It's been a long time between posts on the blog here as a lot of job responsibilities have taken my time, but I can't help but post up a short comment today.

Today is actually the 150th anniversary of the day that Edwin Graves died. On this day in 1864 he died in Fredericksburg, Virginia, two weeks after he was wounded on the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness and had his leg amputated shortly thereafter.

I had the opportunity to visit the Wilderness two weeks ago, on the 150th anniversary of the battle itself. The photo I have attached to this post is a photo of the monument to General James Wadsworth, the Union commander who rallied Graves's regiment, the 37th Massachusetts, to make a countercharge against advancing Confederates on the Orange Plank Road just west of the Brock Road, at the Wilderness battlefield. Wadsworth was mortally wounded in the vicinity of the monument, and most likely Edwin Graves was mortally wounded near this spot as well.

This weekend the Hatfield (Massachusetts) Historical Society will hold a special commemoration of Hatfield's Civil War dead on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day. We're very much looking forward to being present and meeting both other Hatfield Civil War descendants and today's Hatfielders. Very special thanks to Kathy Gow for all you have done not make this happen.

Sergeant Edwin Graves

37th Massachusetts Regiment 

Monday, January 28, 2013

Edwin Graves and the Formation of Company F, 

37th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment 

This month's 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation prompts me to write a little about how Edwin Graves finally came to enlist and go off to fight in the Civil War.

The immediate reason for Edwin's enlistment was the hasty, near-panicky response of the Northern states to the failure of General George McClellan's Peninsular campaign in Virginia, and his withdrawal from Virginia by July 1, 1862. Any hope that the war would come to a speedy conclusion was now gone. By July 2 President Lincoln called on the North to raise 300,000 new troops. Hatfield had its quota to fill, and it filled the quota with calls to the anti-slavery sentiments of Hatfield citizens.

The troops raised in Hampshire County would become part of the new 34th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, shortly thereafter to be renamed the 37th Massachusetts Regiment. At the Amherst College commencement on July 6th (they had a late commencement back then) graduating senior Mason Tyler Whiting approached Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew (who was present as a graduation speaker) and asked for Andrew's authorization to raise a company within the new regiment. Governor Andrew quickly agreed, and young Whiting quickly set out to raise troops for the company.

I have not yet been able to firmly establish how Edwin Graves and a number of Hatfield men came to form the nucleus of Whiting's company. However, Whiting was the son of longtime Amherst College professor William Seymour Tyler, and it is likely that Edwin had been a student of Professor Tyler during the three years in the early 1840s when Edwin was an Amherst student. (Edwin dropped out of Amherst in 1844, perhaps one semester shy of graduation, in order to marry Ursula Billings Moody of  South Amherst and go off to what I suspect was a decade-long career as a railroad surveyor: more about that another time !). It is possible that Mason Tyler looked Edwin Graves up when he went over to Hatfield and recruited Edwin as both a soldier and as a recruiter.

On July 14 Hatfield called a town meeting to vote support for raising the town's quota for the new regiment, a quota of 16 men. The Hatfield history written by Wells and Wells reports that "spirited addresses were made by Rev. J.M. Greene, Rev. J.L. Morton, George W. Hubbard and
Edwin Graves. "

Four nights later, on Friday, July 18 a second town meeting was held to enlist the volunteers. According to the Hampshire Gazette of July 22, "after a few preliminary remarks by the chairman (George W. Hubbard), a committee of two was appointed to extend an invitation to Rev. Mr. Greene to address the meeting. He being absent from town, Mr. James Crafts of Whately was called upon to address the people."

Crafts explained that he had not come expecting to speak but had come to "get a little inspiration to infuse into the hearts of his people" back in Whately. Crafts "spoke of his boyhood days, when his father used to cover up the coals in the old fire place when retiring to rest, and in the morning would call him to go to the neighbors to get some fire, and now the patriotism in his native town was dying out and he had come to Hatfield to procure some fire, some real live coals, to awaken his fellow citizens to a sense of their duty. "

The Reverend J.L. Morton followed Crafts with a speech to the crowd, and was followed by the late-arriving Reverend John M. Greene. Greene "came forward, filled to overflowing with patriotism, and offered his services as chaplain, and said he would shoulder a musket if necessary. Mr. Greene spoke for about an hour and was frequently applauded. He showed himself a patriot, a true American."

Then, "Mr. Edwin Graves was called for, and after making a few remarks presented a United States enlistment roll and amid the most deafening applause signed his name thereto. He then called upon others to follow his example, and before 12 o'clock the call was responded to by sixteen good men and true - the town's entire quota. "

In his sermon at the Congregational Church the following Sunday, the Reverend Greene directed himself to the new enlistees, preaching from the scriptural text "be strong and of good courage, and I will be with thee."  The Gazette reported that "slavery was briefly but pointedly alluded to as being the prime cause of the rebellion, which has been undermining the very foundation of our government, suffering the best interests of the nation, and tending to destroy public institutions of learning, and to do away with civil liberty and freedom, and those who go to do battle for our country, right and liberty, should have in mind that their work is but partly finished unless this blighting curse of our nation is crushed and destroyed."

The Hatfield volunteers marched off to camp in Pittsfield on August first. According to Wells and Wells they marched off "singing, 'We are coming, Father Abraham, with three hundred thousand strong.'"

In Pittsfield Edwin Graves was made a sergeant in Mason Tyler's company, Company F of the new Massachusetts 37th. He became the orderly sergeant, in charge of much of the details of camp life. His Hatfield friend John Field became the company's flag bearer.

Back in Hatfield Edwin's sister Fanny was galvanized by the war and by Edwin's service. With the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in January (1863) she began a campaign to win appointment as a teacher of freed slaves in Union-held territory in the South. More on that shortly.....

Fall 1861

My thanks to Kathie Gow for the encouragement to jump back into this blog !  I'd be thrilled to hear from anyone else in and around Hatfield, or anywhere else, who can shed some light on the history of Hatfield in the Civil War.   

By the fall of 1861 Edwin Graves's immediate family was not yet in the fight, but a number of Hatfield men certainly were. Members of militia units throughout the state had responded to the first call to arms after the firing on Fort Sumter. Hatfield volunteers were quickly incorporated into the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment: the recruits included several familiar Hatfield and Hampshire County names, including two Warners and one Abbott, Bardwell, Evans, Harris, and Morton. A special town meeting was convened on May 6th "to act on matters relating to the war" (according to William Schouler's 1871 "History of Massachusetts in the Civil War"), mostly to raise support for the members of the Massachusetts 10th.

A committee of seven was appointed to arrange the financing of support for Hatfield soldiers and their families. The committee included George W. Hubbard, well on his way from youth as a Hatfield farmer, to attorney, to founding treasurer of Smith College and president of the Smith Charities, to founder of the Hampshire Mutual Life Insurance Company. The committee was "authorized to borrow on behalf of the town not exceeding five thousand dollars, to be expended by them as they might deem expedient 'on such soldiers from this town and their families as shall be mustered into the United States service, during the continuance of the present war.' It was also voted to furnish each volunteer with a uniform, if necessary, and a sufficient amount of money to make his monthly pay twenty-six dollars. 'Voted that the town will provide liberally for the families as such that volunteer.' "

"After giving three cheers for the star-spangled banner the meeting adjourned for two weeks. "

Two weeks later, on May 20th the town instructed the committee to pay each volunteer in the Tenth regiment for time spent in drilling - presumably time spent in drilling locally, before the regiment was formally organized. The regiment would be organized in Springfield in June, and later shipped off to Washington to the accompaniment of the Hatfield Brass Band.

As time permits I continue to do some research into the local militias and their absorption into the Civil War U.S. Army.  As it happens the Edwin Graves family had something of a distinguished history with the Hatfield militia, although I have no evidence as yet to suggest how active Edwin himself was in the militia. Edwin's great-grandfather Perez Graves had been a captain of the Hatfield militia and had led a group of Hatfield militiamen in response to the Lexington and Concord Alarm in April 1775. (Perez and the troop got as far as Ware before learning that the British had been repulsed and there was no need to go further.) Perez also served as a member of the Board of Selectmen and of the Hatfield Committee of Correspondence during the Revolution. Edwin's father Thaddeus apparently also served as a captain of the militia in Hatfield, and was known as Captain Thaddeus before he died in 1831 at the age of 37 when Edwin was seven.

Hatfield selectmen would continue to raise funds for Hatfield soldiers and their families throughout the war. Much of the expense was reimbursed by the state at various points, but it is clear from the historical sources that raising and distributing support to soldiers and families was a major preoccupation for the town's leaders. These days many Massachusetts towns have held police, firefighter and other municipal jobs open for service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, as they are required to do,and local veterans agents serve returning veterans. But it is difficult to imagine any town officials being drawn into the war effort in quite the way that Hatfield's leaders were beginning in the spring of 1861.     
      

The Firing on Fort Sumter: Hatfield's First Casualty

Today was the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter. Fanny Graves Hubbard remembered how the news was greeted in Hatfield, and another foreshadowing of what was to come.

"When news came of firing on Fort Sumter, S.C., because the government would not give it over to the South, it caused great excitement and they, our people, decided to raise a new flag staff on the Hill near the school with a new flag.

" A great crowd assembled and there was firing of a cannon to celebrate. There was an accident, the cannon burst and Erastus Billings was hit on his leg. He was carried into a nearby house and a doctor summoned. Everyone was sobered,  it all came so unexpected. The leg had to be amputated. It was below the knee and he had a false leg, but always walked a little lame. He was young, in his early twenties, but it prevented his taking part in the activities or later going to the war with his brother."

Hatfield On The Eve of Civil War

This is a blog inspired by the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and the experience of my great-great-grandparents, Edwin and Ursula Graves, and their family and neighbors in Hatfield, Massachusetts. 

Some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s my great-grandmother, Fanny Louisa Graves Hubbard, sat down at her kitchen table to write a short memoir. Grammy Hubbard, as she was known to her grandchildren, had been inspired by "Grandmother Brown's 100 Year History," the memoir of an Ohio woman of Yankee descent who became a pioneer settler in Iowa. "After reading Grandmother Brown's hundred years story, I thought my grandchildren would like to have a little of my history," wrote Fanny.

Fanny's memoir looked back over 80 years but her most vivid memories were of the years when she was a young girl, the years leading up to and including the Civil War. Fanny was only 9 years old in the spring of 1861, but her memories remained strong decades later, more than likely because much of what happened in those years would be told and retold by family members in years to come.

Fanny's memory of home, on the eve of Fort Sumter:

" The Connecticut River at its yearly over flow, waters the adjacent meadows and does damage if it comes too high. Its waters have washed away many acres of good land on the Hatfield side and let not a few on the Hadley side. Of late years some of the bank has been 'rip rapped' and a dyke built for the protection of Hatfield street.

" When I was a girl nothing could stop it's rise. A heavy rain with melting snow was apt to start the water rising.

"The high water mark each spring was an excitement to us children, but it must have been in 1861 that the big flood came. We watched the water come up the meadow road, running in often to tell how far or how near it is now. The cow and pig had been taken to Uncle Rufus because their barn stood a little higher. The cellar had to be cleared, as water was pouring in from the soaked ground. When it was time to milk, father came with a boat and we children stepped off the stone step at the front door into the boat. I held baby George[Fanny's younger brother] in my lap and so we went for the milk, but the water came no higher.

" That flood did lots of damage, the current was swift and as the water subsided, it sheared two great holes in the street near our house. Those were the days of dirt roads, it couldn't do so now with the macadam."