USA > New York > Essex County > Westport > Bessboro: A history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. > Part 34
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At au adjourned special Town Meeting beld at the Ar mory in Westport, on the 14th day of January, 1865, pur stant to notice given December 29th. Ist. according
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to law. for the purpose of raising money to pay boun- ties to volunteers, to fill the quota of the town of Westport under the last call of the President for 300,000 men. Voted Aaron Clark chair.nan and Barton B. Riebards secretary of the meeting, and adjourned to Barton B. Richards store. The meeting was called to order by the chairman, who briefly stated the ob- joet of the meeting. whereupon it was moved and seconded to raise the sum of $8000 and place in the bands of the Board of Town Officers, or so much thereof as may be nec- essary to pay bounties to volunteers to fill the quotaof this town. An amendment was then offered and accepted to raise the sum of $10.000. to be used in the same way and for the same purpose. Voted that a committee of five be appointed by this meeting. to be associated with the Board of Town Officers to assist in raising volunteers. This com- mittee was Samuel Root. F. H. Page. Israel Patterson. Ed- mund J. Snaith and Samuel Pierce. Adjourned. Signed by Aaron Clark, Chairman. B. B. Richards, Secretary and E. B. Low. Town Clerk.
This is the last record in the old Town Book which makes allusion to the war. I will tell the story of the men who went away to fight as I have been able to gather it from their own lips and those of their com- iades and families. There ought to be a record of our enlisted men on file in the town clerk's office, but search has failed to reveal it, and I have been obliged to de- pend entirely upon the assistance mentioned; therefore it will be seen that some names may be omitted which ought to stand here, and other mistakes may be made which those who come after me will have the privilege of correcting.
The First Volunteers.
Fort Sumter was surrendered April 14, 1861, and the next day President Lincoln called for seventy-five thou- sand volunteers to put down the Rebellion. Instantly
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the North responded. Two young men from Westport enlisted before the end of the month, being not only the first to enlist from their own town, but also the first froa the county.
One of these young men was Washington Irving Sawyer, who was attending school at Hampton Insti- tate, Fairfax, Vt., when the call for troops came. He was then twenty-two, the-son of Miles MeFarland Saw- yer, and great-grandson of Isaac Sawyer the Indian fighter, whose name is connected with the story of a daring escape from captivity during the Revolutionary
war. He immediately Jeft his studies and came home, declaring his intention of enlisting. He found another young man as eager as himself, with whom he had played in childhood, -- Napoleon Joubert, brother of Mrs. P. P. Bacon. In vain they were urged to wait until a company was formed in town. of which there was a prospect. They left at once for Albany, and there Irving Sawyer enlisted in the 18th N. Y. V., which was attached to Newtou's brigade, Porter's corps, Army of the Potomac. The next summer, June 27, 1862, he was killed at the battle of Gaines Mill, Va., and his wid -. owed mother never saw his face again. His three broth- ers also went to the war afterward. Napoleon Joubert enlisted in the 4th U. S. Cavalry, and was a corporal in Company C. He was wounded by a shot which passed entirely through oue lung, but recovered, and lived until 1901. His brother Cassius enlisted afterward, and die in hospital in Baton Rouge, La.
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Company K of the Thirty-Eighth.
The next public event after the departure of young Sawyer and Joubert occurred upon a day early in June, when a company of Elizabethtown men came out and took the steamboat for the south at our wharf. This was Company K of the 38th New York Volunteers, commanded by Captain Samuel C. Dwyer, a young law- ver of Elizabethtown, who had spent a part of his school days in Westport and was well-known here. In this company were seven Westport boys, all from Wad- hams and its vicinity, and two others who have since resided in town. The 38th regiment was mustered into service in New York, left the State June 19th and reached Washington June 21st. In these first days of the war soldiering was looked upon as a gay excursion into the great world, a pienic at the expense of Unele Sam, with some agreeable drilling and marching thrown in. The greatest uncertainty was the fear lest they might be obliged to come back without seeing auy fighting, and the crowd of merry young fellows who marched across the gang-plauk on board the boat that June day went with bright eyes and laughing lips, proud that the whole town was there to look on and see what a fine show they made. A little over a month, and the 38th, in Wilcox's brigade, Heintzelmann's division, ad- vanced with the rest of the army to the first battle of Bull Run. For four hours it was in close action. After the panie-stricken retreat it was found that the regiment bad lost one hundred and twenty-
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eight men in killed, wounded and missing. Pitt Edgar Wadhams, son of Abraham Wadhams, was severely wounded, and Orlando B. Whitney and George Boutwell were taken prisoners. Whitney died in prison, and Boutwell spent more than a year in dif- ferent southern prisons, nearly starving to death, and returning after bis exchange in a most pitiable condi- tion of weakness. These were the realities of war, and after the first battle of Bull Run no one doubted the possibility of fighting and of death. Company K of the 38th was the only organization from Essex county at this first battle of the war. The next summer, in May of 1862, Captain Dwyer was mortally wounded at the battle of Williamsburg, dying a few days afterward at St. John's Hospital in Philadelphia. His body was sent home to Elizabethtown, and again the towuspeo- ple gathered at the wharf, this time to see the coffin carried by which contained all that was left of the gal- lant young captain who had stepped upon the deck so lightly ouly a year before. Others of our men in Cour- pany K were George French, who was a sergeant ; C. Wesley Daniels, who was wounded Dec. 13, 1862, at Fredericksburgh, was promoted corporal of Company C, and served to Jnue 22, 1863; George Avery and Moses Coyer. Martin Marshall and Stephen Hatha- Way are at present residents of Westport, the latter the oldest survivor of Company K.
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Company A of the Seventy-Seventh.
The excitement attendant upon the departure of Com- pany K of the 38th served to intensify the war spirit already awakened, and once more the centre of Main street was daily used for the drilling of squads of men, while the air was full of war talk and military terms. Then living in town was an old soldier, William Harris by name, who had been in the United States dragoons under Gen. Harney, fighting Iudiaus on the Western plains. Exempt by age from military service, he threw himself iuto the work of drilling the young men who longed for a soldier's life. A recruiting office was opened in the village, Reuel W. Arnold having received authority to raise a company, and by the middle of the summer fifty young men had signed the roll, most of them boys entering the twenties, with a few married men a little older who expected to receive commissions, September 15 they were mustered into service, and two days later took the boat to go to Saratoga, where . they been ordered to join a regiment that was being organized by the Hon. James B. McLean. There the company was soon recruited to its maximum strength of a hundred men from Jay, Keene and surrounding towns, and being the first on the ground, was called Company A. The regiment was called "the 77th," or "Bemis Heights Battalion," named, as Watson remarks, "by the suggestions of the spot," in allusion to the surren- der of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777. This was prob- ably the only regiment in the service which was num- bered purely for sentimental reasons. In actual num-
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erical order it stood somewhere in the forties. The regimental flag emphasized the historical allusion. "The banuer," says Dr. George T. Stevens, in "Three Years in the Sixth Corps, " "was an exquisite piece of work, of the richest fabric; a blue ground with elegant de- signs in oil. On one side was represented an engage- ment in which the American soldiers, led by Washing- tou, were fighting under the old flag, --- thirteen stripes and the union jack. On the reverse was pictured the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga under the new flag, - the stars and stripes." The colonel of the regiment was the Hon. James B. McLean, M. C., succeeded after one year by Col. Winsor B. French.
A month in camp, then on November 23d they were mustered into the service of the United States, and on Thanksgiving Day started for Washington. The .com- pany had elected Reuel W. Arnold Captain, William Douglass First Lieutenant and James H. Farnsworth Second Lieutenant, these three men being somewhat older than the majority of the company. The regimeut received guns and equipments in New York, and upon arriving at Washington went into camp on Meridian Hill. There was much sickness in camp, and here the company met with its first loss, Hiram Persons dying in hospital. On January 5, 1862, Lieutenant Farus- worth resigned his commission and returned home, Charles Edson Stevens being promoted to the vacant office.
February 15th, 1862, the regiment received its first orders to march, being sent across the river into Vir-
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ginia to join Gen. W. F. Smith's division, and assigned to the 3rd Brigade under Gen. Davidson. They marched all day in mud knee deep, with rain and sleet pouring down upon them, and pitched their tent at night upon ground covered with snow. Here they remained in camp till March Sth, doing their first picket duty in front of the enemy. "But on the Sth of March," says Major Stevens, in a sketch of the history of the 77th which the author has freely used in this account, "the question 'Why don't the army move?' was answered by orders to be ready to march at 4 o'clock in the morning, and the great army that had been so long drilling was to be launched at the Confederate force that held Ma- massas all winter." But the Confederate army retreated, and the 77th, with the rest of the division, went into camp at Fairfas Court House a few days, then marched for Alexandria where they camped on ground covered ankle deep with water, with rain which rendered it im- possible to build fires. This is remembered as the worst night ever experienced by the 77th,and the spot is known by the name of "Camp Misery." From there they took transports for Fortress Monroe, and went into camp at Newport News, near the river. Here they saw the wreck of the U. S. frigate Cumberland, sunk by the Merrimac a few days before, and here the rebel gunboat Teaser came out and threw a few shells over the camp, the first which our men had ever seen coming from the enemy. Then came the campaign up the peninsula, with great hardships for new soldiers. The water from marshy ponds their only drinking supply, typhoid soon broke
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out among them, and every day one or two were sent back to the hospital, "some to be sent north, and some to be buried under the pines." For a month they lay under the works at Yorktown doing picket duty and building forts, sometimes being called up two or three times in a night to form a line while there was severe firing upon their pickets. April 3rd, 1862, Captain Arnold resigned his commission, as did also Lieutenant Douglass a few days afterward, and they returned home.
May 6 occurred the battle of Williamsburg, the first serious engagement in which the 77th took part. Here they saw for the first time the boys of the 38th, whom they had cheered as they left Westport a year before, and here it was that Captain Dwyer was shot down. "At Williamsburg," says Major Stevens, "we saw the 38th march into the woods while we were laying in sup- port at Gen. Sumner's headquarters, until we were or- dered to join Gen. Hancock on the right, and there learned of the death of Captain Dwyer." After this came the siege of Richmond and the Seven Days re- treat, when the men fought daytimes and marched nights, becoming so worn out that they would drop down in the road at every halt and fall asleep without stirring from their places, and even slept while march- ing. After the battle of Malvern Hill the 77th was transferred from the peninsula to join Gen. Pope near Washington, and took part in the second battle of Bull Run, August 29th. Theu it was sent into Maryland with Burnside's column of MeClellan's army to check the movements of Gen. Lee, a pleasant march into a
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beautiful country, ending with the hard-fought battle of South Mountain, September 14th, followed immedi- ately by the terrible conflict of Antietam, in which over 17,000 men were killed and wounded, the greatest loss in one day of the Union army during the war. The sixth corps, to which the 77th was attached, came up after a hard forced march, charged over ground which had been already fought over three times during the day, and hell the position. Here Sergeant Hiram Barnes and Wesley Compton of Company A were wounded, and discharged for disability. After spend- ing some time in hospital, Sergeant Barnes re-enlisted in the 96th, where he became one of a picked company of sharpshooters. He was afterward captured by the enemy, and was in Libby prison for five weeks, then transferred to the stockade at Salisbury, N. C., where he remained six months, nearly dying from starvation and exposure. With him there was Silas W. Fling,son of Jerry Flinn, a boy who sunk beneath the hardships of the place, and died in the arms of Sergeant Barnes. Barnes sat and held him for three hours after the breath of life had left him, with a circle of the other prisoners standing around to hide them from observa- tion, in order to make sure that the boy was dead be- fore he was taken out upon the dead-cart and cast into the pit This was one horror which a faithful friend might spare another, even in Salisbury stockade, and I would that Westport boys should always remember the story, long after the tall form and white beard of Ser- grant Barnes shall be no longer seen upon our streets.
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When we find in our own history such an instance of suffering and devotion, let us see to it that it shall not be forgotten.
About a month after the battle of Antietam the 77th was again marching into Virginia to participate in the disastrous battles of Fredericksburgh and Marye's Heights. In the latter engagement the 77th captured the 1Sth Mississippi, colonel, colors and all, or at least they did actually capture the colonel, (Col. Luce,) a large number of prisoners, a stand of colors and a quan- tity of small arms. This was one of the incidents which led Gen. Davidson to say affectionately of the 77th, "It is a little regiment, but it is always in the right place." They recrossed the river to spend the remainder of the winter in camp at White Oak Church, on the Rappahannock. Here some of the officers' wives visited them, among them the wife of the regimental sur- geon, Dr. George T. Stevens. She was a Westport girl, Miss Harriet Wadhams. In December C. E. Stevens was promoted First Lieutenant, and William F. Lyon Second Lieutenant. In the spring the army again crossed the river, and this time the heights of Fred- ericksburgh were carried by Union troops, while Gen. Hooker was being beaten at Chancellorsville, May 1-4. The 77th was one of the regiments detailed to assist the engineer in laying pontoon bridges across the Rap- pahannock. This work was greatly impeded by cou- stant firing from the rebel rifle pits on the other side of the river, and it was in the performance of this duty
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that Rex Havens was killed. Pitt Wadhams was killed on the third day, being shot in the right temple.
Then the third of July, came the great battle of Gettysburg, in which the 77th was held in reserve upon Powers' Hill, near Gen. Slocum's headquarters, where the regimental monument now stands.
Other regiments in which Westport men had enlisted which were present at the battle of Gettysburg were the 2ud New York Cavalry, or the . "Harris Light Bri- gade," the 5th New York Cavalry, the 12th and the 44th N. Y. Iufautry.
After the battle, the 77th, (with the rest of the Sixth Corps,) was sent in pursuit of Lee toward the Potomac. He escaped, and when they came to Petersville, MId., on the Potomac, they were obliged to wait for orders to cross. While in camp at this point, some of the offi- cers' wives who had been in Washington, waiting an opportunity to visit their husbands, made a short visit at the officers' quarters. It was at this time that the surgeon's wife, Mrs. Stevens, presented the regiment with a beautiful pair of guidons. The ground was blue, with the white Greek cross which was the badge of the division, and in the center of the cross the figures "77." These are the tattered guidons which may now be seen in the capitol at Albany, carried by the regiment through all the remaining battles of the war. It is pleasant to think, while gazing upon them, that they were made by a daughter of Westport.
The remainder of the year was spent by the 77th in Virginia, between Washington and the Rappahannock,
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with a few skirmishes, and the advance to Mine Run. While in camp at Hart's Mills, Va., on the Rappahan- rock, the wife of Captain Davenport, of the Fifth Ver- mont, visited him. She had been Frances Wadhams, aud was sister of Mrs. Stevens. Captain Davenport was killed in battle the next May.
In the spring the Army of the Potomac, under Geu- eral Grant, entered upon the final campaign against Richmond. On the 5th of May, 1861, the 77th crossed the Rapidan with about five hundred guns. The 12th of May there were not more than a hundred men in line, the balance of the regiment having been killed or wounded. From the crossing of the river to the first of July there were but few days when the regiment was not under fire. The battles of the Wilderness and of Spottsylvania were among the most sanguinary and prolonged struggles of the war. On the 10th of May twelve regiments, one of them the 77th, were chosen to charge the enemy's works. There were three lines of defense. The first, the second, the third, were taken without halting. Then the enemy was re-enforced, and our men were driven back, leaving their dead and wounded behind them. One of those killed in the last line was Lient. William F. Lyon, son of Isaac Lyou. George Allen, son of Nathaniel Allen, was also killed at Spottsylvania.
The 77th took part in the twelve days' fighting at Coal Harbor, Va., from June Ist to the 12th. Here they first met the boys of the 118th, who had left West- port a year after Company A. "The first time we met
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the 118th regiment," says Major Stevens, "was at Coal Harbor after the disastrous charge on their works. Our regiment was moved out to the pieket line in the night, and the morning found the right of our regiment join- ing the left of the 118th, and we lay in that hole until they were sent around to Petersburg by water, and we marched across the peninsula."
While the 77th lay in the works before Petersburg a singular incident occurred, which is thus related by Dr. George T. Stevens in the book already once referred to. "On the 22d (of June) Colonel Bidwell's brigade occupied the front line of rifle pits. The sun was shin- ing brightly, and our men, unprotected by shelter, were striving to pass the time with as little discomfort as possible. A group of men of the 77th were behind the breastwork, stretched out upon the sand, resting upon their elbows and amusing each other with jokes, when a shell came shrieking into their midst. Its ex- plosion threw them in every direction. One went high in the air and fell twenty feet from the spot where he was lying when the shell exploded. Strange to tell, not a man was killed, yet three had each a leg crushed to jelly, and two others were seriously wounded. The three whose legs were crushed were Sergeant James Barues, James Lawrence, and James Allen, of Company A." Two of these men, James Barnes and James Law- rence, came from Westport, and another one of our men, Moses Tatro, was injured at the same time, being wounded in the hand by a fragment of the shell. Dr. Stevens tells how in thirty minutes' time from the be-
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ginning of the operation each of these Jameses had a leg amputated just above the knee, had the stumps dressed, and were loaded in to an ambulance and taken to the hospital at City Point. From there they were removed to Washington, where they received much at- tention from visitors who had heard the strange story. All lived to return to Essex county, and were often al- luded to as "the three one-legged Jims."
When Gen. Early threatened Washington the Sixth Corps, to which the 77th was attached, was sent to op- pose him. "On the 12th of July our brigade made a charge on the enemy at Fort Stevens, in which every commanding officer of regiments was either killed or wounded. President Lincoln from the ramparts of Fort Stevens (one of the defensive works of Washington) witnessed the charge, it being the only battle of the war which was fought under his eye. The battle decided Gen. Early that the time to capture Washington had passed, and he retreated to the Shenandoah valley, where we followed him under the command of Gen. Sheridan, there to clear him out of the valley by the battles of Winchester, Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek."
At the battle of Winchester, the 77th occupied ground near the ruins of an old church which was surrounded by graves. One of these graves, covered with a plain marble tablet, broken across, was that of Gen. Daniel Morgan, the dashing Revolutionary commander who led his company of Virginia sharp-shooters to Boston to offer their services to Washington, and who took such a brilliant part in the battles of Saratoga. Coukt
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he have sat up and looked around him., and seen the banner of the 77th, with its painted picture of the sur- render of Burgoyne, what would he have thought of the Bemis Heights Battalion !
It was the battle of Cedar Creek which was begun by an attack from the Confederates with "Sheridan twenty miles away," as is told in the stirring poem by Read, so often declaimed by school boys, beginning.
"Up from the south at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay."
but when Sheridan arrived upon the field, the Second Division, to which the 77th belonged, was the only one in the whole army which retained its perfect formation. It lay at the extreme left of the infantry line of battle. So when a Westport boy comes to the lines,-
"The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, then the retreating troops," --
he may think to himself that although the men of the 77th were there at that crucial moment, they were not retreating, and that when the black horse covered "with foam and with dust," came galloping up, bringing Sher- idan
"all the way
From Winchester down to save the day. "-
the Westport men did not need to be rallied, for they had not scattered.
In the engagement which followed the arrival of Sher- idan upon the battle-field, Brigadier-General Bidwell was killed, and the captain of our Company A, Captain George S. Orr, (who had taken the place of Captain Arnold upon the resignation of the latter, lost an arur
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from the explosion of the same shell which killed the General. Hiram Burt was killed at this time. The death of General Bidwell loft Colonel French of the 77th in command of the brigade.
The Fifth New York Cavalry, with some Westport men in Company H, fought at the left of the 77th in the Shenandoah valley.
On the 9th of December the Sixth Corps left the val- ley, and returned to the works before Petersburg. There they lay all winter. On the 2nd of April, 1865, the corps made a brilliant charge and captured the works in front of them. the 49th N. Y. and the 77th N. Y. forming the point of the wedge that broke the Con- federate line, and compelled the evacuation of Rich- mond and Petersburgh by Gen. Lee. In this charge the senior officers of the battalion were wounded, and Major C. E. Stevens left in command. For the remain- der of the campaign, which lasted only a few weeks longer, he was in command of his battalion.
Both General Grant and General Meade spoke in the highest terms of praise of the charge of the Sixth Corps at Petersburg, when the flag of the 77th was the first on the enemy's works. After this came the pursuit of Lee, with the fight at Sailor's Creek, where the corps captured Gen. Ewell, and enabled Gen. Caster with: his cavalry to capture between thirty and forty rebel Hags. "Then on to Appomattox to see the sur- render of Gen. Lee. Then the return to Washington and the grand review by President Johnson, after which the regiment was mastered out of the service of
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