Wallace
Eastman Woodworth
of Portsmouth, Franklin, and Lakeport,
New Hampshire
1842-1925
His Life and Service in the Civil War
Don W. Woodworth
Published at
Sun City, California
August 17, 2014
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
ORIGINS AND EARLY YEARS
THE WAR YEARS
THE RETURN HOME
Appendix A: As
Told To His Grandson
Appendix B: Du Pont’s
Battery at Cedar Creek
Appendix C: The Death of Darius A. Drake
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the Laconia Historical Society and Museum, my thanks for
their preservation of the records of the Darius A. Drake Post 36 of the Grand
Army of the Republic. Of special interest to us is Personal War Sketches
by Wallace Woodworth, a memorial collection of his essays to honor his fellow soldiers.
To Warren D. Huse and Gilbert S. Center of the Historical
Society, my thanks for their labor and wisdom in preparing material for weekly
publication in the Laconia Evening Citizen (presently Citizen of Laconia)
to make available the history of Laconia and Lakeport.
To Coral Richardson Theberge, my niece, my thanks for
research material about the Expeditionary Forces and the blockade of the
Southern coast.
To Ruth Woodworth Criger, my sister, my thanks for Internet searches to find sketches done in the Shenandoah Valley during the campaigns of 1864, for designing and recording the Ancestor Charts of the Hales and Woodworths on this site, and for sharing the pleasures of family history with me.
To my brother, Steven Hale Woodworth, for his faithful preservation of the great photograph of Wallace E. Woodworth as an artilleryman and other important artifacts and papers of the family.
To my son, Bayard Weston Woodworth, my deep appreciation for creating this website as a way of saving some of the lives that have come before ours.
To Barbara J. Townley, my wife, for her encouragement, support, and love.
To my brother, Steven Hale Woodworth, for his faithful preservation of the great photograph of Wallace E. Woodworth as an artilleryman and other important artifacts and papers of the family.
To my son, Bayard Weston Woodworth, my deep appreciation for creating this website as a way of saving some of the lives that have come before ours.
To Barbara J. Townley, my wife, for her encouragement, support, and love.
INTRODUCTION
Wallace Eastman Woodworth might well be invited to stand at
the center of the family circle. His courage and his dignity are guides to an
honorable life. His years of service as a volunteer in the infantry and
artillery regiments of the Union Army reveal the depths of his patriotism. His
love of history and writing has been a gift to his town and to his descendants
through four generations. His more than fifty years as a needle maker earn him
a place of honor in the working class of American industry.
ORIGINS AND
EARLY YEARS
Wallace Eastman Woodworth was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire
on 22 April 1842, the first child of
Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Huntress) Woodworth. He married at Boston,
Massachusetts, 27 May 1872, Sarah Church Preble, the daughter of Jeremiah and
Sarah Ann Huntress, born 9 April 1850, died 21 December, 1929. Wallace died at
Laconia, New Hampshire, 29 April 1925.
Wallace had two sisters and a brother: Ann Louisa (1844-1857), Mary Elizabeth
(1846-1886), and Lemuel Lamartine (1848-1849). His childhood was darkened by
the death of Lemuel when he was seven;
Ann’s death came
when he was fifteen.
Wallace received six years of formal education, most in
Portsmouth. He told his grandson that his favorite subjects were geography and
history. (In later years he would walk and fight over much of the terrain of
the Commonwealth of Virginia in the Civil War, and provide accounts of his life
there.)
In 1853, Nathaniel, a stocking weaver, moved his family to
Franklin, New Hampshire, a growing town on the Merrimac River, where the town’s
first knitting factory had been built the year before. But his plans were cut
short. His death in 1857 created great hardship for Elizabeth, who found work
as a domestic in Boston, and for Mary, who went with her.1 The 1860 U.S. Census lists Wallace as living
in Franklin with the Barret family, an English couple with two small children
born in New Hampshire. It is clear that he was working to support himself.
Indeed, he may have gone into a factory at 15 when his father died. At 18, in
1860, he was a needle maker for Walter Aiken in Franklin, work that he would
take up again after his military service and follow most of his life in
Lakeport.
THE WAR YEARS
South Carolina troops fired on the Federal arsenal at Fort
Sumter on April 12, 1861, and the North mobilized to save the Union. Responding
to President Lincoln's call for ninety-day volunteers, Wallace stepped forward
just 10 days later, and on his 19th birthday enlisted in Co. D, 1st New
Hampshire Infantry.
 |
| Private Wallace Eastman Woodworth, probably at time of enlistment, from a Carte d'visite photograph |
Three weeks later, on September 3, Private Woodworth
enlisted in Company H of the Fourth New Hampshire Volunteers. He mustered in on
September 18 in Manchester. The regiment spent from September 27 to October 9
in Washington, and then was assigned to General Thomas W. Sherman’s
expedition to Port Royal, South Carolina.
An armada of ships under the command of Admiral Samuel F. DuPont was
gathered to carry the war to the southern flank of the Confederacy. The men of the Fourth New Hampshire
embarked on one of the great ships of the fleet, the Baltic‚ a side-wheel
Steamer, suffered a terrible storm of three days off Hatteras, and a severe
fright in striking the Frying Pan Shoals; arrived at Port Royal November 4 [actually the 7th], and saw from the ship’s masts the attack upon Port Royal, the demolition of Fort Walker, and the capture of Hilton Head.2
Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard, placed on small islands to
defend Port Royal Sound and Hilton Head, were demolished by the Naval
bombardment mounted by five warships. As the assault began, the ships moved in
a long oval before the forts, firing as each ship moved into position and
providing only moving targets to the enemy cannon. In the second phase, the
Union ships took positions out of range of the forts’ armaments,
and continued firing until the forts surrendered.
 |
| Union warships firing on two forts defending Port Royal and Hilton Head, November 7, 1861 |
The island of Hilton Head became home to the Expeditionary
Force for three months while the Union assembled an army of 30,000 men in
preparation for an offensive against the southern coast. The island became the
base for operations against the coastal cities and for a blockade against the
ships supplying goods to support the Confederate military.3
On
February 28,1862, Admiral DuPont left Port Royal and Hilton
Head with thirty-three ships carrying the Third Brigade, US Expeditionary
Force, including the Fourth New Hampshire Regiment, and started for the Florida
coast.
After occupying Fernandina and with delays at the uncharted
mouth of the St. Johns River, it was March 11 when the ships began to move up
the river toward Jacksonville. A delegation of townspeople met the ships to
offer to surrender Jacksonville and put themselves under the Union Army’s
protection.4
Because General Robert E. Lee had previously ordered that
vulnerable positions be abandoned to conserve Confederate forces, Fernandina,
Jacksonville, and St. Augustine were being abandoned as the fleet approached.
On March 12, a large Union force, including six companies of the 4th New
Hampshire Infantry (and the Regimental Band) went ashore at Jacksonville under
the command of Colonel T. J. Whipple of Laconia. And again they were greeted by
Union sympathizers eager for protection from nearby Confederate forces for
their lives and property.5
Units of the Fourth, including Wallace’s
Company H, were deployed inland to create a defensive perimeter for the forces
holding Jacksonville. Before many days
had passed,6 Wallace was
taken prisoner. He recounted the capture fifty years later to his grandson,
Donald, who in 1922 included the story in a paper he wrote for a high school
class.
My grandfather and six of his comrades were placed at an outpost a mile in advance of their pickets. The men built a fire in an old stone schoolhouse nearby, which had neither doors nor windows, posted two guards outside, spread out their blankets, and thought themselves very lucky indeed. At one o’clock that night a party of forty-five rebels attacked the schoolhouse from three sides. The ensuing melee lasted about ten minutes after the two guards had killed the rebel lieutenant and escaped. Of the remaining five Northerners, one, (my grandfather’s chum,) was killed, two were wounded, and the [two] others taken prisoners.7
Wallace told his grandson that he and his companion were
first held at Tallahassee. As they were being moved out, a mob entered their
train in an effort to hang the prisoners. The rebel lieutenant in command,
strong in his sense of duty, fought off the mob and thus saved the prisoners'
lives.
 |
| Libby Prison, Richmond, VA, about 1865, after the war |
After seven months as a prisoner of war, Wallace was
paroled on October 19, 1862, sent to New
York, and placed in hospital in November and December to recover from malaria
and the months of hunger. Hearing that his hero, Col. Thomas J. Whipple, had
moved to the 5th Battalion US Artillery, Wallace reenlisted in Light Battery B
of that battalion and became a gunner. It was the day before Christmas, 1862.
He now held the rank of Corporal. A photograph shows him with the crossed cannons on his cap, the stripes on his sleeve, and the gunner’s heavy gloves on his hands.8
 |
| Corporal Wallace Eastman Woodworth wearing gunner's gloves and insignia, c. 1863 |
Wallace and his battery spent the first six months of 1863
as part of the garrison stationed at Fort Harrison in New York Harbor. In July
they were moved to Pennsylvania and then ordered to Gettysburg, but the battle
there was over while they were still forty miles away.
Through summer and fall, they followed the Union Army of
the Potomac under General George G. Meade, moving south into Virginia and
taking quarters for the winter in Martinsburg.
 |
| Ruins of the bridge over the Shenandoah. 1864, Autumn. A. R. Waud. |
 |
| On the advance to Fishers Hill. A. R. Waud. |
5
June - Piedmont, VA.
16
June - New London, VA.
17-18
June - Lynchburg, VA.
19
September - Winchester, VA.
22
September - Fisher Hill, VA.
31
(?)September - Perryville, VA.
19
October - Cedar Creek, VA.
Cedar Creek was a brutal battle that began in the
dark of night. The battle raged all morning, with the Union forces driven five
miles in retreat, losing supplies and cannon. Rallied by General Philip
Sheridan, the Union lines reformed for a counterattack, and by dark had recovered
most of their cannon and captured a Confederate supply train.
The stunning reversal and victory at Cedar Creek marked the
end of the South’s invasion of
the North and saved Washington from the constant threat of attack. With the
approach of winter, the regiment was moved to camp in Cumberland, Maryland.
Robert E. Lee’s
surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April
9, 1865 effectively ended the war, and the remaining parts of the Confederate
army surrendered in the following days.
Wallace continued in the service, assigned to the forces at
Fort Monroe, Virginia, that guarded Jefferson Davis, former President of the
Confederacy and then prisoner of war. In conversation with his grandson,
Wallace later recalled that he had heard Davis, known for his great intellect
and remarkable memory, speak on many occasions. Once Davis
was released into civilian custody, the troops were discharged,
and Wallace's wartime tour of duty ended on January 23, 1867. He later told his grandson that he had served
his country continuously for five years and nine months, about three years and
five months of which he never slept under a roof.
Wallace was not yet done with his military life, however,
for again he reenlisted, this time in Light Battery F of the 5th U.S.
Artillery, on June 10, 1868, and, at age
29, was discharged on June 10, 1871.
THE RETURN HOME
Wallace went to Boston to live with his sister, Mary
Elizabeth, and her husband, Edward W. Griggs. Wallace worked as a baker with
his brother-in-law. At their home, he married on May 27, 1872, Sarah Church
Preble, the daughter and youngest child of Jeremiah and Sarah Ann (Huntress)
Preble. The next year, the newlyweds moved to Lake Village, New Hampshire,
where Wellington Lovett Woodworth, their only child, was born on May 18, 1873.
 |
| Sarah Church Preble Woodworth |
Lake Village was a mill town with its shops and factories
powered by the Winnipesaukee River as it dropped out of Lake Winnipesaukee
through Paugus Bay. There Wallace resumed work as a needle maker in one of the
small shops run by the Wardwell Needle Company near Elm Street. Later, the
company built a three-story factory on Mechanic Street a few blocks from the
center of town. Knitting machinery for the making of stockings was becoming a
local and world industry, and the needles were a key component.
Wallace was pleased to promote the work he did. He sent a
very small circular saw blade and samples of his work to the Granite State to correct a report in that paper. The story
was picked up for its local interest by the Belknap Republican:
 |
| Wardwell Needle Company, From The Illustrated Laconian, 1899, p. 33 |
We have received from Mr. W.E. Woodworth of Lake Village, very conclusive evidence that there are circular saws in use which are smaller than a sovereign, that being the limit of size formerly stated. Mr. Woodworth sends a circular saw the size of a gold dollar, the same being one of those used by his firm in the manufacture of hosiery needles. The evidence of the saw’s effective work is given by the needles. Mr. Woodworth is in the employ of the Wardwell Needle Company, of this place.9
The Civil War was much in the minds of the people. The
veterans were active in the community and honored for their service. Across the
nation, veterans began to organize the
Grand Army of the Republic to keep their history alive and to support their
fellow servicemen. The Darius Drake Post No. 36 of the GAR was instituted in
Lake Village on October 17, 1877 with twenty-five Union veterans as charter
members. Wallace wrote for the local paper about Darius Drake’s
death at age 23 at the siege of Fort Wagner.10 (Appendix C)
On March 14, 1888, the Veteran’s
Advocate published Wallace’s
account (Appendix B) of his artillery unit’s
retreat in the face of a massive surprise attack at Cedar Creek, Virginia in
which their positions were overrun and their cannons captured. As the attack
begins in the dark of early morning, the bugle sounds a call to “boots
and saddle”:
As we rushed out of our shelters we beheld the First Sergeant with a candle trying to get the men in line to answer roll call; but as the shots were flying over our heads quite fast, the men showed more wisdom than the sergeant and rushed for their horses; and although the battery was known for their quick work, they outdid themselves that morning.
The Union lines reformed later in the day, and they
recaptured a large part of their cannons, equipment, and horses, as well as a
Confederate supply train.
By 1888, his reputation in the community was such that the Belknap
Republican of June 8 reported that Wallace was one of three people asked to
cooperate with the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union to open a reading room. The meeting was held in the Baptist
vestry with the Reverend Getchell in charge. The outcome was the Goss Reading
Room on Elm Street, which still exists as a public library. His son Wellington at 18 was selected as
librarian in March of 1892.
In December 1910, Wallace received from his son the deed to
“the bungalow" at 12 Walnut
Street, the small house (next door and up the hill) that Wellington had bought
earlier that year from George D. Merrill for $1,067.50. Wellington’s
careful records show that he paid for taxes and repairs, and for a few months
had collected $12 per month in rent. The gift of the house meant that for the
next fifteen years Wallace and Sarah would live next door to their son,
daughter-in-law, and grandson.
In 1916, the United States entered the World War, a
prolonged and awful war. We have no record of Wallace’s
reaction to it. Still, given his patriotism and his graphic memories of the
horror he had seen, we must think that his feelings were complex and troubled.
The Census of 1920 lists Wallace, age 77, and Sarah, age
69, at 12 Walnut Street, and shows that he was still working as
"Operative, needle."
From records his grandson made for a college class late in
1924, we know Wallace enjoyed raising flowers and breeding hens. He was
photographed late in life at the bungalow with his hen house in the background.
He published in a poultry journal an article comparing the egg production by
chickens in hen houses with that of chickens laying eggs in the open — as
was common on farms and in town. Chickens housed and penned were the more
productive, he showed.
So the years following the World War brought a return of
order and tranquility that had been the typical mood of the four decades of
their life before the war. They had a broad circle of friends and had a long
and reputable history in this small village that had been home since 1873.
Together they kept a large garden and a couple dozen chickens. Wallace walked
to work, up Walnut Street to Mechanic Street and down the hill to Wardwell’s,
perhaps five minutes. Sarah
could take her needlework down next door to sit with Edith,
to talk about their work at the church, young Donald and his friends, the news
of the town.
Wallace was still at work at the age of seventy-seven, and
we do not know if he retired. At some point, abdominal pain and fatigue must
have signaled a crisis, and he could not have concealed it from his wife and
son. He died on April 29, 1925 at the age of 83 of a tumor of the pancreas.
Arterial sclerosis (hardening of the arteries) was a secondary cause. His
estate, with Wellington as executor, was not appraised until 1930, following
Sarah's death. House and land were appraised at $2,300 and no personal property was listed. It was a
modest life they were closing, after all.
The chickens were not part of the estate. Given Wallace's
reputation as a breeder of chickens, it is likely his flock was sold, not slaughtered,
in 1925. The rifle he carried in the war
was handed down to his son and grandson.11
Wallace was buried at Bayside Cemetery in Lakeport. Sarah
lived until December 21, 1929. Their graves are in a plot with a Woodworth
stone and with the graves of their son and grandson. The plot is at the edge of
a grove of old pines on the shore of Paugus Bay, receives perpetual care, and
has been faithfully decorated with purple lilacs and pink carnations on
Memorial Day through four generations to the present.
Sun City,
California
August 17, 2014
woodworthdw@yahoo.com
……………………………..
Notes:
[Some
details of the family’s
life in Lake Village were taken from a scrapbook of clippings from the local
papers that Wallace and Wellington kept over several years.]
1. The Census of 1860 shows Elizabeth, 47, working in Boston as a domestic in the home of master carpenter Nathaniel W. Pratt, with his three sons, ages 8, 12, and 15, and her daughter, Mary, 14. (Mary has been enumerated as both Mary and Elizabeth. Her death certificate at Boston shows her as Lizzie Griggs.)
2. Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers
and Sailors of N.H. in the
War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, Concord, N.H. We have corrected in
brackets Ayling’s date of the
arrival of the warships and the Baltic at Port Royal Sound and Hilton
Head (November 4 in the original) to November 7.
3. George E. Buker, "The Inner Blockade of Blockade
Runners," North and South, The Official Magazine of the Civil War Society,
IV, 2 (January 2001), 72-73.
4. Buker [note 3], 73.
5. Buker [note 3], 73.
6. Despite Wallace's recollection that his capture occurred
on
March 8, 1862, we find March 12 documented for the landing
at Jacksonville. Thus we conclude that his capture occurred on or soon after
the 12th. (Muster Rolls show him absent, having been taken prisoner, and three
dates: March 24 and 25 and April 11; the discrepancies suggest a variety of
sources, perhaps including Confederate prison records showing arrival dates at
various locations.)
7. Donald M. Woodworth, “ My
Grandfather’s Experiences
in the Civil War,” manuscript with
instructor’s corrections,
dated May 12, 1922. An exact transcription has been made here. For the full
text, see Appendix A.
8. The original photograph is owned by Steven Hale
Woodworth. The copy shown was prepared by Ruth Woodworth Criger.
9. [Untitled], Belknap Republican, June 22,
1888.
10. One hundred and twenty-five years later, the article
was reprinted in the Laconia Citizen (and is included here as Appendix
C.) The writing shows the skill of a person with talents well beyond the six
years of schooling he received in his youth.
11. Wallace’s
rifle, with bayonet attached, was moved down to
Wellington’s house (at 921
Union Avenue, later grandson Donald’s
house) and remained there, shown to his great-grandchildren, Don and Anne, who
would try to lift it to their small shoulders, its weight proof
of how strong Wallace must have been to carry this rifle on long marches.
Appendix A: As
Told To His Grandson
My Grandfather’s
Experiences in the Civil War
by Donald M. Woodworth
May 12, 1922
My grandfather enlisted on his nineteenth birthday, April
22, 1861, at Concord, N.H., in the First New Hampshire Volunteers, burning with
patriotism and aroused, like all other men in the North, with indignation at
the bombardment of Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, S.C.
The Colonel was Mr. Mason W. Tappan, of Bradford, and the
Lieutenant-Colonel was Mr. Thomas J. Whipple, of Laconia, with whom my
grandfather immediately fell in love.
His regiment was transported to Washington, May 28, and
pitched camp about two miles from the city, and on June 10 it made its first
march, a distance of nineteen miles, to Rockville, Maryland. As marching was
wholly new to the men this was a very severe task, as the weather was very hot
and much of the road was made of broken quartz.
My grandfather marched more than five-hundred miles during
the war, (once in 1864 he marched sixty-two miles in two days,) but he said
that that first march was worse than all the others put together.
August 9, 1861, the regiment had returned to Concord, N.H.,
and had been discharged. [Note: their enlistment was for ninety days. –Ed.]
Hearing that his idol, Colonel Whipple, was to command the
Fourth Regiment, my grandfather promptly enlisted in Company H of that Regiment
on September 4. It was soon taken to Washington, and from there to Fortress
Monroe, where a large fleet had been collected. In the first part of November,
the fleet started south under
sealed orders, convoyed by a number of imposing war-vessels
led by the "Wabash," Admiral
Dupont’s flagship. On this trip the fleet
ran into a terrific storm which lasted three days. On the second night, the
ship that carried the Fourth Regiment struck on Hatteras Bar three times.
On the seventh of November the fleet sailed into Port
Royal, Hilton Head, S.C. and took Fort Walker after a five hour engagement.
About three months later the regiment embarked for Florida
and captured Jacksonville early in March, 1862.
On the night of the eighth of March my grandfather and six
of his comrades were placed at an outpost a mile in advance of their pickets.
The men built a fire in an old stone schoolhouse nearby, which had neither
doors nor windows, posted two guards outside, spread out their blankets, and
thought themselves very lucky
indeed. At one o’clock
that night a party of forty-five rebels attacked the schoolhouse from three
sides. The ensuing melee lasted about ten minutes after the two guards had
killed the rebel lieutenant and escaped. Of the remaining five Northerners,
one, (my grandfather’s chum,) was
killed, two were wounded, and the others taken prisoners.
My grandfather and his comrade were taken the next day to
Tallahassee and put into jail. From there they went to Chattahoochee; from
there to Macon, Georgia, where there were fourteen hundred prisoners; and from
there to Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia, where they were paroled and sent to
New York City.
Just before the train carrying the prisoners reached
Tallahassee, it stopped in a small town where the Third Florida Regiment,
containing many Cubans, was encamped. A crowd of soldiers and civilians boarded
the train in an attempt to get the prisoners out and hang them, but the rebel
lieutenant in charge defended the prisoners bravely and soon the train started
and left the angry mob behind. My
grandfather, then only nineteen, said that he was never so
scared in his life as he was when he expected to be hung. He said that he, like
all the other men, went into battle expecting to be shot, but to be strung up
like an ordinary convict was enough to make his blood run cold.
After being a prisoner of war for seven months and then in
a hospital for two months, my grandfather was transferred, on December 24,
1862, to Battery B, Fifth United States Light Artillery, which served as part
of the garrison of Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor until July, 1863, when the
Battery was ordered to Gettysburg, but the battle was over when it reached
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The Battery then followed Meade’s
and Lee’s armies as far as Martinsburg,
Virginia, which was its headquarters during the winter of 1863-64.
Early in the spring the Battery started for Lynchburg under
General Siegle. This march was known as "Hunter’s
Raid."
On Sunday, May 15, the Battle of Newmarket was fought. The
Battery was defeated and had to retreat. (It was at this time that my grandfather
marched sixty-two miles in two days.) In this battle the Rebels employed three
hundred cadets under eighteen years of age from the Virginia Military
Institute. General Siegle was then succeeded by General Hunter who ordered the
Battery to leave its base of supplies and march South. The result was that the
soldiers had to tighten their belts every day after that, for the country
through which they marched was bare. On June 15 the Battery met the
Confederates again at Piedmont. During the action, which lasted all day, the
Northern Battery fired twelve hundred rounds of solid shot and shells. After
this battle it was a running fight all the way to Lynchburg, 126 miles. At
Buchanon the Battery crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains at an altitude of four
thousand feet.
The Battles of Diamond Hill and Lynchburg were fought on
June 18 and 19; then, being out of ammunition, the Battery had to retreat, and
as they could not go back the way they came, it went West through Salem and
across the Allegheny Mountains to Charleston, West Virginia, a distance of 117
miles. The men arrived half-starved and their horses completely worn out.
At 1 P.M., July 4, the Battery started for Parkersburg and
covered the intervening eighty-one miles in three days. From there it was taken
by train to Martinsburg, five hundred miles away, the town from which it
started, having covered about 1,025 miles, by rail and on foot, in about two
months.
The Battle of Winchester was fought on September 19 and
resulted in a Union victory. The Union loss in killed, wounded, and missing,
was 5,018 men.
The Battle of Fisher’s
Hill was fought September 21-22, the loss amounting to 528 men.
On October 19, General Early made a surprise attack on the
Union forces at Cedar Creek, driving them back five miles with heavy losses.
General Sheridan, coming up in the afternoon, (after making his famous ride
"From Winchester, twenty miles away,") ordered a counter attack, and
at night the Union forces occupied their old breastworks, having captured
fifty-four pieces artillery, the whole Confederate baggage train, and losing
5,665 men.
The Battle of Cedar Creek ended all active operations in
the Shenandoah Valley. In December the Battery marched to Maryland Heights and
then was taken by train to winter quarters at Cumberland, Maryland.
When the war ended in April, 1865, the men were, of course,
overjoyed to think that their marching days were over.
Late in the fall of 1865 the Battery was dismounted and
became Heavy Artillery, after turning in its guns and horses.
To fill out their term of enlistment, the men were sent to
Fortress Monroe, where they became part of the garrison that guarded Jefferson
Davis and his Secretary of War.
The guard duty there was very severe. The men went on duty
every other day, and, being a non-commissioned officer, my grandfather was on
the prison guard and got only three nights sleep a week. While on this duty he
had a chance to see the Confederate Ex-President and to hear him talk a great
deal.
My grandfather was discharged from the service on January
21, 1867 -- having served his country continuously for five years and nine
months; about three years and five months of which he never slept under a roof.
Appendix B: Du
Pont’s
Battery at Cedar Creek
[Wallace wrote of the fierce battle
at Cedar Creek, Virginia, in which his company and other Union forces were
driven from their positions in an overwhelming Confederate attack. When published in the Veteran’s
Advocate on March 14, 1888, his story of the
Confederate assault was attached to another man’s
account of the Union counterattack (including the reforming of the Union lines
and the recovery of their lost cannons). We include here only a portion of that
part authored by Wallace, the full text having been lost.]
Several, quick, shots in succession were the sounds that
awoke us from deep sleep about four o’clock
on the morning of Oct. 19, 1864, but as all was quiet again we turned our
blankets and tried to go to sleep, when through the air again came the sharp
reports of rifles, nearer and more prolonged than before. We were no longer
left in doubt as to whether it was a mere affair of the pickets or not; for the
clear ringing of the bugle, sounding the call of “boots
and saddle,” told us that
old man Early was bent upon wiping out the score of Winchester and Fisher’s
Hill.
But let us go back for a moment. A week previous to this,
Sheridan’s Army, consisting of the Eighth,
Nineteenth, and Sixth Corps, in the order named, from left to right, had been
entrenching. Battery B, 5th U. S. Artillery, Capt. F. A. Du Pont (of which this
article has particularly to deal), being stationed some distance to the left of
the valley pike, the guns being in the breast works on the ridge of a steep
hill while the caissons were massed in the narrow ravine below. To illustrate
the discipline in the Regular army and particularly in Battery B, under our
martinet of a Captain, as we rushed out of our shelters we beheld the First Sergeant with a candle
trying to get the men in line to answer roll call; but as the shots were flying
over our heads quite fast, the men showed more wisdom than the sergeant and
rushed for their horses, and although the battery was noted for their quick
work, they outdid themselves that morning. The writer of this article, as he unhitched
his horses, the off one, which was a very high strung mare, broke away and was
off towards our base of supplies.
Running to the spare line I procured one of the sick
horses, already harnessed to replace her.
The big guns
had already begun to get in their work.
Appendix C: The
Death of Darius A. Drake
[From Personal War Sketches, a
memorial volume of biographies that Wallace Woodworth wrote on behalf of the
men in the Darius A. Drake Post 36 of the Grand Army of the Republic at Lake
Village. The book, now at the Laconia
Historical Society, was stored for several decades in the vault of the Lakeport
National Bank, where Wallace’s
son and later his grandson served as the bank’s
manager. The transfer to the Historical Society took place when a later owner,
Indian Head Bank, closed the bank.]
Darius A. Drake, in whose memory the post was named, was
the son of Col. Darius G. and Lavina M. Drake, and was born at New Hampton,
July 21, 1840.
The father, Colonel Drake, held every regimental commission
in the old state militia, and was lieutenant-colonel of the 29th regiment when
Thomas J. Whipple was colonel.
Darius A. Drake enlisted as a private, July 21, 1861 (the
day of the battle of Bull Run), in Laconia under Capt. William Badger, now of
the regular army, for the Third New Hampshire, but the regiment was full, and
the remaining new men were assigned to Company D, Fourth Regiment, with
T.J. Whipple as colonel.
The regiment was raised under the first call of President
Lincoln for 300,000 volunteers, and was mustered into the United States service
at their rendezvous in Manchester, Sept. 18, leaving there nine days later for
Camp near Washington. The regiment was assigned to the 10th Army Corps, and was
sent on transport to Port Royal.
Later, Drake returned north on account of ill health and
was detailed for a time for recruiting service.
Back again as sergeant, he was in the siege of Fort Wagner,
Morris Island, off Charlestown, S.C., and was in the front in the zigzag
trenches supporting a battery during the night.
Francis A. Davis of Laconia was an Army chum of Drake’s
and was by his side when he received his mortal wound. A shell thrown from Fort
Jackson had passed by them before it
burst, causing them a mutual congratulation that they had escaped it, when a
piece of it flew back, striking Drake on the hip, and ended its deadly work.
The wounded soldier was taken to the field hospital in the
rear, suffering great agony, and died the next morning, Aug.23, 1863. aged 23
years. The body was buried on the island at the time, but later the government
moved the bodies of its brave dead to Mt. Pleasant, a beautiful spot on the
mainland.
