Wisconsin Public Television University Place History Sandwiched In  Leslie Bellais, "Civil War Memories and Mementos"  April 26, 2011   cc >> Catherine VanSusteren: Hello. I'd like to welcome our speaker for today at our museum's History Sandwiched In program. Our speaker is Leslie Bellais. She is our curator for costume and textiles for the State Historical Society. And today she will be giving a program that will take a little closer look and examine the various artifacts that are on exhibit now on the first floor of the museum. And you can also feel free to take a look at those artifacts as you leave after the program today. So please join me in welcoming Leslie Bellais. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] >> Leslie Bellais: Hello. I told everyone there would be three people here. 

[LAUGHTER] And I was wrong, which is nice. Something nice to be wrong on. What I'm going to do is I put this exhibit together that you can see out here, and as I was putting it together we were merely looking at broad themes but there were some artifacts I thought had these really powerful stories that I really wanted to share the whole story or more of the story and tell you more about what was going on behind them. So that's what I'm going to do today is I've picked a few objects that I just think are just really cool. And they're mainly cool because of what they tell us about the Civil War, what they tell us about the person who used them, or what they, as a starting point to learn more about that person. And I just thought you'd like to learn more about some of these objects. So I'm going to start with the first one. Do you know who Louis P Harvey is? Louis Powell Harvey? You do. He was governor of Wisconsin. [INAUDIBLE] He was Cordelia Harvey's husband, if you know who Cordelia Harvey is. 

He's more famous as that sometimes. But he was the governor of Wisconsin for a couple months, actually. And this is the knife that tells the story of his death. And that's what I wanted to talk about today. This is a pen knife that was found on his body, and I'll tell you the story in just a moment, but the way they knew it was his body was because you can see the initials right here, LPH, are engraved on it. So they knew they had the right person. Now, Harvey was born in Connecticut in 1820, came to Wisconsin in 1841, and started as a newspaper editor. And he was writing a Whig paper which is sort of a precursor to the republicans. And then he moved to Clinton in Rock County and opened a store. But the Whig paper really got him into politics, and so in November of 1861 he was elected governor of Wisconsin. 

He was inaugurated in March. And so the war is underway at this point. And on April 6th and 7th the Wisconsin troops participate in the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing and Shiloh. And I'm just going to, and there he is a few years before he became governor and there's the Pittsburgh Landing. And if you know his story, you know what's coming, actually. But what happens is he decides, he's kind of an unusual guy and he decides that he wants to collect materials to take down to the soldiers and also to thank them for their participation, especially the wounded soldiers. And so he makes a personal trip down to Tennessee, which is where Pittsburgh Landing is, to meet with the soldiers and he does for several days. And they're very excited about meeting the governor and feel very honored that he's there. On the day he's supposed to go back, which was April 19th, in the evening, he was on the steamer the Dunleith and he was told, his party was told that they were going to have to move to the steamer the Minnehaha. And as the two boats come together they bump, and he takes a step forward, we believe, and falls into the water. 

Now at that moment, this is a group of doctors who are on board, and one of them immediately reaches out his cane and Harvey grabs it but pulls the cane out of his hand. So then another doctor, these are all Wisconsin doctors, jumped into the water and held on to the Minnehaha and told Harvey to hold on to him. But Harvey, by this point the current was very strong and he was swept under a nearby flatboat and was presumed dead at that point. So it's nighttime, they just had their governor drown, and they decide that they have to wait until the morning. And they start searching the next morning. However, it takes 14 days to find him. And, basically, what happens is a hospital corps detachment was send out to look for it and found him 65 miles from where he had actually drowned. Now, this is when we come to the knife. And there's two stories. There's a conflict in what actually happened there. 

And I don't really know what happened, but I can tell you what the stories are and I'm going to just put the knife back here so we can think about it. In the Milwaukee Journal in 1929 they did a story on this knife. And this is what they said happened: that the corps, the hospital corps came upon some Negro children playing upon the river bank and they stopped to watch them and one of the doctors with them, who was Dr. Samuel Bell, was startled to see in the hands of a little boy the silver pocket knife of the governor who had long been his life-long friend. The children told him the body had washed ashore and family members had buried it in a shallow grave. At this point his body was exhumed and returned to Wisconsin. Now Samuel Bell was a friend of his and kept the knife as a memento of his friendship and of the loss, and then when he die indeed 1913 his estate donated it to the Historical Society. However, the letter that came from the executor of the estate wrote that Harvey's body was found by some thieves who rifled it of everything of value, overlooking this little pocket knife however, which was found by Dr. Bell in a secret pocket. The initials on the knife told him that the remains belonged to Governor Harvey. But in any case, no matter what, we know this knife was on his corpse when it was found. It probably wasn't a very pleasant corpse at that point. 

But this survived and we feel it's a real honor to have this in the collection and be able to tell that story with this piece. It's probably the best piece to tell that story with. Now, his wife Cordelia Harvey went on to quite a lot of fame afterwards and that's another story. But I'm going to move on to another Wisconsinite. Her name is Eliza Wilson. She was from Menomonie. And she was a vivandiere during the Civil War for Company K, the 5th Wisconsin. And this is her dress jacket. And her dress jacket would have been worn, this is blue velvet and you can see it out on exhibit, it would have been worn with a red skirt with blue velvet bands around it, white bloomer pants, and a white hat with red, white, and blue feathers. So this was her dress uniform. 

But what I first started with is when I pulled this out is what is a vivandiere? I hadn't really heard of that word before. And that's probably what you're thinking. So let's look at vivandieres. They're first seen in the French army during the Napoleonic Wars. They were called cantinieres, and there's a cantiniere on the left. And their primary job was to participate with a regiment on campaigns in parades. They provided food and drink, they did laundry, and they nursed the ill and wounded. And they're usually depicted holding a canteen, which both of these women are. This is an envelope from the Civil War era showing a vivandiere helping a Zouave soldier. So they were particularly popular in the Crimean War. 

And that's first about when the Americans learned about them, but Americans were also very much influenced by French military practice. And if the French had vivandieres, they were going to have vivandieres. And so that's basically what we did. And Eliza's was a Zouave outfit and she did dress in a Zouave costume. Here's what they looked like in real life. We don't have a picture of Eliza as a vivandiere, but here are two Civil War ones. They were often known as daughters of the regiment, and they were usually daughters of the officers or of well-to-do men who were at the town where the company came from. And once on the road, the daughter of the regiment really kind of embodied to the soldiers the domestic world and the women they left behind, and they were usually treated with great respect. And her presence was supposed to add a refining quality or have a refining influence and help cheer up the troops. And we believe that's what Eliza did. 

So here's, the one on the left is Mary her name has several spellings. Here it's TP and this is a known one. She's in a basic, you can't tell but she is wearing bloomers. But you can see them in their dress uniforms. And this would have been similar to what Eliza would have worn. Every day she wore a very serviceable brown wool outfit, also a bloomer costume. This is Eliza. We don't have any pictures of her from the time that she was a vivandiere but I have a few afterwards. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1834. She came to Iowa when she was two, and then when she was 12 her father William Wilson decided to open a lumber business up in northern Wisconsin and founded Menomonie. 

And so he is considered fairly significant person of Menomonie. And in 1861, right after Abraham Lincoln called for troops, he helped form the Dunn County Pinery Rifles which later became 5th Wisconsin, Company K. Eliza was caught up in all this patriotism, and she was very eager to participate so she volunteered to go along with Company K. She provided all of her own equipment which included a maid. [LAUGHTER] She had a maid with her the whole time, I understand. And she also brought a buggy with, as one person wrote, an especially matched chestnut pair of horses. So she was probably living fairly comfortably compared to some of the others who went with her. Now, the 5th Wisconsin was part of the Iron Brigade, and it went over and fought and in Virginia. That was a pretty bloody place to be. And they fought in a number of wars, number of battles in the Peninsula Campaign between 1861 and 1862. 

And we don't know exactly when but by the string of 1862 a decision was made that to have a woman to worry about that the troops cared about in the midst of these battles was just too much. And so she was sent home. And we know that she's back by late June. Now, we do have a number of letters written by the 5th Wisconsin that mentioned her, and they all think very highly of her. One wrote that she goes about in bloomer costume, acts as a hospital assistant, and is a noble-hearted girl. Just so you know, at the time this is happening she's 27, 28. And the Madison Patriot, which was a newspaper at the time, said she is "fine, appearing intelligent, young lady. It is expected of her to assuage the thirst of the dying and wounded on the field of battle. She is regarded as a sort of guardian angel of the regiment." And another letter that was undated but had to be probably around this time period of August '61, wrote "Miss Wilson is a godsend. She is always cheerful and never seems to tire. 

Just the sight of her refreshes us and gives us courage." So it's kind of exciting to find out that, we knew we had this jacket in here but we didn't know what it was. And to go and do all this research and find out that she was a well-loved and well-respected person was kind of exciting. And then to also find pictures of her. She never married but she went and moved back with her father, and then in 1882 he gave her a farm outside of Eau Claire, where she moved to. And she ran it. She was the farmer of it, though she didn't actually do the labor, of course. And then at her death in 1902, the Menomonie's, William Evans GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic post, honored her by putting their flag at half mast. And they really considered her one of them even though she, vivandieres were never listed in the regiment, they were never formally part of a regiment and you won't find their name listed. So that's Eliza Wilson. And I want to look at probably one of the most famous people in the collection of people I have here and that's John Converse Starkweather. 

And we're going to look at his tokens of remembrance because he seemed to acquire a number of them. And if you go up to the exhibit, there's a whole section just on tokens of remembrance. And all these that you're seeing out here are mementos of the Civil War of people who lived through the Civil War and what they decided to save. Most of them are not on purpose. It's like a new testament that happened to be carried through the war or a cup or a blanket. Some of these are on purpose. And those we are calling tokens of remembrance when they are made for a specific person to honor them and their role during the war. Now, John C Converse was a brigadier general at the end, by the end of the war, not at the beginning but by the end. And this is a cane he gave to his father in January 1st, 1864, and it lists all of the major battles he fought in. And then at the very top it says Chickamauga with a date, September 19-21, 1863. 

And that's where he got his debil--, I won't even try it now, debilitating wound that kind of put him out of commission as an active officer. So he was recovering a few months later. He has this cane made in memory of, not in memory but in memory of his work and he gives it to his father. And it says on there from John to father. >> Is he from this area? That's why it's in Madison? >> He actually is from Milwaukee. Actually I'll go into that. He also got his own token of remembrance which is this silver pitcher and two matching goblets. It's engraved with the words "Presented to General John C Starkweather for gallantry and bravery in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 by his staff and officers of the 9th and 10th Indiana Cavalry and 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry and also by citizens of Pulaski, Tennessee" and it's dated August 17, 1864. Now, John Converse Starkweather was born in Cooperstown, New York. He studied law and in the mid-1850s came to Milwaukee to practice law and immediately afterwards formed the Milwaukee Light Guard. 

The Milwaukee Light Guard was a militia group. We didn't have much of a standing army before the Civil War, and basically most defense is handled by militia groups. What's interesting about this is he was very adamant that this was made exclusively of native-born patriots. He did not want any immigrants, especially Germans, in his militia. [LAUGHTER] Now when the war broke out, the Milwaukee Light Guard was the first group to volunteer, and they've offered their services to the Wisconsin governor, Alexander Randall at the time. And he was immediately made colonel of the 1st Wisconsin Infantry volunteers. So he went on, two years later, after his fighting in a number of battles and being actively involved in those battles, he saw a lot of action, he was made a brigadier general on July 17th, 1863. But he was wounded at the battle of Chickamauga in September of that year. Now these paintings are in our collection, and we actually own the coat that he is wearing in the militia Light Guard painting, which is also kind of exciting. Now this is him during the Civil War. 

This is the generals of the Iron Brigade, and he's the one sitting in the middle. So a few months after the Battle of Chickamauga he is incapacitated, and that's about the time he's giving his cane to his father. Now in the spring of 1864, so a few months later, he's assigned to defend the lines of communication from the east to the west and is headquartered at Pulaski, Tennessee, which at that point is a Union stronghold. Shortly, about a week or two after receiving that pitcher and those two goblets from the citizens of Pulaski and from his troops, Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Pulaski and kicked all the Union soldiers out. So he was in an uncomfortable position to have lost Pulaski, and he was looking for a place to go. So he wrote to General Philip Sheridan, who was about to head off for the Atlanta Campaign, and asked if he could join him. And Sheridan bluntly rejected the application. [LAUGHTER] So I was curious, why would he bluntly reject the application? So I did some more research and I found that according to ranking officers at Pulaski he was still slowly recovering from his wounds, he was suffering from depression, and the officers stated that he was drunk or had been for some time. So he didn't handle his, he had a little probably post-traumatic stress disorder going on there. [LAUGHTER] But in any case, Sheridan didn't want him and I think part of it was because he lost Pulaski. 

Now after the war he moved to Oconomowoc where farmed, and then in 1876 he moved to Washington, DC, where he returned to his lawyer practice and he died there in 1890. So that's General Starkweather. Now let's look at a little girl instead of some adults. And this is a dress that we have on exhibit. This is a refugee dress. It was made for her as she and her family fled south. They were northern refugees fleeing south, and they fled to Nacogdoches, Texas. Now, she was born in 1859 in St. Joseph, Missouri. And she does have a Wisconsin connection later in life, which is why we have the dress, but she was mainly a Missouri girl. And she was living in St. Joseph. 

And her father was James HR Cundiff who was a slave owner and the editor of an anti-Union newspaper in St. Joseph. And St. Joseph, that's him up in the corner there on the left, was, as one historian had written, a hotbed of political instability. And if you remember Missouri was a border state and it took a while to decide where it was going to go, and it did eventually go with the Union but it had a number of northern and southern sympathizers. And the Union army moved into St. Joseph and found themselves very tired of the escapades of a certain James HR Cundiff who did things like pull down the US flag from the post office, which he got jailed for briefly. So they asked him to shut down his paper in January of 1862, which he really had no choice in doing, and then left St. Joseph to join the First Missouri Cavalry as a lieutenant colonel. At that point he had a wife, he had a son, Carol, and a daughter, Cora, and they were still being harassed by northern sympathizers. So they decided to flee to Nacogdoches, Texas. And the picture in the center is supposed to be a confederate refugee camp near Vicksburg, Mississippi, which would be on the way to Nacogdoches, and it was captioned that this depicts women and children driven from their homes by predatory bands of northern soldiers. So you've just seen women and children and slave women are what you're seeing here. So that's how we know that this is a Confederate refugee camp and not a Union refugee camp. 

So no significant battles happened in Texas. It was a fairly safe place to flee to or to have safety in, but it did experience the deprivations of the war like the rest of the Confederate states, and one of those deprivations was having enough fabric. And so the family headed by Dr. James Harper Starr, who is pictured on the right here, turned their home into a textile workshop. And they turned their parlor into a spinning room, and they also moved a loom into there, which Mrs. Starr and her daughter Pamela knew how to operate and they spun fabric, or spun and wove fabric, and made rugged civilian garments for residents of Nacogdoches. And we believe that this is one of those rugged civilian garments. After the war, Cora moved about to St. Joseph. Her father reunited with the family until his death in the 1880s. And she was a school teacher. She also never married and her mother and her moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in the early 20th century, which is why the dress ended up here. And it was a donated, actually, by her much younger sister Hannah who called it a Civil War relic and told us some of the story that they had fled to Nacogdoches and that this was a refugee dress, so we do know that that is accurate. 

So I thought that was kind of, we were very pleased to find the whole story for this particular piece. I want to look at, we've been looking at some European Americans, so now let's look at some minorities here. And we'll start off with old Steve and his slave collar. He was rescued contraband. He was a Louisiana slave who escaped to the 4th Wisconsin Infantry who were camped at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And once in camp, the soldiers freed him of this collar that he was wearing at the time and he became war contraband. So the first thing I wanted to know is this concept of contraband was kind of interesting. And these were some cartoons taken off envelopes at the time, and I'll explain them in just a moment. Contraband started almost immediately after the war. Within a month of the war slaves began escaping from their slave owners to Union troops, to Union troop lines. 

And the Union troops did not know what to do with these people and at first just took them in, well first sent them back, actually. But Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe in Virginia decided that when three escaped slaves arrived there that he would not return them and instead issued this statement that says "you," the southerners, "say you have succeeded so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property." So since they're viewed as property by you and are helping you to build forts and other protective things, they can be claimed as war contraband. So then slaves got a hold of that idea pretty quickly, and what you're seeing in the bottom here is a slave owner saying, "Come back here you black rascal." He says, "Can't come back, no, sir, massa; this child's contraband." And he's running to Fort Monroe and the first place to actually have contraband. And this is gentleman is saying, "I's contraband." So it's like they knew that they were contraband and that was a good thing. It took about another three or four months for the secretary of the Navy, actually, to issued the directive that you couldn't treat contraband as slaves once they came into camp, that you had to pay them. And he set wages for the Navy, and then the army did so immediately afterwards. So that once you moved into camp that you didn't have to worry about still being a slave. You could actually make some money. They mainly were interested in men. 

They didn't know what to do with women and children and that was another story. But old Steve was one of these men who fled to one of these camps. This is not old Steve but it probably looks a lot like him. This is Wilson Chin, and he's wearing a slave collar. He's got on a leg brace, and he's got a number of whips at the bottom, slaves whips, and he's also branded on the forehead. So this was a photograph taken in New York City of this escaped slave from Louisiana and sold to northerners to raise money that was sent down south to educate freed slaves. But any case, what happened with old Steve was that in May of 1862 the 4th Wisconsin camped at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which is what you're seeing down here, and they sent a steamer across the river to the plantation of John Bird Jay to get fuel, which fuel would be wood at that point. And Jay had told his slaves to hide when the Yankees were there. They were not allowed to see the Yankees. But old Steve and another slave, Charlie, decided that they wanted to see what Yankees looked like. 

So they want down and took a look at them. They didn't interact with them too much. They just watched them, and then went back to work and didn't run away or did anything like that. But Jay got very upset with these two slaves for disobeying his rules. And he was also a very rabid secessionist and was just upset that the Yankees were taking his stuff to begin with, and he kind of took it out on old Steve and Charlie. And he did that by first he whipped them, and then he put them in handcuffs. He placed Steve in that slave collar. And that slave collar goes around your neck with the tube post behind your ears so that you can't move your head. He then locked them in stocks inside what was called a calaboose which was their term for a slave jail. They used the N word instead of slave. 

But despite this, old Steve especially was determined to get out of this. And he managed to actually escape with the slave collar on. He unhooked one of the handcuffs which is how he was able to escape. He was able to get Charlie out with him, and they took a canoe across the river to the Union camp at Baton Rouge. And the 4th Wisconsin Regiment left the soldiers unguarded that night, and they took charge of them. The first thing they did was remove his shackles. And they filed off a rivet on the slave collar, which is the one in the front, so that he could be freed of it. They described old Steve as a large powerful man, over six-feet tall and broad-shouldered, solidly built in proportion, almost a perfect specimen of physical development. He was around 50 at the time. So he was immediately put to work, he was introduced to the colonel of the infantry. 

He put him to work as a cook for Company I, and he immediately began to learn to read. That was his main concern and someone who wrote about this later said that "every moment old Steve could spare from his duties he spent in study getting help from one or another of the soldiers as he could, and he was already making rapid progress considering his opportunities." Then in the fall of '62, remember he came in June of '62, the Union army began forming African American units, army units, and he left cooking to enroll in the army, and then we don't know what happened to him after that. So this is, I think, a very powerful object to think of this being around your neck and that also has an interesting Wisconsin connection, and it's one of the most powerful pieces, I think, we have in the collection. And it tells a story of contraband which we don't talk about that much when we talk about the Civil War. Then I also want to talk about Native Americans. And this was a medal given to Private Steven Nicholas, while he was a confederate prisoner, by other members of his company. And he was a scout and we don't know what the eye and the star mean by I do believe the eye stands for the fact he was a scout and was looking out for them. Now Steve, his name was Steven Nicholas but most people called him Steve Nick, was a Stockbridge-Munsee, was a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee nation. These are some Civil War soldiers from the Menominee tribe or nation from Wisconsin. We don't know their names, but this is what he might have looked like in uniform. 

Now what's interesting about the Native American predicament during the Civil War is that most Native Americans did not want to fight for the Union. The Union hadn't been that kind to them, and they didn't really want to participate. Most Native Americans who went in bulk to fight for one side or the other fought for the Confederacy. However, in Wisconsin, 279 Native Americans enlisted and joined the army. And there's a question of why would these men do this? And there's about three possible reasons. One is they could have wanted the bounty. Most soldiers who joined, especially later in the war, were paid a bounty. The belief that their participation in the war might help the US government honor its treaties. It's like look what we're doing for you, now you can be good to us. And most likely, and probably in the case of Steve Nick, they wanted to prove themselves as warriors, and this was one way to do it. 

When I started research on this, this is all I had with the note that this was worn by Steve Nick. And through my research I was able to find pictures of him which was really fun. So I think you get the idea of what a dramatic character he probably came across as. He was born in Rhode Island in 1840. That's the Stockbridge-Munsee nation comes from Rhode Island. In 1845 he came with his grandparents. I have no information on who his parents were, but he was adopted by his grandparents, Moses and Catherine Stanton, who helped form Chilton, Wisconsin, in Calumet county. And he was always described as a descendent of the Indian warrior King Philip. And if you know your American history, King Philip's war was 1676-1677, one of the bloodiest wars in New England. It was the last gasp of Native Americans trying to push out European Americans out of New England. 

They were not successful but they sure made a dent in the population. And King Philip was sort of the leader of this. He was actually killed during the war. Now, we know that most of the Native Americans in Wisconsin who joined came from that area between Fond du Lac and Green Bay. So he's from Chilton which makes sense. He fits into that basic trend. Now I found an article written about him in 1916, which was about 15 years after he died, that really kind of captures his drama and his romance of his life. And it says that after being educated, Steve grew up to be strong and athletic. He was fearless, shrewd, and quick to act. On his 21st birthday he wanted to join the army at the first call. 

His name was entered as that of a volunteer in Company K. But he was a very disappointed person when he found out that he could not go with his regiment because his name was not on the list when lots were drawn. Later he went with Company D of the gallant 1st Wisconsin Cavalry. Now, Colonel Daniels who was the colonel of that cavalry saw his courage and made him one of his trusted scouts. Later on, a fight took place between this company, Company D, and the Confederate Colonel William H Parsons' company of Texas. And during this fight, Steven Nicholas and 46 other members of his company became prisoners of the Confederacy. Parsons, who was the lieutenant colonel, I mean the confederate colonel, offered him his release and other inducements if he would desert the stars and stripes, mainly going after him as a Native American, you know, why would you fight for the Union. Why would you fight for the Union. But Steven promptly refused. Now, just to skip ahead, this was a time when captured soldiers really were not kept prisoners very long. 

That comes later on in the war. They were usually released with the promise they wouldn't go back to fighting. However, he was released and immediately reenlisted in the same company but this time as a sergeant. And to continue that article, it says in 1865 near West Point, Alabama, an incident took place in which his boldness was clearly shown. The rebels were driven into a fort on a hill overlooking the town. While one regiment attacked the town, two regiments attacked the fort. A desperate hand-to-hand fight took place before the fort fell. Steven Nicholas was the first to enter the fort and he fought with the rebels until it fell. And then it goes on to say he was pitiless and avenging while fighting but would not allow the strong to oppress the weak. A little story is told of him when once while trying to get a better horse he passed a southerner's house which was being raided by Union men. 

He protected two ladies from the cruelty of the northern soldiers. Later it happened that a southern general gave him a $20 gold piece for protecting those ladies who were his wife and daughter. So this is him depicted during the war, and these are after the war. He does have his GAR badge on in the middle picture in the photograph, but afterwards he had a fairly bland life. He worked as a carpenter in Michigan and back in Wisconsin. And he died of tuberculosis in 1901. I think he was around 61 at that time. These two illustrations are taken from his obituary which was on the front page of the Chilton Times. So whenever you read about Chilton or Calumet County in the Civil War, he is one of the first who is mentioned. So he had this very dramatic life, and he was able to be a warrior and live up to that Indian warrior stereotype that he might have felt he needed to during the Civil War. 

And we have another Native American I want to mention. And he was a bugler, and this is his bugle, for the Company F of the 152nd Indiana Infantry from February of 1864 to August of '65. He enlisted around the age of 18, and I know I'm saying Indiana but he had a very traumatic life before he was an Indiana soldier, and that all happened in Wisconsin. And I thought it was very, even though this is not necessarily a Civil War story, this is one of the few surviving pieces that's related to him. And we have actually two bugles, but this is one of them. And he was a Native American; he was Menominee. And it's a very interesting study of white and Indian relations in Wisconsin in the mid-19th century. And what happened is around April 1850, well he was born as Oakaha to his Menominee mother, Nacom, who is in the middle there, and probably a white fur trader, and around the age of five he was kidnapped by Alvin and Lucia Partridge of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who believed he was their lost son Caspar Partridge. And the picture in the middle is from an 1880s booklet written on this kidnapping and the whole story. So it's sort of an idealized version, and it's definitely not accurate. 

But in 1850, Caspar, who was about three at the time, wandered away from his parents and was never found. Because of Oakaha's light complexion, his ability to speak some English, and his possible resemblance to other Partridge children, the Partridges, on seeing him in the fall of 1851, which is 18 months later, believed he was their lost son. So the Partridges took Nacom to court to have themselves declared Oakaha's true parents. To the surprise of everyone, considering there is a racial bias among whites, the judge kept Oakaha with his mother. Or awarded the child to his mother. But before he could be returned, because he was in the hands of the Partridges, actually he wasn't in the hands of the Partridges, he was in the hands of the government, friends of the Partridges abducted him and he disappeared. We don't know where exactly but at some point in the next year or so he is now called Joseph Partridge, which is interesting because they're not calling him Caspar Partridge, and he came to live with them, well, they disappeared too but they disappeared to where people know where. They sold their property shortly after Oakaha disappeared and moved to Steuben County, Indiana. And by 1860 we know that he is living with them in Indiana. But in the meantime, 1853, three years after Caspar disappears, the bones of a small child were found where Caspar had basically disappeared. 

And with this evidence now most of the white settlers or Euro-Americans in this area, in Wisconsin actually, believed that the Partridges had actually kidnapped Nacom's son. Up to this point they believed that they were in the right and that they really had Caspar in their hands. So at this time there's a new superintendent of Indian Affairs. His name is Franz Huebschen, and he wanted the boy returned to his rightful family. So this is two years, he's been with the Partridges about two years now. And he finds him down in Indiana and brings him back to Milwaukee. And Chief Oshkosh comes down from the Oshkosh area and comes down to claim him and take him back to his mother and back to his tribe or nation. However, the Partridges are allowed to visit Joseph during this time period every day, and one day they go in to visit him and dress him as one of the other daughters in the family and secret him out. [LAUGHTER] And it turns out that they take him down to Tennessee where he lives for about a year in hiding until they bring him back to Indiana where he lives with them in Steuben County. And this is when he's definitely known by as Joseph Partridge. 

Now Huebschen is not letting this go right away. He hires the Pinkerton Agency to go find this boy. And during the time that they're searching they couldn't find him. And by the time he comes back on the radar he's about 14 years old, and no one's going to touch him at that point. So by 1860 we know he's living with the Partridges, and in 1864, at the age of 18, he joins the Union army for a bounty of $66.66 And he was scout and a bugler and he never saw any action. But that was his Civil War history. What's interesting is this story continues after the war. This is the home in Indiana with the Partridges featured up there. That's the home he spent most of his teenage life at. After the war, he married a Tennessee woman but divorced her fairly shortly afterwards when he found out she was having an extramarital affair. 

And then in 1881 he married 19-year-old Clara Hockster, he was 35 at the time, infuriating her parents who did not want her marrying an Indian. Which is very interesting because his parents are saying to everyone that he's theirs and they are not Indian. So there's obviously some disbelief with what the Partridges are saying. And for the next 22 years he farmed in a property near where the Partridges were. And then in 1903 he abruptly leaves his family and becomes a sort of wanderer. He wanders all over the country doing odd jobs as he can find work. He definitely takes to drink at this time, and he gets married again even though he hasn't divorced Clara. But he leaves this wife, too. And in 1916 he finds himself in Fort Douglas, up by Tomah, looking for odd jobs. And he goes out for an odd job and while he's being interviewed or they're talking to him he dies of a heart attack. 

So Fort Douglas comes down to pick up his body. They do know he's a Civil War veteran, but they're not quite sure what his name is. So on his grave stone it says Joseph F Parker instead of Joseph Partridge. And there was a Joseph F Parker who was out of Waukesha who went to the Civil War, and it has his company and regiment listed on that grave stone. However, he had three children with Clara, and these are them back there, Lou Lou, Carl and Lafayette who went by Fay, went there and saw the grave stone and were really infuriated that they couldn't remember his name and they had to put it wrong but they never fixed it. And so it still says Joseph F Parker. Now, there's also some curiosity of what happened to Nacom. And this is also from that same book on the history of Joseph Partridge. And basically a Catholic priest, the Catholic priest who wrote this, Father Bondell, was really upset with the Partridges taking the child in the first place. He wrote to the judge and to the court during the first trial to say this is Nacom's child; I've seen her with him since he was born; you want take this child away. 

So in the end he ended up writing a history of their lives, and he kind of imagined the end of Nacom's life, which is sort of a fantasy probably of his, that she died of a broken heart moments after being baptized by a Catholic priest. And that's what's happening here. I think I'll do one more really quickly. I had a little bit of a time and I think I can do this one within two or three minutes. This is a watch that was given to Sergeant Dealton Titchener from Crawford County. And it says on it, engraved on it, "Presented to Sergeant D Titchener by the members of Company H, 36th Regiment Wisconsin volunteers. " And he's kind of an interesting fellow, too. He was born in 1822 in New York state. He moved to Wisconsin around 1848, and then in the 1850s moved to Seneca Township in Crawford County where he worked as a lawyer, and this is his business card. We don't have any images of him but we do have this. And he was very active in trying to get the county seat moved from Prairie du Chien to Seneca but lost. 

But it gave him a lot of notoriety. He hated southern secessionists, he hated northern copperhead sympathizers, those are the ones who lived in the north and sympathized with the south, and he definitely supported the war. So at age 40, which was not necessary to do this at age 40, he enlisted in 1862 in Company A, the 31st Wisconsin, but was discharged in November of '63, a little over a year later, due to disability. Now his neighbor, after he was back working as a lawyer and doing some farming, his neighbor refused to volunteer and disgusted with this neighbor, he rejoined in his place. So he rejoined in February of 1864. This time he joined Company H, the 36th Wisconsin, which gave him the watch for his, well we don't know exactly why. On May 26th, so February he joins, May 26th his company is in a skirmish charge on the Confederate works in the Battle of North Anna River in Virginia, and he's captured and sent to Andersonville prison in Georgia. As he walks into the prison, his watch is confiscated by the Confederates and taken as their property. And I wanted to just mention that before, I sort of mentioned this with Steve Nick, that before 1863, if you were captured, you were usually exchanged or paroled, sometimes on the battlefield, but usually within a month you'd be sent back to where you came from. Now on December 28th, 1862, so at the very end of 1862, the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, decides this is not going to happen anymore. 

We're not giving Confederate soldiers back to the Confederates. And with that, prisons start emerging, Confederate prisons. And they're pretty awful, Union and Confederate prisons are pretty awful places. Andersonville is where the privates are sent, the non-commissioned, officers are sent to Libby prison, for example, privates are sent to Andersonville. Now Andersonville opened in February of '64. It was meant as an open air stockade. There's no buildings built into it. It was meant to hold 10,000 people. It ended up holding 32,000. And that's kind of what you're seeing here. 

So they weren't allowed to build anything but they could put up tents if they wanted to. We know that 45,000 men passed through the gates of here as prisoners. 13,000 of them died. In the summer months they died at about a rate of a hundred a day. And northerners were so infuriated by Andersonville, which was probably considered the worst of the worst, that when the war was over they hung the commander for impairing the health and destroying the lives of prisoners. So he was executed for his participation. We do know that Titchener died at Andersonville in August. So he was captured in May and died August 18th. The official cause is jaundice, though his family believed it was from starvation. And after the war, members of his company were able to purchase the watch back from the Confederate army and give it to his wife and then his great-granddaughter gave it to us. 

But this is his tombstone at Andersonville. And his great-grandsons are now doing a lot of research on his life and were able to give this photograph to us so it was very exciting. So I thank you for coming and for listening to my stories and I hope you enjoyed them. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]