Week 45: War and Peace

 

Samuel S. Scott

The Civil War was the first war in American history in which a substantial proportion of the adult male population participated. Almost every American would have known friends, family members, or neighbors who marched off to war, many never to return.         --The National Park Service

My 2x great-grandfather, Samuel Scott, was one of the nearly 2.5 million men who volunteered to fight for the preservation of the Union.  Samuel was a widowed father with a 7-year old daughter when he made the decision to leave her with relatives and join the Union Army.  Once he had made the decision, Samuel  traveled to nearby Ft. Wayne on 22 Aug 1862 to join Company B of the Indiana 30th Infantry Regiment.  His rank in was Private, just like his brothers Caleb and Isaac who had joined Company B a year earlier.

According to historian Bell Wiley, who has studied the common Civil War soldier, the average Northerner was “white, native-born, farmer, Protestant, single, between 18 and 29. His height would have been about 5' 8" and would have weighed about 143 pounds.  Most soldiers were between the ages of 18 and 39, with an average age of 26.”  Samuel checked most of those boxes.  He was a white Protestant farmer who was single, but not by choice.  I wish I knew his height and weight but I'm clueless as to either of them.  Union soldiers initially earned $11 a month but in June 1864 the Union raised the soldiers' monthly wage to $16.

On 5 Apr 1863 Samuel wrote a letter home to his parents Caleb and Mary Scott from the Hospital Department of the 2nd Battalion, Pioneer Brigade, Army of the Cumberland in Murfreesboro, TN.  The letter doesn't say he was there because of wounds but it's likely that he had been wounded fighting with the 30th Indiana at the Battle of Stones River, which took place between 30 Dec 1862 and 3 Jan 1863 in Murfreesboro.  In that battle the Union army lost 1,700 men who were killed, 7,800 who were wounded and 3,700 who were missing or captured--a total of 13,200 casualties from an army estimated to count 41,400 in the battle that took place there. 

From his words, it's easy to tell that he's lonely for everyone back home:

Respected parents I find mi self out more seated with pen and ink tring to scribe a fu lins to let you no that I am well at present and hop that ma find you the sam.  I hav not had any letrs from you for mor than a month what is the reson I cant tel I am geten tird of riting and not getting one ansers from you but anuf of this I am seting up with the sick and riting betwen spels and if I mak som blundrs you ma just pas them bi for what that wil fetch for I hav run out of nut to rit.

Samuel's handwriting was beautiful, but his spelling was weak.  Here’s an edited version by my cousin John Scott, who discovered the letter in the Indiana State Library:

Respected parents, I find myself out more, seated with pen and ink, trying to scribble a few lines to let you know that I am well at present and hope that I may find you the same.  I have not had any letters from you for more than a month.  What is the reason, I can't tell.  I am getting tired of writing and not getting one answer from you.  But enough of this.  I am setting up with the sick, and writing between spells, and if I make some blunders, you may just pass them by, for what they will fetch, for I have run out of news to write.

A portion of the letter home

Samuel mustered out of the 30th Indiana on 29 Jul 1864 and transferred into the 1st Regiment, Company C, of the U.S. Veteran Volunteer Engineers.  This regiment was organized in the Dept. of the Cumberland from the Pioneer Brigade.  Duty with the Veteran Volunteers Engineers consisted of repairing railroads, building block houses and bridges, destroying and building transportation networks, erecting defensive and offensive emplacements, providing situational intelligence, and general engineering duties.  Samuel mustered out of the VVE on 26 Jun 1865 holding the rank of Artificer (skilled craftsman) and headed back home to Indiana when the war ended.

He was 33 years old by then and luckier than thousands of his fellow Union soldiers.  Of his five brothers who also joined the cause, only Caleb didn't return home.  Many families weren't as fortunate. Samuel must have been so happy to be reunited with his 10-year old daughter Julia and to begin a peaceful life away from the war.  

On 12 Nov 1867 Samuel married Nancy Elizabeth "Lizzie" Cretcher.  At just 23 years old, she was twelve years younger than Samuel, but the family of three set up housekeeping.  Samuel bought 70 acres of land in Section 16 of Harrison County the next year.  The skills Samuel learned in the Veteran Volunteer Engineers must have transferred to his civilian life because in the 1870 census his occupation was listed as "carpenter".  The family home might have been a modest one at first but this picture shows a large home with the front section of made of brick.  The inscription on the back says the brick home was built in 1888 so maybe it was added on to an earlier structure. 

 

The Samuel Scott farmhouse

 In 1869 the family expanded with the birth of my great-grandfather William Oldfield Scott and again in 1872 when my great-granduncle Charles Neil Scott was born. Julia left home to be married in 1877. 

Samuel must have been a man who planned ahead.  In December of 1901 he wrote his will, naming Lizzie as the intended recipient of "all my personal property, household goods and kitchen furniture, and all property of a personal character which I may have at the time of my death", along with "the use, rents, profits, occupancy and control of all my real estate of which I may die seized".  

Nine years later, on 18 Dec 1910, Samuel passed away from chronic bronchitis and atheroma (degeneration of the arterial walls) a few weeks shy of his 79th birthday.  He had endured the loss of his first wife, Ann Clinger, only a year and a half after they were married; years of separation from his daughter Julia; the loss of his brother Caleb during the war; and Julia's death in 1886.  He had outlived eight of his eleven siblings and both his parents.  

 

Resting in Union Cemetery, Warsaw, IN

I love old obituaries--the multiple headlines always make me smile.  By the time you've read them, you already know the gist of the article.