Walking the Berkshires

Nominations Open for Cliopatria Awards for the Best in History Blogging in 2009

The Cliopatria Awards are accepting nominations this month for the best in History Blogging published after December 1, 2008.  Since 2005, this has been the preeminent recognition of excellence in history blogging, with a panel of judges reviewing nominations in the following categories:

• Best Group Blog
• Best Individual Blog
• Best New Blog
• Best Post
• Best Series of Posts
• Best Writer

I was deeply honored last year to receive a 2008 Cliopatria award for the best series of posts.

This is a wonderful way to recognize the quality of blogging efforts of professional and amateur historians alike.  Why not drop in at Cliopatria at History News Network and give them an excellent slate of nominees from your favorite history blogs and posts?

Unknown: A Local History Civil War Mystery

I came upon this grave marker recently in Cornwall Hollow Cemetery.  It caught my eye as a government issued headstone of the "Civil War" type, authorized in the 1870s for the graves of Union soldiers (and also was used for unmarked graves of veterans of earlier wars).  Given its low status position over at the very edge of the graveyard, I wondered whether it would prove to belong to a black soldier, for there were social and racial hierarchies even in New England graveyards and I often find veterans of the 29th Connecticut colored infantry in such places.  What I found instead has left me searching for explanations.

This weathered marble stone has no name or associated company and regiment.  It is inscribed simply  "Unknown U.S. Soldier".  If this private cemetery were near some battleground or a place that had seen the passage of armies, I would not have given it another thought.  But this is northwest Connecticut, hundreds of miles from the battlefields of the Civil War, and in a part of the state which has never seen a military engagement since its settlement. 

The presence of this artifact at this location raises many questions.  How did it come to be here?  Are there remains associated with the grave marker, and how were they associated with Cornwall, Connecticut?  The marker was provided at no cost for veterans by the government, but someone covered the expense of the plot, and if the soldier died far from Cornwall, also paid to transport the remains here.  

Graduate school taught me the value of testing the assumptions of every explanatory hypothesis.  The available evidence at the outset consists of the stone itself and the site where I found it, which is a matter both for the archeologist and the historian.  My initial inquiry in Cornwall has determined that neither the historical society nor the town clerk, nor the sexton have any knowledge of a written record beyond what is recorded on the stone, nor of how it came to be here.  So let us begin with the stone.

As the photograph at the top of the page illustrates, this marble headstone is discolored and weathered, consistent with other military grave markers of its time period.  It is of a "Civil War" type used for Union veteran's graves beginning in 1873, and authorized for use in private cemeteries in 1879.  This establishes the earliest date in which this artifact would have appeared at this site.  Such markers were in use until a significant design change after WWI.  This one has straight rather than curved sides coming to a point at the bottom of the sunken shield, which is the earliest variation on this design.  Although unmarked graves of U.S. veterans of from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Indian Campaigns and Spanish American War were furnished with this type of headstone, (Confederates got their own from the U.S. government in the early 20th century), this stone - because of its apparent age and the sheer number of soldiers involved - is most likely for an unknown Civil War soldier.

This is not the first design for grave markers of unknown U.S. soldiers, however.  According to this site"

"In 1873 Secretary of War William W. Belknap adopted the first design for stones to be erected in national cemeteries. For the unknown dead, the stone was a block of marble or durable stone six inches square, and 30 inches long. The top and four inches of the sides of the upper part were finished and the number of the grave cut on the top...The use of stone blocks for marking graves in national cemeteries was discontinued on October 21, 1903, and the graves were marked with the same design as those furnished for the known dead."

It is possible that this practice had already been followed in private cemeteries long before 1903, but I do not know how regular it was.  Two of the federal contractors for Union grave markers were located in the southern Berkshires in Stockbridge and Lenox, Massachusetts.  Quite possibly the stone was manufactured there.

Coincidentally, there is another Civil War connection between the little cemetery in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut and Stockbridge,  Massachusetts.   Major General John Sedgwick came from here and is buried beneath a prominent monument in the Cornwall Hollow Cemetery, with another monument to his memory located across the road.  A branch of the Sedgwick family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts from Cornwall, where his cousin Catherine Maria Sedgwick was prominent fiction writer.

That is about all that I can surmise about the stone itself.  There is also its position in the cemetery to consider, in a low status plot at the very edge of the graveyard.  This is not a public memorial, though it is a dutiful acknowledgment of the military service of an unknown soldier with a government headstone in a private cemetery.  I believe that while the stone itself may have been moved within the cemetery and probably replaced an earlier marker of some kind, there were indeed once unknown remains with which is is associated. 

How did an unknown U.S. soldier of this time period come to Cornwall?  It is hard to imagine a scenario where remains of an unknown soldier from the Civil War were at least partially identified such that they could be positively to assigned to a soldier from this particular rural community in Connecticut.  Cornwall Hollow is in the northeast corner of the town, but even if we consider Goshen, and Canaan/Falls Village as well it still seems implausible.  Remains that preserved evidence of a Corps badge colored by division, a regiment number and company letter would stand a good chance of being positively identified unless there were several candidates from the same company who came from the same place and died in the same place.

Blaikie Hines "Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut" has a wealth of detail about the service and casualty figures for every Connecticut regiment and community.  The majority of the enlistments in this communities was in the :county regiment": the 2nd CT Heavy Artillery (40% of those credited to Cornwall, 34% of Canaan's soldiers, 53% from Goshen).  Yet even on their worst days of the war, such as Cold Harbor where the Heavy's took heavy casualties and remained under fire for days thereafter, the number of dead in these communities was very low.  Cornwall suffered 11 casualties on June 1st at Cold Harbor but only 1 battlefield death (another was wounded mortally).  Canaan lost just 2 at Cold Harbor and 2 at Antietam and the remainder were single fatalities.  Goshen lost 2 at Winchester.  At no time did these communities suffer multiple battlefield deaths from the same unit (or any combination of units) except at Cold Harbor where Goshen and Cornwall together lost three from the 2nd C.T.H.A.  This strongly suggests that there was not a situation where a group of men from the same communities died and became unknowns at the same place.

I also discount the likelihood that some private individual cared enough about unknowns (perhaps having lost but not recovered a loved one in the war) to pay for the transportation of the remains of an unknown to stand for them all and then bury at the edge of a private cemetery, procuring a government issue headstone somewhere along the way.

The only other explanation I can think of involves considerable conjecture.  It might have been that a Union veteran was passing through the area, alone, unknown in the community, and died here before he could leave.  This might have happened after mustering out - probably not as a deserter because he would have avoided drawing attention to himself identifiable as a soldier - or as an invalid separated from his friends.  He might have been buried "in a pauper's grave", and his original wooden marker replaced with government issue sometime thereafter.  It would have been a lonely end, and in that case someone did the decent thing and buried him with recognition of his service, if not his name.

I honestly do not know the answer.  But I find the possibilities fascinating.  Any readers willing to test my assumptions or offer other insights would be most welcome.

Postscript (November 6th, 2009): Remarkable what data may be lurking in Google books.  In a February, 1876 record of Congressional testimony regarding contracts to furnish soldier's headstones, I find that the contract for the original headstone blocks for unknown soldiers of the Civil War was awarded to one D.C. Sage, of Cornwall, Connecticut.  The unknown soldier grave marker in Cornwall Hollow was not one of Sage's blocks, but could have been a later replacement.

Locally Grown History Weekend

Lightning struck twice for me in October, as Facebook's personal marketing profile proved to be well calibrated to my interests, at least where local events are concerned.  Facebook's sidebar suggestion that I experience the new Walkway Over the Hudson sent me and my children on a grand adventure a week ago.  Then last Friday it picked up on my Revolutionary War interest and clued me in to a pair of terrific events in Torrington, not to mention a whole local history initiative in Western CT about which I had previously been unaware.  Score one for social media: it is still a long way from a decent batting average, but a nice example of what is possible.

Locally Grown History is aspparently in its second year, and an effort to showcase the extraordinary opportunities in our region to experience its history and cultural heritage and integrate these resources with what our children learn in schools, as well as what the public in general knows about our past.  Sponsored by the University of Connecticut in collaboration numerous groups and agencies, including the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Corridor, it is a wonderful local resource.  It seems to be doing for our heritage of regional history the same sort of thing that the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative that I direct is striving to achieve for regional conservation by aggregating the resources and talents of local conservation groups in the service of important land protection efforts.  I would commend any effort out of hand that tackled this objective for our history, but in addition to that the organizers of last weeks events produced a high quality forum on the Revolutionary History of Connecticut that was most welcome and very well received.

It began on Friday evening at UNCONN's Torrington campus (immediately after a Civil War Sesquicentennial event at the site of John Brown's birthplace) with a screening of Mary Silliman's War.  The movie was presented by historian Richard Buel, who produced the film and was the co-author of the book The Way of Duty on which it is based.  The opportunity to see this film was very timely for me, as that very day I noted that J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 discussed the paucity of historically accurate, watchable films about the American Revolution.  I can now confidently add Mary Silliman's War to that impoverished list.

This movie was not a big budget Hollywood film - and regrettably it will set you back $75 to purchase a DVD from the distributor - but they did wonders with the resources they had.   The acting, particularly by Nancy Palk in the title role, is quite compelling.  From an historiographical perspective it belongs in the a progressive tradition, viewing the war as a socially disruptive civil conflict on a human scale, more in keeping with My Brother Sam is Dead than Johnny Tremain.  Professor Buel shared his thoughts on the compromises that are made translating a book to film and conveying complex events and ideas in visually compelling ways. In one interesting aside, he mentioned that the officer leading the reenactors who represented the royalist forces who burned Fairfield objected to one scene of sexual violence saying; "The British did not rape", demonstrating a blind spot that is not borne out by any serious study of the subject and the historic record.  I've been reading Sharon Block's Rape & Sexual Power in Early America, so I feel fairly current in this regard.

I found it particularly well done regarding the values, attitudes and expectations (changing and immutable) that the characters had of themselves and for each other.  The film displays the Silliman household, with its children, servants and slaves, in a way that does not trivialize or over exploit power relationship and the effects on the family of the loss of the patriarch.  As an aside, my ancestor Ebenezer Olmsted of Ridgefield, CT fought in Silliman's regiment From June-December, 1776, and both of them were present at the Battle of Ridgefield during Tryon's Danbury Raid the following year.

It was a terrific set up for Sunday afternoon's Revolutionary War forum.  The keynote address was by Professor Robert Gross, author of The Minutemen and their World.  He spoke of  his experience of the marvelous diorama at Minuteman National Park of the fight at Concord Bridge that prompted his book.  As he gazed at the little figures, frozen under glass, he was struck at how this depiction of a highly symbolic moment in time placed both the event itself and the people of Concord out of context.  His subsequent research revealed that militant patriotism only took hold in Concord in 1774 with the revocation of the colonial charter, and it was this event, rather than taxes and tea, that threatened the local institutions that were already fraying in Concord.

There were a number of workshops offered following this address.  I participated in two: 

• Revolutionary Archaeology in Connecticut:  Dr. Nicolas Bellantoni, Connecticut State Archaeologist

• Children and the Revolution through Literature: Prof. Christopher Collier, University of Connecticut, former Connecticut State Historian and co-author of the Newberry award-winning My Brother Sam is Dead and other historical novels for young adults.

Each presenter had a unique style - Bellantoni's clear enthusiasm for his subject and Collier's thoughtful pedagogical engagement with each of the participants - and I learned new things from each.  I will be sure to follow the Rochambeau Trail through Connecticut and revisit Collier's novels at my earliest opportunity.  As I myself am writing a novel based in the Revolutionary era - albeit a counterfactual one - I was keenly interested in Collier's thoughts on how to stay true to the values and attitudes of his characters and their time while making them empathetic and approachable to modern readers.  He very kindly provided us with a number of free copies of the teaching aid he wrote for his historical novels for young adults entitled My Brother Sam and All That and there is much there about writing historical fiction as well as using it in the classroom that I am enjoying thinking about.

The last session was a round table of the topic of Religion and the Republic: Approaching a Central Theme in Connecticut History.  In keeping with the spirit of Locally Grown History, this was a collaborative effort, expertly woven together by Professor Andrew Walsh of Trinity College.  I have come to believe that the first Great Awakening, as much as any other causal factor of the Revolution, played a pervasive and dominant role in determining loyalties within communities and the direction of social, and therefore political life.  In an increasingly secular society, where we are either too partisan, polite, or politically constrained to thoughtfully discuss the history of religion in America and its influence on the growth and development of our Republic.  This is an area of study to which I need to give more thought.

I felt the afternoon, despite the dreary wintry mix outside, was a grand success, and look forward to becoming moire involved in future  Locally Grown History events.  This collaboration is a true regional asset.

Civil War Memorial in Stanford, NY

If you have occasion to travel through the Town of Stanford, NY on County Route 82, as I did yesterday, you might notice that in company with many northern towns and villages, it has its own Civil War memorial.  The monument does not dominate the Town square, nor preside over the community from atop a noble granite column. In fact, is is unique for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that despite the verdigris of its oxidized bronze, the memorial is not of great antiquity but a far more recent creation.  It certainly was not there when I grew up within the township.

In 1996, in fact, the Stanford Historical Society erected a statue commissioned from local artist Peter Wing to commemorate all of the Town's Civil War soldiers. The sculpture is quite unusual in that it depicts an actual person rather than a homogeneous representative soldier as was the practice with such monuments erected in the decades after the war.  The bronze statue depicts one native son in particular: Maj. Cornelius Nase Campell, one-time Town Moderator of Stanford and then 1st Surgeon in the 150th N.Y.S. Volunteer Infantry ("The Dutchess County Regiment").

This three year's regiment saw service in both theaters of the war, fighting with the 12th Corps at Gettysburg and then with the Army of the Cumberland in the redesignated 20th corps.  The sculpture of Maj. Campell wears the distinctive 5 pointed star of the 20th corps as a cap badge.  The 150th fought in the Atlanta campaign and marched as part of Sherman's Army through Georgia and the Carolina's, participating in the Grand Review in Washington before heading home in June of 1865, having lost 132 to deaths during its three years in service.

Peter Wing - himself a Viet Nam veteran - was able to consult this wartime image of Maj. Campell from the collection of the U.S. Army Military History Institute when sculpting his likeness.  His name is often recorded as "Campbell", with the notable exception of the dedication plaque on the Standford monument.

Maj. Campell is an intriguing choice for the subject of a late 20th century Civil War Memorial.  I would be very curious to know what was the impetus for the modern day residents of the Town of Stanford, only a small proportion of whom are likely to be descended from those veterans they chose to commemorate, to commission and erect this monument generally to those who served and specifically to Maj. Campell.  It may have been a happy chance that there was local talent available to create the bronze statue, for most 20th century memorials tend to emphasize names on plaques rather than images of soldiers.  In that sense, this memorial is a deliberate look back at an earlier aesthetic, yet it reflects the sensibilities of our era by depicting an actual person to stand for the whole.

In fact, most modern Civil War memorials are commissioned not for hometowns but for battlefields - those that will still accept them.  The motivations for erecting them may be genealogical, as with two monuments I observed at Perryville Kentucky paid for by the descendant of a particular confederate NCO who died on the field, or cultural, such as the relatively recent monument to the Irish Brigade at the Bloody Lane in Antietam.  When such monuments appear in our time, when no one's living memory encompasses the individuals and events they commemorate, it is worth considering what motivated these remembrances even as we acknowledge those they seek to honor.  

The Stanford memorial was dedicated even before the sculpture was created.  Freedom Square Park lies below the public school on the other side of a rail fence near Rte 82, and this memorial is its principal monument.  The quotation on the plaque at the base of the pedestal is from another native son of Stanford - Talmadge Wood, who died of wounds received at Gettysburg.  Clearly the Historical Society had access to material like this that enabled the Town to personalize its memorial and make direct links between our time and second hand memory of the past.

I grew up in an isolated corner of the Town of Stanford, although I was in both a different school district and a different postal district than the rest of the Township.  I remember celebrating the Bicentennial in Stanford, though, right where the monument now stands and still have the souvenir wooden nickel from the festivities.  I wish I had still been around in the mid 1990s when this statue was commissioned and the memorial was dedicated.  Now that my curiosity has been peaked, I will have to pay a visit to the Historical Society and see what else i can learn about this role of Civil War Memory in my old hometown.

Walkway Over the Hudson (and Back!)

Poughkeepsie was the place to be this Columbus Day Weekend, as the newest jewel in the NY State park system - the much anticipated Walkway Over the Hudson - is now open to the public. I am quite certain that the residential streets leading up to the old railroad bridge that spans the river never experienced such traffic on a Sunday, and if it keep sup they will need additional parking to accommodate all the eager pedestrians. before.

I drove over from Connecticut with the kids as an afternoon outing, along with thousands of others in the region who had the same idea on a crisp, cloud studded Autumn afternoon.  It was well worth it.

This bridge was the first of any kind to span the Hudson River south of Albany.  Erected in the late 1880's, it was at that time the longest bridge in the world.  The Central New England Railway crossed the span to access the Pennsylvania coal fields.  It was still in  use, though much reduced, when in 1974 a fire started on the Poughkeepsie side that ruined the tracks but left the structure intact.  The bridge was abandoned - too expensive to take down - and there it stood, a curiosity to motorists crossing over on the nearby Mid Hudson Bridge.

The vision of a pedestrian walking bridge utilizing the piers and trusses of the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge had early proponents, and in 1992 a nonprofit organization was launched by dedicated but underfunded volunteers to try and move the idea forward.  More recently, substantial support from private foundations, businesses and government grants made the Walkway Over the Hudson a reality and a fitting capstone to the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up his namesake river.

A Well Regulated (Private) Militia

Connecticut, "The Land of Steady Habits", is not known for being particularly radical when it comes to governance.  It is decentralized into 169 towns without regional government.  Traditionally they have been united in their devotion to home rule and the conviction that they are unique communities, distinctly different from their neighbors.  Even within towns there are semi-autonomous boroughs, postal districts and villages with which residents more closely identify than the parent community. 

I, for example, live in Canaan within the Town of North Canaan (locally known as Canaan) and distinct from East Canaan, also in North Canaan.  The Town of Canaan is locally known as Falls Village and contains South Canaan which only appears on maps and does not rate a post office address.  There is no West Canaan in either Canaan, but there is a Sodom.  I hope that is clear.

Connecticut is, for New England, a more conservative State than most of the others: at any rate a lighter shade of blue. It also has legislation within its regulations that I would think would be the envy of any number of deep red states elsewhere in this great country of ours.  Connecticut allows groups of five people or more to establish private military units.

CGS § 27-101 allows for the creation of private militias  “for the purpose of drilling or maneuvering with firearms or other dangerous weapons…or for the purpose of giving or acquiring military training or experience."  Given that this is Connecticut and not Idaho, those organizations taking advantage of this opportunity have tended to be black powder artillery units.  The 1st Litchfield Artillery Regiment has been active since the 1960s and while it does not have a web site it has been a fixture at artillery shoots and town parades.  According to the State's records;

This company first filed with the secretary of the state on July 23, 1964.  It is based in Litchfield.  Its membership is limited to veterans (mostly wartime veterans but they can vote to admit nonwartime veterans).  Members must also be U. S.  citizens, have a good knowledge of Connecticut history and appreciate its ancient traditions, and be deemed worthy of admission by members.

The stated objectives of the company are to:

1.  preserve the tradition of horse drawn artillery by instructing young men in its history and in the operation of field guns and to become proficient in the maneuvering and firing of horse-drawn artillery by drills and training;

2.  participate in state functions, such as those on Memorial, Veterans, and Independence Days;

3.  act as an escort to the governor at inaugural parades or other times he requests;

4.  help the governor uphold the laws;  and

5.  participate in ceremonies at the request of the Connecticut Historical Commission.

The company is headed by a commanding officer (colonel).  Other officers include lieutenants and majors.  In its 1996-97 statement, the company reported 13 members.

It is worth noting that this regiment is more than a reenactment unit.  It can be called into service to defend the State, presumeably against a foe that would be intimidated by smoothbore muzzleloading artillery (and who wouldn't be?).  They also provide a wicked starting gun salvo for the local road race. 

At Litchfield's recent 4th of July celebration, the regiment appeared in summer campaign dress  from the Indian Wars of the 1870s-1880s.  I remember watching them fire cement-filled beer cans at targets in an old gravel pit in South Amenia, NY when I was a lad, and ever since, have wanted my own brass 12 pounder.  Now all I need is four friends with the same dream (and considerable start up capital) and the Cannon Company of the Canaan Home Guard will proudly preserve our town and traditions from any of our neighbors with irridentist tendencies.

Extra, Extra

My latest article in the Lakeville Journal appeared in the April 2nd edition; readable here with free on-line registration:

"...My friend Mark Brown, an avid angler, tells me that we really have no native brookies left in Connecticut, as the indigenous strain has been thoroughly diluted by stocked fish. Not only that, but the widespread clearing of the landscape in the 19th century, accompanied by heavy fishing and the introduction of non-native trout species, further impacted genetic diversity of brook trout thought most of its range.  On opening day in 1877, one fisherman in Salisbury reportedly caught 150 brook trout in Moore Brook: none of them larger than half a pound.

By the early 20th century, a conservation movement spearheaded by dedicated sportsmen was hard at work in an effort to restore some of America’s vanishing wildlife — including the now ubiquitous white tailed deer — and to introduce other game species that they hoped would naturalize. Theodore Roosevelt is the one who is best remembered, but another national conservation leader was Connecticut’s Sen. Frederick C. Walcott, who along with Starling W. Childs established the Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk and Falls Village.

Sen. Walcott was a close friend and ally of Herbert Hoover, who deserves to be remembered as one of our great fishing presidents as well as the fellow who saw the bottom drop out of the market on his watch. In May 1940, the two men went angling at George Quinion’s fishing camp on Schenob Brook, just across the state line in Massachusetts, where they released several trout to help establish the fishery.  Quinion noted approvingly that President Hoover was careful to handle the fish with wet hands to preserve their protective coating, and used a barbless hook for his flies... "

The paper also ran one of my salamander pictures, which doubles the exhorbitant rate my services now command from a Hamilton to a Jackson.  

 

 

Massachusetts Main Streets and Backs Roads Has One of My Stories

Massachusetts Main Streets and Back Roads ,a quarterly publication from the same folks behind Vermont Quarterly hits the newstands this month with its first edition.  The Magazine covers the history and lore, food and entertainment of Western Massachusetts, and I was approached to contribute a story on Berkshire history.  The Spring 2009 edition features a two page article of mine entitled "Berkshire's Big Dig" about the Hoosac Tunnel, an engineering marvel in the northern reaches of the county.  Along the way,  Readers of this Blog will not be surprised to discover, I manage to incorporate a good does of natural history, a reference to the "Great Road" through a "hideous howling wilderness", and a picture of a Civil War General on a one-man pontoon boat.

When there is an on-line link to the piece, I'll be sure to steer you to it.  If you live in the region, keep your eye out for a copy.  I'm on track to write recurring features for this magazine, and am starting to think up an appropriate topic for the summer edition (ideas welcome). 

Meaning and Losses from the American Revolution

Sometimes I come across something new in my reading on the American War of Independence that leaves me - in the modern parlance of our English cousins - simply gobsmacked.  Consider this passage from Edwin G. Burrows' remarkable study of American prisoners during the Revolutionary War:

"The impact on local communities was crushing.  Of the thirty-six men from Litchfield, Connecticut who helped defend Fort Washington, four were killed and thirty-two taken prisoner.  Twenty died in the prisons of New York, another six on the way home.  Only six returned to Litchfield - six of the original thirty-six.  Half a company of 100 men raised in Danbury, Connecticut was captured at Fort Washington and confined in one of the sugar houses.  Two survived.  Some towns may have lost everyone.  At dinner one night in April 1777, Ambrose Serle, Admiral Howe's secretary, heard of 'a little town in Connecticut' that had turned out 220 men for the American cause, every last one of whom died in batle or succumbed to disease.  Many families must have been nearly wiped out.  Two of Ruth Peck's three sons were taken prisoner at Fort Washington.  One lost both feet to frostbite trying to walk home from New York in the dead of winter; the other returned with the smallpox and died, but not before infecting Peck's husband, who later died as well."

Burrow's book is aptly named Forgotten Patriots, and even without the local connection to towns in Northwest Connecticut its grim reckoning would have haunted me.  We are talking about death rates of 60-70% in the prisons of New York in 1776.  Compare that with Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison camp, where the death rate was horrendous at 40% of those in captivity there.  Elmira, the northern counterpart to Andersonville, saw the death of 1 in every 4 prisoners.  The numbers in the Civil War may have been larger - Clara Barton estimated nearly 13,000 at Andersonville alone - but our modern memory of the Civil War is constantly being reworked and refreshed, while these patriot dead have somehow slipped our grasp and have lost their place in narrative of our founding.

Exploring how this selective memory came to be is the central theme of Burrow's book.  I keep coming back to what the impact must have been on small, rural communities to have lost nearly everyone who marched away.  There is a welcome resource for those who ask this question about the Nutmeg State during the Civil War in Blaike Hines' statistical study: Volunteer Sons of Connecticut, in which he breaks down the "worst day" for every Connecticut town in terms of battlefield casualties and tracks those who died of disease or in captivity.  The iconic monuments of greatcoated soldiers that stand watch on our village greens bear the names of those who served, with stars beside the names of the dead.  Americans in the north chose to commemorate this war in terms of individual sacrifice. 

There are very few monuments dating from the decades following Independence when veterans were still living, and those that were contructed tend to recognize collective sacrifice for patriot ideals.  When it later became fashionable to recognize patriot leaders and ancestors, subsequent generations started to erect monuments along the lines of the Civil War memorials, but those directly impacted by these deaths did not choose to memorialize their personal grief and collective loss.

Today's Lakeville Journal Article

I managed to wander quite far afield in this week's Nature Notes article in The Lakeville Journal,  which is readable on-line with free subscription.  Only the bookends of the piece are rooted in the local enviroment, since I found it difficult in the dead of winter to find something new and fresh to say about life outdoors.  As for the rest, I went back to my days in Africa and what I learned about tracking from a sleeping elephant.

Here are the bookends: 

"‘I track humans,” said the stranger sitting next to me, by way of introduction. As a conversation starter it made quite an impression. He was the sort of character who could fairly be described as crusty, and I suspected I might end up as captive audience to his Ancient Mariner. He went on to volunteer that he was an expert tracker whose services had been of particular value to law enforcement, and who now was responsible for preventing poaching on a large piece of private land in the Berkshires.

“You know how I catch ’em?” he asked, raising a craggy eyebrow with the confidence of one in possession of secret knowledge. “I find their tracks in deer season and then I go to the nearest bar.  Anyone sitting on a stool is showing me his boots. I just compare what I see to what I saw...”

"...The last elephants to roam the valleys of the Litchfield Hills passed away at the end of the Pleistocene age.  But one of the old family names of our region, the Spurrs, comes from the Dutch 'spoor', meaning the trail left by a person or animal. As a follower of spoor, I limit myself to following the tracks of small animals in the snow, the one time when our poor blinkered senses discern what other creatures know in every season."

For the part in the middle, go here.