Saturday, November 12, 2011

Civil War Lecture Series at the Hayes Presidential Center

Larry Strayer
Civil War: Battlefield and Homefront
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center

In conjunction with its exclusive exhibit CIVIL WAR: Battlefield and Homefront, the Hayes Presidential Center hosts a series of three lectures in the Hayes Museum. Each lecture is free and open to all.

November 17
Center Executive Director Thomas Culbertson opens the series with his 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 presentation Rutherford B. Hayes: Citizen Soldier. The lecture takes an in-depth look at what inspired a 39-year-old lawyer, husband, and father to enlist in the Army despite having no prior military training. Culbertson’s talk also examines the effects the war had on Hayes’ life and career.

December 8
• An archaeologist who has spent years researching on Johnson’s Island, discusses discoveries he has made at the site of a former Confederate prisoner-of-war camp beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8. David Bush, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Historic and Military Archaeology at Heidelberg University. He has been excavating the Johnson’s Island site for more than 20 years. Recently, Bush authored a book about the camp titled I Fear I Shall Never Leave This Island: Life in a Civil War Prison. The work combines letters written between a prisoner and his wife, with archaeological evidence Bush has unearthed. A book signing will follow the lecture.

December 15
• On Thursday, Dec. 15, Civil War expert and collector Larry Strayer shares the story of how he got involved in collecting Civil War memorabilia, and how his collection has evolved over 40 years in Battlefield & Homefront Exhibit - An Inside Look at Civil War Collecting. Numerous items from Strayer’s collection are on display in the CIVIL WAR: Battlefield and Homefront exhibit. Following his lecture, Strayer will invite participants to view the exhibit with him.

Major funding for CIVIL WAR: Battlefield and Homefront is provided by
Diversified Insurance partnered with Auto Owners Insurance.
Additional funding is provided by Croghan Colonial Bank

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Lest We Forget: Remembering Sandusky County, Ohio's Veterans

CBS Sunday Morning
On Memorial Day 2010, CBS Sunday Morning featured the efforts of Wayne Van Doren and his family to place American flags beside the grave sites  of veterans in six Sandusky County cemeteries. From Revolutionary War soldiers to the highest ranking general killed in the Civil War, McPherson Cemetery in Clyde, Ohio, is the final resting place for nearly a thousand veterans. Wayne has meticulously mapped the location of each so that on every Memorial Day he and his family can continue their tradition of honoring those who have served in America's wars.

Wayne Van Doren 
Fremont, Ohio's Oakwood Cemetery
Courtesy of The News-Messenger
Wayne has extended his reach. He hopes to honor each veteran buried in Sandusky County, Ohio by placing an American flag beside each grave. Wayne stated that there are 64 cemeteries in Sandusky County where veterans are buried. Above is a picture of Wayne in Fremont's Oakwood Cemetery that appeared in the September 16th, 2011 issue of The News-Messenger.  Wayne has been walking Oakwood Cemetery all summer, attempting to locate all of the veterans' grave sites. It is one of the largest in the county. Sadly, in Oakwood alone, there are 357 veterans' graves that do not have bronze flag holders beside them. Flag holders and an American flag are issued to veterans' surviving family members when veterans die. Each flag holder has the emblem that identifies the war in which the veteran served.

After learning of my attempts to discover Sandusky County's African American Civil War soldiers, Wayne took photographs of their gravesites while walking Oakwood. Below is the photo he gave me of David J. Vance's tombstone. Others that Wayne shared with me are posted on the Hayes Presidential Center's Civil War Research page, where short sketches of each African American Civil War soldier appears. (With the help of Charles Weiker, we recently discovered the service of two additional soldiers.  Both have been added to the page.)
David J. Vance
Oakwood Cemetery, Fremont, Ohio

Monday, October 3, 2011

Pvt. John Grabach: Third Ohio Cavalry at Lovejoy's Station

During a visit to Clyde, Ohio for a family reunion, John Grabach, then living in Grand Island, Nebraska, related his experience after saving the life of a wounded comrade at Lovejoy's Station during the Civil War. Grabach served in the Third Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. The "Clyde Enterprise" published his reminiscence in the January 12th, 1899 issue of the newspaper.

Pvt. John Grabach
1843 - 1924

John Grabach died November 13, 1924 in Portland, Oregon, where he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic Post #12. His grave remained unmarked for 85 years until a government headstone was obtained and placed by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. The above photograph is courtesy of Randy Fletcher, who took the image at the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery in Portland and placed it on Find A Grave. As a member of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, Mr. Fletcher worked to complete the renovation of this cemetery in 2009, which included the replacement of a bronze statue stolen more than forty years earlier. 
"Clyde Enterprise"
January 12, 1899

About the middle of August 1864, General Kilpatrick received orders from General Sherman to take such regiments of cavalry as he wished and to the rear of the Confederate army near Atlanta and destroy all railroads, so that it would be impossible for them to move out of the city by rail. On August 17th General Kilpatrick was ready to move, with five regiments of cavalry and about 3,000 men. One of the regiments selected was the Third Ohio Cavalry of which O.M. Mallernee, J. M. Kelsey, J. Setzler, Henry Grabach, Robert Benfer, Jacob Trott, Joseph Britenburg, Orrin Buzzell, and Theodore Rickey of Clyde [Ohio] and vicinity, also John and Augustus, brothers of Henry Grabach, and the late F. VanHorn of Monroeville, husband of Mrs. Elvira VanHorn of Clyde were all members. They were ordered to carry five days rations and none but sound men and horses were allowed to go. One of the survivors now living here tells the story of what followed in the following way:

“We started in the morning, going to the extreme right of Sherman’s army and far to the left of the Confederate army (under command of General Hood) marching all night and stopping early in the morning for an hour’ s rest and to feed, but made no fires to cook coffee. By this time we were in the rear of the Confederate army. Then we started again as fast as our horses could stand it, and when night came we again stopped to feed, but built no fires nor unsaddled horses. About midnight we struck the first railroad, which we tore up, built fires and heated the rails in the middle and bent them around telegraph poles to make them unfit for further use, and as soon as the job was done we went on as fast our horses could carry us.



Track of Confederate railroads destroyed by Union troops became known as "Sherman's Neckties"

About daylight we came to another railrodad at Lovejoy Station, where we again tore up the track and destroyed the rails, but before we were ready to move we found that the enemy were firing on our pickets from every direction. They had moved quite an army from Macon on the east and from Atlanta on the west, and before we were aware of it they had us surrounded and it looked as though the only thing to be done was to surrender. However, we found that General Kilpatrick was not the kind of a man who surrenders. When an aide from the rebel general demanded our surrender, General Kilpatrick replied, “Go back and tell your general that the government don’t furnish us horses to surrender to rebels.” He quickly formed us into proper shape for a grand cavalry charge for freedom, and at the command from a signal gun we were off with drawn swords and everyone shouting at the top of his voice. We did not have far to go before we met the Confederate infantry, which were at “charge bayonets to receive cavalry.” But we went on and on, over bayonets and men. No we did not all go on. Many were killed or wounded in this charge and hand to hand fight.

H. Grabach had his horse shot, but fortunately for him he found a horse without a rider, and he went on. By this time we were badly demoralized and it was necessary to halt and reform our lines and commands, and soon the command was again on the move, but unfortunately, the Third Ohio Cavalry was put on as rear guard. We counted off our thinned ranks by fours, and every fourth man held horses while numbers one, two, and three were deployed on foot as rear guard to hold the enemy in check and give the balance of the command a chance to retreat in good order.

While on this rear guard fighting we had many men killed and wounded, and among them was Lieutenant George Garfield, a nephew of General J. A. Garfield, who was wounded in the neck and shoulder, so that he was unable to hold up his head; but the comrades, among them John Grabach, who were near to him, put him into a rubber blanket and carried him back a little ways and then again used their guns upon the enemy. But we were so hard pressed that they carried him back further. He was losing blood and was in such a condition that without care he would have died in a short time. When Garfield saw they could not carry him further, he asked if anyone of them would stay with him, whereupon John Grabach informed him that he would stay and care for him. Grabach immediately gave his arms to Lieutenant Charles Kelsey, a brother to our townsmen, James and A. I. Kelsey, who was the last man to go. In a few minutes the enemy were there, and at once traded their poor shoes for Grabach and Garfield’s good boots and the next squad traded coats etc., but offered no personal harm.

After the escape of Kilpatrick’s force the wounded were picked up, both Union and Confederate, and all the Union men that were able to be moved were sent to Andersonville prison hospital, where John Grabach was installed as wound dresser.

Up to this time, no guard had been placed over Grabach, who was the only sound Union soldier. Only his duty to his comrades kept him seventeen days after the fight, Wheeler Forgerson, a cousin to our townsman, Tom Forgerson, bunkmate of Grabach, died from a wound received in the charge, and a few days later Lieutenant Garfield had so far recovered that he was able to be moved, and he was sent to Libby Prison, an officers’ prison in Richmond, Virginia, and the other wounded had died or were on the way to recovery. Then one day an order came to the hospital from Captain Wirz for all sailors and marine men to fall in for exchange, Whereupon Grabach made up his mind he was a sailor. But the officer in charge said there were too many, and he wanted only sailors and marines, and all others should fall out. Many fell out, but Grabach still insisted that he was a marine. When they arrived at Captain Wirz’s headquarters, the roll was called. Finally a name was called and no one answered, and soon another name was called without an answer. When it was called again, Grabach answered and also another soldier, whereupon an investigation followed and the other man was decided to be the right one. Captain Wirz ordered a guard to take charge of Grabach, and after the roll was finished there were four more men than they had on the roll, and Captain Wirz ordered the guard to take them to the guard house and put them in stocks, and pointing to Grabach, he said, “ and that _____ put him in the spread eagle stocks.” They were placed there but the guards were more humane than the officers and took them out of the stocks with a promise that if any of the officers came around they must at once be placed in the stocks again until they were gone.

Libby Prison
(National Archives)
Within a few hours an order came to send all prisoners in the guard house to the train, which was loading with prisoners, as they claimed for exchange, but the real object was to keep them from falling into the hands of General Sherman. In the night, the train arrived at Macon, Georgia, and here Grabach jumped from the train and dodged the guards, and before daylight was out of the city in the open country headed for our lines. After many days of traveling by night and hiding by day, and being fed by the escaped prisoners’ friend, the black man, he was retaken just before reaching our lines.

Again he was a prisoner, and this time he was taken to Millen, being the first of a lot of 35 to be put into this prison stockade, but in a few days it had been increased five thousand. One day after a few weeks of prison life he with a squad of others was taken outside of the stockade to carry in some wood. When the opportunity offered, Grabach dropped behind a big log and again made his escape, and commenced his lonely march by night and sleeping in woods and fields by day, and after many nights of marching, hunger, and cold he was again recaptured.

Again he was a prisoner of war and was being taken to Florida. While going through Savannah with other prisoners he again made his escape, this time by playing off sick, being apparently in such condition that he could not go any farther. Here in the city of Savannah for several weeks he was cared for by a German family and often went downstreet where almost every day some prisoners were being put aboard transports for exchange. One day he found an opportunity to fall into the ranks of prisoners for exchange. He got on board the transport as one of them with much difficulty. This time he was successful in gaining his liberty and in due time arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, and then came to his home near Clyde, Ohio, and in a few weeks rejoined his regiment at Gravelly Springs, Mississippi, where he was mustered out of the army in February, 1865, having been a prisoner about five months, and about four months after his term of three years service had expired.”

For several years after the war, he lived in Clyde, but for many years he has lived in Nebraska, which is now his home. For the past few weeks he has been revisiting this, the home of his younger manhood, and participating in the Grabach family reunion.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Family of George and Deborah Godette

Charles Weiker of Fremont, Ohio shared this story and these images of his family. At Find A Grave, you'll see further images and information posted by Godette family members.

James Godette, Jr.
The family of George and Deborah Godette’s French connection derives from Jean Gaudet, the progenitor of Gaudet/Godette descendants in North America. He was born ca. 1575 in Martaize Vienne, France. He and his family along with his brother Aubin Gaudet arrived in Port Royal, Acadia in 1636. Jean Gaudet was a farmer who raised cattle and sheep and cultivated his acres of land in the Annapolis Basin for over 30 years, caring and providing for his family in his new homeland. Jean Gaudet died in the year 1672 in Port Royal, Acadia.


Nearly a century later, between 1755 and 1762, it became a very tumultuous and tragic time for Acadians. It was in those years that the British authorities decided to enforce the deportation orders. Acadians were stripped of their rights and placed on overcrowded vessels bound for unrevealed destinations. The events were horrendous and marked the memories of the exiled and their descendants for decades to come.

Acadia, Annapolis Basin

As with so many of those who were exiled; George Godette’s definitive destination cannot be fully documented due to the uncertainties of acceptance and survival of the assorted deported.  What can be determined within his timeline of exiled events is his connection by marriage to Deborah George, whose family is documented to be living in Craven County, North Carolina as early as 1753. Deborah’s brother, Peter, was listed in a Company of Foot Soldiers commanded by Captain Abner Neale by Commission bearing the date of April 11, 1753 for the District between the Head of Slocombs Creek to the Head of Turnagain Bay.  The first known record in Craven County, North Carolina for George Godette, himself, is his being excused from paying taxes in September of 1780 due to the fact that he was crippled.

Among the children of George and Deborah Godette were Peter Godette and Deborah Godette. Deborah married Isaac Perkins, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. He enlisted for three years, was granted a pension, which was repealed and later restored.

Peter Godette married Sarah Barber in 1797 in Craven County, North Carolina. They were the parents of John Godette, who married Clarissa Jackson. The laws of North Carolina allowed free people of color to have a license to carry guns. The names of John Godette and his sons William Godette and James Godette appears on lists dated September 1851; June 1852; and September 1854.

As mixed raced people they were free and had rights, but conditions before the start of the Civil War became unsettled and unsatisfactory for them. The relationships between ethnic groups was of a fluid nature among early working class people, before legalized slavery and stringent laws unnaturally and unnecessarily strained and defined color lines.

For whatever the reasons, decisions were made within the family of John and Clarissa Jackson Godette. Some of the family would remain in Beaufort County, North Carolina and continue their lives there. Those who chose to stay were: John and Clarissa Godette, their son, William Godette and his family; and their daughter, Ellen Godette Cannon and her family.

Those who chose to go with a group of 60 people for the migration to Ohio were three of John and Clarissa Jackson Godette’s children and their families: Elizabeth “Patsy” Godette Laughinghouse; James and Elizabeth Driggers Godette; and John and Linda Godette Blackwell. They left before the start of the Civil War and made their way northward to Ohio, settling in the communities of Oberlin, Pittsfield, and Kipton in Lorain County; Fremont in Sandusky County; and Elmore in Ottawa County.
Godette Family Home in Pittsfield, Ohio (ca. 1860s)
James Godette, Sr. and Elizabeth Driggers Godette; and two of their daughters, Henrietta and Josephine

They were true pioneers in the very sense of the word, as are many of their descendants to this day. Among them were two of the sons of James and Elizabeth Driggers Godette of Lorain County: William and Alfred Godette. The two brothers moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where they joined the city’s fire department. William Godette joined in 1885 and rose through the ranks to captain during his 41 years of service. Younger brother Alfred joined in 1909 and died fighting a fire in 1921, the ultimate sacrifice for service.

William Godette, St. Paul, Minnesota

The new St. Paul Fire Department Headquarters and Station 1 is now named the William and Alfred Godette Memorial Building to honor their memories. It was formally commissioned and opened in September 2010

Alfred Godette
1874 - 1921
(Courtesy of Find-a-Grave)

Friday, September 9, 2011

Hughes Granite Company Created Ohio's Enduring Civil War Memorials

The name Hughes Granite is long gone from Clyde, Ohio, but the exceptional markers, monuments, and memorials the company created remain a physical presence throughout the eastern half of the United States. Carmi Sanford founded the company in the 1880s. After Sanford’s death in 1893, his brother-in-law William E. Hughes oversaw operations. Under his management, the firm flourished becoming one of the best-known granite companies in the United States.

The secret to Hughes’ success was quality. He purchased stone directly from quarries in Scotland, New York, and Vermont. The company employed as many as 55 master stonecutters, sculptors, and engineers. Its most skilled sculptor was James B. King who, like several other Hughes employees, came from Scotland to work for Hughes.


Located on East Buckeye Street in Clyde, the Hughes Granite cutting room featured the most modern tools for cutting, polishing, and carving. The end product was a beautifully executed, high quality, durable marker.

An astute businessman, Hughes also perfected the use of ventilation in designing mausoleums and crypts. His American Mausoleum Company constructed more than 100 mausoleums nationwide, including the Inglewood Park Mausoleum in Inglewood California.
Perhaps the company’s greatest success came when the state of Ohio selected its designs to memorialize its Civil War dead. Competing against 11 other firms, Hughes won the contract to create 34 monuments for Ohio’s fallen at Shiloh battlefield near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. Employees described their efforts as a “labor of love and duty.” In addition to creating the monuments, the company agreed to deliver them to the site. The monuments were transported to Tennessee by rail and barge. Each 16-ton monument was raised from the river up the 100-foot bluff to the battlefield.

In the spring of 1902, during a ceremony at Shiloh, the state dedicated the monuments to its native sons. One Ohioan accurately predicted “the beautiful memorials… will stand and be admired by future generations when the memory of those who created them has been forever buried in oblivion.” And so it is.

Hughes Granite and Marble Company may be lost to time, but its inspired work lives on as part of the sacred landscape of Andersonville and the Civil War battlefields of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Chickamauga.

Read about the Hughes Granite and Marble Company in-depth at Sandusky County Scrapbook.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Anna Pittenger McMeens: Civil War Nurse

Anna McMeens (with purse) and Cooke Family Members
Anna Pittenger McMeens may have been one of the first nurses to serve in a military hospital during the Civil War. When her husband, Dr. Robert R. McMeens enlisted as the surgeon of the Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Anna assisted her husband at the military hospital at Camp Dennison.

She traveled with him to Nashville, Tennessee, where he served as Acting Medical Director of the Tenth Division. He oversaw the Union’s 800-bed military hospital. Anna returned to Sandusky when her husband left Nashville with his regiment. She immediately began working with the Sanitary Commission to provide medical supplies for soldiers in the field.

Cooke Castle on Lake Erie's Gibraltar Island, 1901
She never remarried after the death of her husband in 1862. She traveled to Washington, D. C., where she worked in military hospitals for more than a year. Following the war, Anna McMeens managed the summer home of Jay Cooke, financier of the Civil War. Cooke Castle is located on Lake Erie’s Gibraltar Island.

A sketch of Anna McMeens in Woman's Work in the Civil War (published 1867) highlights her contributions during the conflict. It states that after the Civil War, and while at Gibraltar Island, she took part in missionary work among the sailors of Lake Erie.

If anyone can identify the organization or the Lake Erie's sailors missionary work in which Anna McMeens participated as early as 1867, I would appreciate hearing from you.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Coming North: Martha Laughinghouse Weiker

My search for photos of African American Civil War soldiers led to a conversation with Charles Weiker of Fremont, Ohio. He not only provided a photo, but also shared these photos and this fascinating story of another of his remarkable ancestors who came to Ohio, eventually settling in Sandusky County at the time of the Civil War…. 
  

Martha Laughinghouse Weiker holding son Charles. Son Walter stands at her side (ca. 1888)
Martha Laughinghouse Weiker was born in 1848 in New Bern, Craven County, North Carolina; the 2nd daughter of Ajax and Elizabeth “Patsy” Godette Laughinghouse. The family of freeborn mulattoes traces its history to Ajax’s great-grandfather, Andrew Laughinghouse, who actually wasn’t a Laughinghouse at all.

Around 1769, a shipwreck occurred along the treacherous shoals of the North Carolina coast. The only survivors of the vessel were a small boy and his small body servant. That child was Andrew, who along with his slave, was taken in by the family of Thomas and Patience Smith Laughinghouse of Beaufort County, North Carolina. When questioning the boy (who must have been well off because he traveled with a servant) neither he nor his servant, due to their young ages, could tell the Laughinghouse family what Andrew’s last name was. Andrew was raised as one of the family and adopted the Laughinghouse surname as his own.

Martha’s oldest family lineage is through her mother’s side, stretching to the saga of Margaret Cornish, who at the age of nine, was kidnapped from her homeland of African Angola in the Mbundu nation within the kingdom of Ndongo and was put aboard a Spanish slave ship. The ship was captured by an English pirate ship that took its selected human cargo to Jamestown in 1619.

Margaret Cornish, along with her generations of descendants, lived their lives through a myriad of changing laws in the English colonies that slowly and blatantly circumvented their rights because of their mixed bloodlines. But they persevered despite difficulties.

In time, laws and events would converge and create a situation for free people of color. Just before the start of the Civil War, unsettled and unsatisfactory conditions relative to slavery as practiced in the South, led to the organization of a group of 60 people who migrated to Ohio. Members settled in Oberlin, Pittsfield, and Kipton in Lorain County, Ohio; Fremont, in Sandusky County, Ohio; and Elmore in Ottawa County, Ohio. Patsy and her daughters eventually settled Fremont around 1863.
703 Ohio Avenue
Fremont, Ohio
1901
Back Row (standing l to r ) Charles Weiker, unknown, Walter Weiker, Sarah Weiker Willey, William Dixon, Clara Weiker Dixon, Charles Cooper, Catherine Weiker Cooper, Gardner Willey
Second Row (seated l to r) unknown, unknown, Philip Weiker, Catherine Smith, Martha Laughinghouse Weiker, daughters of Clara Dixon Weiker, Clara Cooper
First Row (boys seated: l to r) Tom Weiker, Fred Cooper

In 1874, Martha married Philip Weiker at the Four Mile House. Following their marriage they located to a farm in Riley Township. Years later they moved into Fremont, where they built a house on the corner of Ohio Avenue and Mulberry Street. The residence still stands today. Philip and Martha had 10 children of their own. They also raised 2 other children.

Martha was a devoted member of the A.M.E. Church on Second Street for more than 50 years. She took an active part in church work, becoming an honorary member of the Missionary Society. After living a full life with family and friends, and perhaps, sometimes pondering over the miles and years before and after the migration that brought her family North, she passed away in 1932 at the age of 84.

A version of this article appeared earlier in Lifstyles 2000.