I have wondered if the boys and girls of today
would be interested in hearing of those other boys
and girls who lived through Civil War times.
When Sumter was fired upon, we were all excited
and indignant, but it did not seem to be our war
until 1862, when
Charles Granger, whose school we
were attending in Mitchell, was commissioned to
raise a company, which was called "Company K." Among
those enlisting were several of our fellow students
- then it was our war.
Of the younger set, of Mitchell county boys whom
I knew best was
Henry Sweney, not yet seventeen,
Arthur Clyde, older brother of our Judge Clyde,
Del
Carter and
"Aus" White of Brownville. Two years
later John Prime, of Mitchell, still lacking several
months of the eligible age (17), enlisted and was
placed in Co. "K." He afterward enlisted in the
Spanish-American War, was sent to the Philippines
and received a commission as major from President
McKinley.
It was wonderful, the importance these enlisted
boys took on in our eyes. Here-to-fore we thought it
more desirable to be escorted by real, grown-up men
-- all this was changed, however, we were proud to
have these boys carry our books and escort us to and
from school, church or societies -- they were
already hero's in our eyes. Our games hereafter were
of a military nature. There could be no sham
battles, for no one could be found who would take
the Rebel side. The girls stood willing "breast
works" from behind which the new soldiers hurled
their deadly missiles of snow at the invisible "Rebs."
I doubt not that patriotism burned as hotly under
the jackets of our boy friends. We, however, had no
way of showing it save by wearing rosettes of red,
white and blue ribbon, "Garibaldi" waists, "Zouave"
jackets and a dinky little straw cap with a broad
visor and crossed rifles in front. These gave us
quite a military appearance. There were some of the
girls, however, daughters of southern sympathizers,
("Copperheads"), who would not wear these emblems,
and were ostracized from all clubs, societies and
cliques. Their name was "Anathema".
Then there were "rally" meetings, which I am sure
would have been called "pep" meetings had that word
been invented then. There were drillings, and there
was a barbecue. The meat of the barbecue was almost
uneatable, as at the present time -- raw or
scorched, and liberally sprinkled with dust and
ashes on the outside, and raw beneath. But it was a
(literal) burnt offering to the god of war, and so
we partook of it.
And so, amid feasting, hand-shaking and some
tears, the boys went away to war, and the girls home
to be father's "boys" and fill the brothers' place
the best they could. My older sisters were married
or teaching, so it fell to my lot to be "second
maid" to mother, and general chore-boy for father: I
drove the cows to water, fed the pigs and helped to
haul the wood. As a chopper I was not a success,
though father said, encouragingly, that after I had
learned to strike twice in the same place, he was
sure I would do well.
The women held meetings in the school house, or
at various homes, and rolled bandages, scraped lint
or knitted socks. Canning had not then been
discovered, but they dried fruits and vegetables.
They also made many articles to be sold at fairs or
put in "grab-bags," all to be sold for the benefit
of the soldiers.
Prices soared as in the time of the World War.
Our grocer at Brownville doled out sugar and tea by
the ounce that all might have a taste. Many used
'prairie tea,' a concoction made from a weed growing
on the prairies. All drank coffee made from roasted
barley or chicory, for the "boys" must have the real
coffee. It required ten yards of calico (print), at
fifty cents per yard, to make a dress, as six widths
must go into the skirt - fancy, six widths of print
gathered into a twenty-two or twenty-four inch
waist! And this paid for with eggs at five cents the
dozen, would mean one hundred dozen eggs.
Woman's only extravagance was her hoop-skirt,
which had reached its greatest circumference. A
ball-room at this time was a thing to remember. The
skirts rose and fell, floated and billowed to the
strains of music like nothing so much as a circus
tent in a high wind. But withal there was not such a
generous display of hosiery as in the present
ball-room.
Many letters were received from our boys who were
anxious for letters from home, and as I read those
old letters now, I can but wonder at the bravery,
the stoicism shown by these young, tenderly reared
boys. No word of complaint, of hardship endured, of
long marches with sore and bleeding feet, of poor
food, and the frequent sleeping in wet blankets on
the cold ground -- if any complaint was made it was
of the inactivity. Not one of those boys was "too
proud to fight" but longed to be in the midst of the
fray. Sometimes we received letters from boys we had
never seen. They were sometimes illiterate, but
always respectful. Our names had been given them by
one of our boys. We took that as an introduction, a
guarantee of their character -- whoever they were,
they were helping save the Union, we owed them
something. We are glad that we always showed the
letters to mother, and always answered them. They
could not harm us and we might help them -- and here
I smile at the good advice we squandered (probably)
on those boys. We were sure our words carried
wisdom.
Our own brother and our sister's husband, who
were in the Iowa cavalry, had been sent to protect
the western frontier. One dark day as mother sat
reading the two weeks old paper, printed at
Julesburg, Colo., she felt a heavy hand grasp her
shoulder, and looking up she saw the white face of
our sister, who had been reading over her shoulder
and saw the name of her husband in the list of
"killed," and an article headed "Walter B. Talcott
killed while trying to save a comrade." A party of
men had been sent from the fort to drive off a band
of Indians, but the Indians being reinforced, turned
upon them, driving them back to the fort. They had
nearly reached their goal, when Walter saw a comrade
whose horse had fallen upon him, and not thinking of
himself, leaped from his horse and went to help his
friend. Both were killed. Then mother said "greater
love than this hath no man that he lay down his life
for his friend." But ours was not the only house of
mourning -- all over the land, both north and south,
were mothers mourning for their sons and like Rachel
of old, "refusing to be comforted because they were
not."
Many private schooners passed our place, fleeing
from the Indians, uprising in the states west of us.
New Ulm a little town in Minnesota, had been
literally wiped out, the men killed, the women often
met a worse fate, little children killed or taken
prisoners, and the houses burned down. Some small
bands of Indians came to us for food. The leader
would place his hand on his heart and say "Me no bad
Injun - me Winnebago." We always fed them but never
trusted them, and were glad to see them disappear
beyond the horizon.
Many years ago, while visiting in St. Paul, I was
made curious by often seeing on the street a fine
looking woman, and always a few feet behind pacing
with a stately tread came a large handsome Indian
woman. She was always dressed in black silk, with a
fringed silk shawl over her head, reaching to her
knees. I learned their story. At the time of the
massacre at New Ulm the white woman was a tiny babe.
The Indian woman, who was of the raiding party, took
a fancy to her and claimed her for her own. When the
girl was seven years old, a clue was obtained, the
child found and claimed by her relatives, but the
strongest affection existed between the two. When
the girl had grown to womanhood and married, she
furnished a room for her foster mother, and tried to
induce her to live with her always, but the woman's
nomadic nature could not be happy in civilization.
She would stay with her perhaps months, then would
carefully fold her shawl and silken garb, place it
in a drawer, don her Indian dress and steal forth at
night, only to appear as mysteriously on a future
visit.
One hot day in harvest father suffered a severe
sun stroke; He must have a doctor. There were no
phones or cars at that time. The neighbors' boys
were all gone to war, so it was decided that I
should ride to Osage, twelve miles away, and drive
back with Dr. S. B. Chase, our good family
physician; We had no side-saddles and at that time
no modest girl would ride cross-saddle, and no
modest girl must ride without a riding skirt to
conceal her feet. But mother called them "death
traps" and said I should not wear mine, "Old Jin"
was selected as the safest horse in the stables -- a
blanket was strapped on her back, with a loop for
the foot, and I, perched on one side like an
acrobatic bareback rider, was ready for my journey.
Like Loch invar of school book fame, "I rode all
unarmed and I rode alone." I remember how I gloated
over the beauty spread out before me. The little
knolls were blue as the summer sky with the prairie
violet, interspersed with wild purple crocus. On the
lower land were fringed gentians, both blue and
white. Both pink and yellow lady slippers grew in
abundance. On the river banks were blue and scarlet
lobelia and yellow cowslips. Nearly all of these
wild flowers have, by encroaching civilization and
ruthless hands, become extinct in Mitchell county.
But I must not linger, for Old Jin also lingers
and gets many stolen bites from the lush grass
growing by the road side. The bridge across the
Little Cedar was gone because of recent freshets
[high water or flooding], but it was easy in the
bright sunlight to see the diagonal ford.
When I arrived in Osage I found the good doctor
himself sick, so the best he could do was give me
medicine for father. I was tired and hungry -- the
square-fronted restaurants were also saloons; the
hotel no better. I must not go there, so tired and
hungry, I turned away. One seeing our neat, pretty
little town of today could hardly believe that it
grew from such an ugly hamlet. The buildings were
unpainted, no trees, no sidewalks, the unpaved road
had been churned to a quaking mire by the impatient
feet of fly-harassed horses tied in front of the
saloons. It was indeed an ugly place.
Leaving Osage I took the wrong road. After
following many side roads, I came to the old Harlow
Gray place - here I stopped to inquire my way. The
family was at supper - they all came to the door,
eyeing me suspiciously. I believe they thought me a
deserter from the army or a fugitive from justice. I
smiled to myself to think any sane person would try
to make a get away on old Jin. They gave me such
explicit directions that I "erred not" and got
started on the right road. The bright moon cast
weird shadows across the road and old Jin stepped
over them gingerly. The silence seemed awful. I
tried to sing but my small voice in that awful
expanse of silence made the silence unbearable. A
white horse rose slowly from the roadside. It seemed
to me there never was such a large white horse
outside of Revelations. Old Jin shied to the side of
the road almost unseating me, which indeed would
have been a catastrophe, as I could not mount from
the ground, and there was no fence, boulder or stump
in sight. I was relieved to see the lights of Burr
Oak. A revival meeting was in progress, and as I
stopped a moment, I saw a man whom I knew, pacing
the aisle, swinging his arms and beating his breast
like a demented gorilla; all the time shouting,
"Come ye sinners, and go with me to glory." As the
"sinners" all remained seated, I believe they
thought with me that it was safer to go alone and
take my chances. I rode on and the last I heard were
strains of the cheerful old hymn, "Hark, from the
Tombs a Doleful Sound."
When we reached Little Cedar, the trees shut out
the moonlight and darkness closed down upon us like
a mantle. The owls questioned, "Who? Who?" and
although we knew their voices, we were scared at
their uncanny persistence. The ford at the Little
Cedar, which was' easy by the bright sunlight, was
now as black as the River Styx. I could only draw up
my feet, clasp my horse's neck, and trust to her
wisdom, and she did not fail me. It was with an
inward prayer of thanksgiving that I felt her
clamber up the bank on the farther side. As the moon
struggled through the foliage, the trees took on
fantastic shapes. A tall stump by the roadside shone
brightly with phosphorus, and as I cut it with my
whip it seemed to spit fire at me like a thing of
evil. When I was two miles from home a prairie wolf
appeared, and ran sociably a few paces ahead of me.
When within a quarter of a mile from home it
disappeared in the tall grass, and I found mother
watching for me, worrying, as mothers will. A half
hour later father had taken the medicine and was
resting quietly. I had eaten a bowl of bread and
cream, and was resting happily in my bed. Nothing
was heard but the munching of well earned ears of
corn by Old Jin.
I believe the enemy most-dreaded by us was
prairie fire. Some one would give the alarm, we
would look out and see creeping up from the south a
sinuous line of fire, miles long. Then every able
bodied man, woman and child would seize a pail of
water and a grain sack and set forth to whip it out.
But once it did not creep upon us. The wind blew a
gale, and the flames fairly leaped upon us, seeming
to meet the sky overhead. It had its way with us,
taking everything but the house and the livestock. A
year's supply of hay, stables, machinery and fences
all gone in a shorter time than it takes to tell it.
I remember that the horses refused to leave the
already burning stables until their heads were
muffled in blankets.
All this time we were getting frequent letters
from our boys at the front. Father had secured a
post office, which was opened at our home. It was
named Nelson (after father), and has been
discontinued for many years. A stage coach
flourished up to our front door, the horses gave a
compulsory plunge and the driver, George Duryea,
jumped from the seat and dragged a large leather
mail pouch into the house. Father took it and
emptied the contents on to the floor, where he and
mother (who was deputy) proceeded to sort the mail.
We stood, our eyes eagerly scanning the pile, and I
am sure at this late day Uncle Sam will not
prosecute us for "meddling" with the U.S. mails. I
confess that if we saw a letter bearing our name, we
took matters into our own hands, and "sorted" it
ourselves. Brave letters they were, but with not
much that we were eager to hear. They were filled
with boyish witticisms -- one had attended a three
course banquet with hardtack as the "piece de
resistance." Another made a gibe at the sanitary
commission for sending them "desecrated" vegetables.
Desecrated vegetables were a kind of vegetable soup,
or hash used in soup. It was sent in barrels, and
usually was fermented when it arrived. They had
found a bed of oysters, which they could eat with
impunity, "or anything else they could get hold of."
Orders had come to all "in tents and pup houses," I
believe "pup tents" were individual tents. We always
answered promptly, that our letters might be
received before they should move on.
Almost all letters bore testimony to the love and
reverence which they bore for "Cap Granger" -- and I
am sure that the fathers and mothers rested easier
to know that their boys were safe-guarded by such a
clean, big hearted man. Capt. Granger of Company K.,
after his return, practiced law in Des Moines,
serving several years as Judge of the Supreme Court.
He spent his declining years in Long Beach, Cal.
where I think he died.
One dark day in July came the sad news that he
whose life I had promised to share had lost his
right arm at the battle of Old Town Creek. His
brother and another comrade had been detailed to
carry him from the field to an ambulance. In the
ambulance, lying face to face with him was a rebel
lad who had lost his left arm in the same battle. Of
that awful ride in the southern hot sun, over
jolting corduroy roads, I cannot bear to speak;
wounded, sick almost unto death, with nothing to
alleviate his suffering but the loving and devoted
care of a younger brother. He was carried to Gayoso
hospital in Memphis. Then did the good mother leave
the father, the farm and two younger brothers, in
the care of a young daughter, and hurry to minister
to her suffering boy. The minnie ball that had taken
his arm, lodged in his thigh bone, making a bad
wound, which would not heal. This ball was removed
two years later by Dr. S. B. Chase and Dr. Turner,
both of Osage. He lay in the hospital for a year,
and was brought home by
Fred Penney, of Stacyville.
He was by that time so emaciated that Fred could
carry him from the train to the station. He would
give me back my promise, but a thousand times no --
all the more, "I loved him for the dangers he had
passed, and he loved me that I did not pity them."
It seems strange, even to me, that I can speak so
impersonally of so personal a matter -- but it was
so long ago, almost it seems as though I am writing
of another girl.
He held the office of county treasurer for eight
years, being moved with the treasurer's books from
Mitchell to Osage, when an injunction was placed on
the books.
The Mitchell county boys of Company K, all came
back, and said Col. Sweney, proudly, "they all made
good." Not many of the gray-haired boys are left,
but when they meet they like to go over the old days
and tell anecdotes, both sad and amusing. Colonel
Sweney told one of the latter, it was of
Bart
Hutchins, a long time resident of Osage. He said a
braver soldier than Bart never lived, but because of
his good nature and drollery the boys always tried
"getting one" on Bart, One morning as they were at
mess call, the call to battle came. Bart had just
sweetened his black coffee with the still blacker
molasses -- it looked good to Bart, and he did not
want to leave it, so pouring the water from his
canteen, he emptied the coffee in. During the battle
he sank to the ground groaning, "God Boys, I'm
shot," They looked him over, but could find no
wound. A ball had pierced the canteen, the impact of
the ball and the warm coffee running down his leg
made him think that he was wounded and his life
blood ebbing away. Bart was never to hear the last
of that.
Captain Granger told one on
Del Carter of
Brownville. He said Del, on account of his extreme
youth and happy-go-lucky disposition, was a great
favorite in the company. He was an enthusiastic
fighter, would fairly eat bullets, but like all
growing boys, he wanted sleep. In season and out of
season he would sleep. One night Captain Granger was
making the rounds to see that all was safe, when he
came upon Del, who was supposed to be on picket
duty, on his face with his gun under him, fast
asleep. Thinking to scare him and give him a lesson,
Captain Granger made the best imitation of a rebel
yell that he could muster and jumped astride his
back. Del squirmed over and rubbed his eyes and said
reproachfully, "Oh, hell, Cap, get off."
I cannot close this paper without paying tribute
to another comrade, who was always first at the side
of a sick or wounded boy. He was a kind of "Robin
Hood," who would take from those who had plenty, to
give to one who needed. He would cheerfully and I
believe conscientiously confiscate a chicken, a
pillow and even a feather-bed to add to the comfort
of a comrade, and many a dainty bit of food from a
southern kitchen found its way to a hungry boy. And
he would watch, sleepless the whole night through
beside a wounded comrade. This is my belated tribute
to John B. Ryndes. His faults were many, but his
heart was big enough to take in all suffering
humanity, be it soldier or civilian. -- "Requiescat
in pace."
Reproduced with the approval of the Mitchell
County Historical Society; from THE STORY OF
MITCHELL COUNTY 1851-1973.
Transcribed in August
2002 by: Neal Du Shane
