lost heavily in casualties and prisoners. The Stars and Stripes waved from the
conquered heights.36
Three days later, on the
day Thomas turned 57, they met the enemy again, this time at Antietam Creek.
The day ahead would be an awful day in the valley by the creek and in the hills
above -- once the bridge was crossed. Indeed, Antietem was the bloodiest single
day of the war, though other, longer battles would be costlier. Here, this day,
the two armies would suffer 21,000 dead and wounded.
 |
| Bridge over the Antietam River where Union forces, including the Fourth New Hampshire Regiment, had to cross under heavy Confederate fire from high ground above, left. Bridge now called Burnside’s Bridge. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. |
Thomas, an unarmed man -- like the men
of the Regimental Band that came to the battlefield with the Ninth New
Hampshire Regiment -- had a vital role in the hospital behind the lines and in
the battlefields in the direct line of fire. Lord writes,
Just
as at South Mountain, so at Antietam the members of the regimental band found
plenty to do in their humane though dangerous task of bearing the wounded from
the field. One of the “faithful”
thus writes of the day’s doings:
“The engagement began about seven
o’clock this morning. Taking our stretchers and moving forward, we found, on
the edge of a corn-field, a member of Company I named Messenger, badly wounded
in the head, and carried him to the hospital. By the time we got back the brigade had become engaged, and
several had been wounded, the brigade at this time being stationed near the
stone bridge.
“Dr. Webster had established a hospital
to the left and lower down, in an old barn, and thither we were ordered to bear
the wounded, of whom there were now a great many. Simonds and myself brought thirteen men from our own and
other regiments without stopping, and I doubt not that the other boys were
equally as busy. In no other
battle afterward, I think, were we kept so closely at work, none of us resting
all day.”37
Thomas’s share of this labor to rescue the
wounded must have left him in deep sorrow that could return at times long after
his return home.
The Ninth NH Regiment, we recall, was just 20
days away from home, and one of the least-trained units in the Northern army.
Yet they were fierce fighters in the long hours pinned down by the stone
bridge, all the while exchanging fire with Confederate forces hidden on the
high ground across Antietam Creek. Lord quotes a letter sent by an unnamed
soldier to his hometown paper, the Lebanon, NH Free Press:
“ANTIETAM CREEK, NEAR SHARPSBURG”
Sept.
23
“ . . . Tuesday night we lay on
our arms, and Wednesday at 9 a.m. were called into line and moved in the
direction of heavy firing. The
rebel, as usual, had chosen a splendid position . . . As on Sunday, we were ordered to the left. The enemy had here crossed the little
stone bridge spanning the Antietam creek, and taken position on the table-lands
beyond.
“The creek flowed in a ravine,
and though fordable in regard to depth, yet the steep and rugged bank on the
other side rendered the enemy’s position unapproachable, except by crossing the
bridge and filing up the narrow wagon-road. Our work was to assist in holding the rebels from destroying
or recrossing the bridge, and to gain possession of the same if possible. The lines of infantry were formed on
each side the creek, and for more than two hours one continued roll of musketry
was kept up along the lines, the rebels having the advantage of high ground and
a narrow piece of heavy woodland as a breastwork. The contest was desperate.
“Our troops fought like those
determined to conquer. Twice was
the attempt made to charge across the bridge, and twice the noble fellows were
compelled to fall back under a galling fire which laid low many of our brave
heroes. A third attempt was made,
and not in vain. The bridge and
the day were ours, and soon General Burnside and staff rode across amid the
cheers of the victorious forces.
The New Hampshire Ninth was one of the first to follow, leaving behind
our brave and beloved Lieutenant-Colonel Titus, wounded in the shoulder, and
several of his brave fellows. We
were now separated from the rest of our brigade, and it was our misfortune
several times during the day to come under a most galling fire from the rebel
batteries.
“About sunset we were ordered to
a large corn-field supposed to be thickly swarming with rebels, which we
afterwards learned to be true. As
we approached the field we were obliged to lie down to escape the showers of
grape and bursting shell. We were
soon covered by a small battery, which we hoped would silence theirs and give
us an opportunity for action; but to our disappointment, after firing a few
shots they withdrew, as we afterwards learned, for want of ammunition, leaving
us entirely unprotected and the enemy advancing upon us in superior force. The regiments at our right and left
also withdrew, and the general sent a verbal dispatch to our colonel that our
only safety was in reaching the ford.
“We immediately fell back to the creek under a perfect
shower of grape and canister, which wounded several of our men, and few of us
came over ‘dry shod.’
“It was late at night before we
again got organized, and hence we obtained but little sleep."38
After
the two major battles at South Mountain and Antietam, Thomas was discharged,
credited with two month’s service with the Ninth NH Regiment, and sent back to
Laconia on October 20, 1862.39
Sixteen
months would pass before he would again return to a military life. In this
time, tragedy would come to Mary and Thomas and to their soldier sons. Both
Charles and George had enlisted in the Twelfth New Hampshire Regiment. Sometime
after January 20, 1863, Charles was discharged and returned to Laconia, ill and
debilitated, probably with dysentery. On July 2, George was wounded at
Gettysburg. There, on the second day of continuous and awful battle in defense
of the Emmitsburg Road, George was wounded above the ankle,40
hospitalized, and probably sent back to Laconia, to wait with his brother for
his body to heal. Eighteen months passed before he was discharged. His wound,
two inches above the ankle, apparently did not heal, and resulted in infections
at the knee which froze the lower leg at right angles to the thigh.41
Thomas’s
fourth and last enlistment began March 3, 1864 with Company A of the 31st
Maine Infantry.42 This unit was organized to keep the services of
men with minor wounds, and older or less able men. It was joined with men from
Vermont and New Hampshire companies, marched in the Second Brigade, and served
behind the lines as a garrison or guard force when the army moved up for the
siege of Petersburg, Virginia, beginning in June, 1864 and lasting until April,
1865.43 He had served
16 months when he was mustered out at Alexandria, VA, July 15, 1865, months
after the April 9th surrender at Appomatox Court House and the April 15th death
of Lincoln.
Return
Thomas
came home to pick up the pieces of his life, rejoining his wife and children
with the knowledge that the family had answered the President’s call and that
the Union was preserved. Mary, with the children’s help, had held the home
together through the worst of hard times. Now Thomas was reunited with the
family, and, for the moment, they had both boys there, too. Charles, weak from
chronic infection, and George, though injured, could work and share the
family’s life.
Sadly, Charles did not recover, and the family buried him in the Union Cemetery after May 22, 1866, in plot 3, near the front gate on the Academy Street side.44 Thomas inherited the land Charles owned in Gilford. The Probate Court record45 shows the only known example of his signature, evidence that he had studied penmanship in school in Campton and could read and write.
Thomas had declared himself a farmer in his first enlistment, confirming that the land he owned at the time of the 1860 Census was producing food for the family. He would have returned to planting and harvesting, as well as the making and repair of shoes.
With
other veterans, he joined the John L. Perley Post 37 of the Grand Army of the
Republic in Laconia, formed about 1875. He and George were members together.
The posts elected their leaders each year, gave them military titles to define
their duties, and met for fellowship and for service to needy members. The New
Hampshire GAR organization created a series of large Victorian buildings for a
conference center at the Weirs overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee. Here they
recalled their shared struggles, honored their heroes, noted the past year’s
deaths. At Memorial Day ceremonies, they marched at the front of parades and
visited schools to remind the children of the war that saved the Union. At the
Centennial in 1876, with the War still fresh in the nation’s memory, the
veterans of Post 37 were accorded a place of honor.
Mary died at age 59 on July 6, 1873. Her stone
includes this thought: “Home is lonely without you Mother." Thomas
survived another seven years, to December 6, 1880.46 His stone
reads, "Erected by Elizabeth A. Benitez.” (This was his daughter, born about 1834, always attentive to
her parents, as we may believe from the inscriptions on the stones.) Both
graves are in the family plot that Thomas purchased in 1868 inside the Academy
Street gate.47 Some of
their descendants are buried in a second Hale plot near the pond in this
cemetery. Each year, red and white
carnations have been placed in vases or laid upon their stones to mark Memorial
Day. The carnations and the two colors come down to us as a Hale family tradition
and obligation.
Don Woodworth,
Sun City, California,
November 1, 2013.
woodworthdw@yahoo.com
Sun City, California,
November 1, 2013.
woodworthdw@yahoo.com
NOTES
1. Newbury, Massachusetts, Vital Records (hereinafter
VRs).
2. Robert S. Hale, Genealogy of Descendants of Thomas Hale of Watton,
England and Newbury, Mass., ed. George R. Howell (1889).] Website: http://archive.org/stream/genealogyofdesce00hale/genealogyofdesce00hale_djvu.txt
3. Boston VRs, in Massachusetts, Town and Vital
Records, 1620 – 1988. This is the earliest record I have found
(Ancestry.com) and both original records and later transcriptions appear in
digital searches. In the original record, the marriage intention is entered (as
a marriage) on 9 September 1828. In the same source 16 October 1828 is given as
the date of the marriage. In both cases, the bride’s name, including the middle
initial are correctly given. (An incorrect marriage date of 1835, found in some
online family trees, clearly belongs to another Thomas and Mary Hale.)
4.
Laconia VRs. in the death certificate of George W. Hale (14 March 1900), we
find the line quoted here saying Mary was born during the crossing. The census
taker in 1860 (see note 5) recorded Massachusetts as her birthplace.
5. U. S. Census for 1860, New Hampshire, Belknap
County, sheet 181, lines 7-16. The uncertainty of birth dates for some of the
children of Thomas and Mary reflects the lack of vital records for this period
in Campton and Thornton.
6. Land deeds for Campton, Grafton County, New
Hampshire.
7. Although Amos probably qualified for a land claim
based on his service in the Revolutionary War, he apparently preferred New
England land to more western places. We see that Amos Hale of Newbury (also
Newburyport) enlisted on 9 May 1775 in the Massachusetts Militia at 16, giving
his age as 18. He served until 10 October 1780 in five units and at various
times, including service in a unit reinforcing the Continental Army in 1780.
Recorded in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution,
VII, 45.
Amos received a pension from March 4, 1831 until his
death on 30 Aug 1839. U.S. Pensioners, 1818-1872 > New Hampshire >
1831-1848.
The death of Amos, noted in old script on the pension
record cited here, could not be found in Campton VRs nor in Grafton County VRs.
8. Joseph W. Hardy, Settlement and Abandonment: An
Eclectic History of Wells, Maine 1600-1900 (Portsmouth, NH: Back Channel Press, 2008), 68.
Hardy discusses the obstacles to expansion into northern New England, including
the French and Indian War in the1750s and 1760s, and the Revolutionary War in
the 1770s. In the three decades that followed, families in Massachusetts and
Connecticut moved to northern lands. By 1813, Amos and Elizabeth would have
known many who had taken this step.
9. Hardy [note 8], 61, 95. I have relied on his
descriptions of the labors of those who took up homesteading in the forests. He
cites (as sources for the homesteader’s work), Robert M. Thorson, Stone by
Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls (New
York: Walker, 2002) and Clarence A. Day, A History of Maine
Agriculture 1604 to 1860 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1954).
10. The description of Campton, published just four years after Amos and family
arrived, is found in Merrill’s 1817 Gazetteer of New Hampshire. Campton
is the fourth town listed alphabetically in this website:
11. Sylvester Marsh’s testimony before the Senate
Committee on Education and Labor, reported in The New York Times, “Those
Good Old Times: How People Lived Sixty Years Ago,” Jan 12, 1884.
12. Marsh [note 11].
13. Marsh [note 11].
14. In the North Star, Danville, Vermont, 15
June 1816, quoted in David M. Ludlum, The Vermont Weather Book (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1996).
Website:
15. R.B. Strothers, Science, June 15,1984:
1191-1198. Throughout New England, Canada, and Europe in the winter of
1816-1817, the deaths mounted from the long struggle with cold, hunger, and
disease. It was 104 years later, in 1920, that an American climatologist, William
J. Humphries, showed the cause: the explosion of Mount Tambora on the island of
Sumbawa (in present-day Indonesia) in April of 1815 had driven an enormous
amount of dust into the upper atmosphere. As the dust circled the earth, the
sun’s heat was blocked, the world cooled, and severe changes in the climate
were felt around the world, most heavily in the Northern Hemisphere. In the
awful summer of 1816 and the following winter, it was what is now called
“volcanic winter.” Hardship, disease, hunger and localized famine led to rising
death rates, estimated at 100,000, in Europe, Eastern Canada, and New England.
16. R. S. Hale [note 2], 185-187. Daniel Hale (1723-1799) was in the fifth generation
from Thomas and Thomasine (Dowsett) Hale, the immigrant ancestors in Newbury in
1637. Daniel had a substantial estate and was called Lieutenant and Deacon,
both titles of honor. Amos was his executor.
17. This discussion of the rural shoemaker’s home
industry is based on research
conducted by Nina Maurer to create a catalogue of artifacts in the collection
of the Old Berwick (Maine) Historical Society. Her conclusions about the early
home-based shoe industry are in an article in The Weekly Sentinel
(Wells, Maine, 28 December 2007), 1, 27.
18. Boston VRs [note 3] are very good, but the
researcher should be aware that more than one couple shared the names of Thomas
and Mary. In this situation, the “Mary A.F.” and “Mary Ann F.” are definitive.
19. U. S. Census, 1860 [note 5], lines 7-16 and others
on that page.
20. Gilford Vital Records, Vol. 2, p. 17.
21. U. S. Census, 1860 [note 5]. Enlistment papers show that by 1862 he
had found factory work.
22. U. S. Census, 1860 [note 5],
23. The records of the John L. Perley Post 37, Grand
Army of the Republic, p. 2 (retitled about 1930 “Eligibility Book for VFW”)
show Thomas Hale, residence Laconia, occupation shoemaker, entered service July
25,1861, rank “Drummer” in Co. D, 4 NH Volunteers, final discharge October 10,
1864, same company and regiment. (Note: service dates and records are
incomplete in the GAR Post document. Please see detailed account in the text.)
[Note: Leon Paxton Hale, grandson to Thomas, marched
as snare drummer with the Pease City Band in Laconia in the 1890s (Photograph
in The Laconian, 1899). Thomas’s great-grandson, Edward Hazen Hale,
great-great-granddaughter Edwyna Hale Chapman, and great-great-grandson Don
Woodworth continued the family drumming tradition in Laconia. Brass bands
marching in the streets of the nation have sustained the patriotic life of
communities, large and small.]
24. The GAR records [note 23] show the early end of
service without comment. Perhaps the unit was disbanded before the 90-day
obligation was up.
25.
Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of
New Hampshire the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 (Concord,
1895), 175. Thomas’s four
enlistments (and service in five units) are taken from pages 175, 480, 986-7,
1052, 1207.
26. These details, quoted from enlistment papers, are
found in
the Certificate of Disability for Discharge, given at
Hilton Head,
12 January 1862 .
27. Ayling, Revised Register [note 25].
28. Certificate of Disability for Discharge, 12
January 1862 [note 26].
29. At our request, Larry Epstein, M. D., has
explained the 19th century medical terms: “Phthisis is simply Greek
for ‘consumption’ (TB) and the pulmonalis specifies lung location.” Dr. Epstein
has confirmed that Thomas’s return to service in a matter of months indicates
an error in the original diagnosis. Dr. Epstein writes: “...many cases of
presumed pulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) in the 1800’s were really bacterial
pneumonias (such as pneumococcal), and vice-versa.” (Personal communication by
email, 13 January 2008).
30. Ayling [note 25], 480, 986-7.
31. Edward O. Lord, History of the Ninth
Regiment New
Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion,
(Concord, NH, 1895), 6,12.
32. William Marvel, Race of the Soil: The Ninth New
Hampshire Regiment in the Civil War (Broadfoot Publishing Company,
Wilmington, NC, 1988), 16-17.
33. Lord, 19-28. Since most of these young men were
leaving home and traveling out of New Hampshire
for the first time, Lord gives a detailed account of the stages of the trip and
of the new territories they were seeing by train and ship.
34. Lord [note 31], 26.
36. Lord [note 31], 68-69.
37. Lord [note 31], 119-120.
38. Lord [note 31], 115-117.
39. Discharge papers for Thomas J. Hale, dated October
20. 1862.
40. Furlough and discharge papers for Charles and
George loaned by Edwyna Hale Chapman. George was with the 12th New
Hampshire Regiment at Chancelorsville (May 1-5, 1863), a ferocious battle with
heavy losses. The 12th went on to the battle of Gettysburg, where on
the second day (July 2, 1863) in continuous and awful battle in defense of the
Emmitsburg Road, George was wounded above the ankle. An excellent description
of this battle in which the 12th was heavily involved is found in
Kevin O’Brien, "To Unflinchingly Face Danger and Death: Carr's Brigade
Defends Emmitsburg Road," Gettysburg Magazine XII (January
1995), 7-23.
41. Family tradition is the source for the description
of the wound and its effects.
42. Ayling [note 25], 1052.
43. Lord [note 31], 534.
44. Laconia VRs for date of death; grave location from
observation.
45. Belknap County, New Hampshire, Probate Court
Docket #2099.
46. Laconia VRs.
47. Thomas was an early subscriber -- perhaps the
third -- to a lot in Union Cemetery. His certificate is dated 20 May 1868 and
reads, "Thomas Hale of Laconia is Proprietor of the whole lot number
3." (The certificate of ownership was loaned by Cora Hale Kimball.) The
stones, close to the Academy Street entrance and now horizontal, were laid down
at the request of great-grandson Edward Hazen Hale to avoid breakage (personal
communication, Cora Hale Kimball, 5 November 1983).
