“My poor boy, Colonel!” The Story of Michael and Hezekiah Spessard

    There are few more heart-rendering stories from the Battle of Gettysburg than that of Captain Michael P. Spessard, a forty one year-old native of Craig County, Virginia, who commanded Company C, 28th Virginia Infantry in Garnett’s Brigade of Pickett’s Division, and his son Hezekiah Spessard, a private under his father’s command. Their lives would forever be changed on July 3, 1863, when, barely minutes into the charge against the Union center, Hezekiah fell from the ranks, seriously wounded. Eppa Hunton, Jr., son of the dynamic Colonel Eppa Hunton who commanded the 8th Virginia Infantry, first described the scene in his father’s 1933 autobiography: “My father has frequently told me that as he was going into the battle he saw Major (then captain) Spessard of the 28th Regiment sitting on the ground holding a youth’s head is his lap. As Father approached, Spessard looked up and said, ‘Look at my poor boy, Colonel.’ He must have been dead then, for in a short time Father saw him kiss him tenderly and gently lay his head on the ground. Then the Major rose to his feet, put his sword to his shoulder, and ordered, ‘Forward, boys!’ and continued in the charge.”

An 1882 William Tipton image taken from Cemetery Ridge looking over the ground the 28th Virginia crossed in their advance. NPS

    This story has been retold several times, most notably in Gettysburg Historian Kathy Harrison’s “Nothing But Glory”, Pickett’s Division at Gettysburg (Longstreet House, Hightstown, NJ, 1987) where she describes Spessard fighting like a man possessed in the point-blank combat at the Angle, and his subsequent escape from capture. Harrison then relates that, “Captain Spessard was one of those fortunate enough to…. escape back to Seminary Ridge, where he saw to it that his son Hezekiah was properly cared for in the field hospital.”
    Other authors have depended on this narrative for the details of the Spessard story. It can often be found verbatim on internet pages and published narratives. Yet, I was curious why no details had ever emerged of the time the captain must have spent with his son as he lay dying in a Confederate field hospital? There is no mention in the Official Records, Hunton’s memoir, or the post-war letter written by William Jesse, a former member of the 28th Virginia who described Captain Spessard that day. In the absence of evidence we have assumed that after Pickett’s Charge, the captain sought out his son.
    What did happen to the Spessards after the charge? Tim Mallick, of northern Virginia, investigated this story, initially seeking only to determine what Confederate field hospital treated the younger Spessard and where he is buried. He found Private Spessard’s military service records for at the National Archives, and they noted that he died on July 19, 1863. There were no details on the location or circumstances of his death, nor his final resting place. If he died after July 3, then it had to be in a field hospital, but where?
There are two possibilities where Hezekiah might have received medical treatment. If he was removed from the field by comrades or a Confederate stretcher team, they most likely would have taken him to the division hospital at Bream’s Mill and the Currens Farm on Marsh Creek, west of Gettysburg. This is where the majority of Pickett’s wounded were taken. Several years ago the park acquired a medical roster of the wounded of Pickett’s Division at Bream’s Mill compiled by surgeon Edward Rives of the 28th Virginia Infantry, from the holdings of the Highland County Historical Society in Hillsboro, Ohio. Hezekiah Spessard’s name is not listed in this journal, nor is a grave marker noted for him in the journal of Dr. J.W.C. O’Neal, who made a number of notations on the graves found at Bream’s Mill, the Currens Farm, and Black Horse Tavern. That Hezekiah was not treated at his division’s field hospital made it unlikley that his father or anyone from his division removed him from the field.
    If Hezekiah had fallen closer to Union lines and been removed by Union soldiers, he most likely would have been transported to the Second Corps hospital at the Schwartz Farm, but his name does not appear on any rosters of Confederate prisoners (or burials) at that site. Where he might have been taken remained a mystery.
    Tim Mallick continued to dig into the story and discovered a letter in the Spessard family papers at the Craig County Historical Society in New Castle, Virginia. It turned out that Hezekiah had been removed from the field by Union soldiers of the 3rd Corps and that he died at their corps field hospital on July 19. This hospital was located south of the Union 2nd Corps hospital on the Schwartz farm. Unfortunately, Hezekiah’s grave at the hospital was either not properly marked or the marker was lost by the time Dr. O’Neal visited the site to record the Confederate burials there. Hezekiah’s remains are most likely among the many unknowns shipped to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond in 1872-1873.

  Though he was never reunited with his dying son, Captain Michael P. Spessard remained with the 28th Virginia Infantry and was promoted to the rank of major in 1864, a role in which he served until surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House. Personal tragedy visited him again after Gettysburg when his second wife and their daughter both died in 1864. Upon his return home after the war he resumed farming in Craig County and married for a third time in 1868, fathering five more children. He served as county sheriff and in public office in New Castle until his death in 1889. He was buried alone on his farm in a small plot that was unfortunately neglected until ten or twelve years ago when a family member and volunteers from the Virginia Sons of Confederate Veterans cleaned up the plot, erected a fence and gate around the site, and installed a new headstone to replace the old stone that was broken.

Michael Spessard's original headstone. Courtesy Tim Mallick.

    After the charge, Spessard evidently searched for his son Hezekiah at the division hospital at Bream’s Mill and failing to find him, marched away from Gettysburg uncertain of his whereabouts. It was not until late July when he received a letter from his wife that he knew when and where his son had died, but never had the opportunity to attempt to retrieve his body. He never returned to Gettysburg. Eppa Hunton, the colonel of the 8th Virginia, once wrote that he never returned to Gettysburg after the war because the memories of the battle it would arouse were too painful to experience again. No doubt, the same was true for Michael Spessard. The personal tragedy he suffered there eclipsed all other events that July 3 afternoon.

John Heiser,
Historian

A Gettysburg Valentine

The Valentine, left in a Gettysburg home when the armies approached.

After the battle, a Gettysburg resident found this note on the back of a valentine:

A "Rebel" note written onto its back.

“July 2nd, 1863.  Mr. Yankee: Your house is not torn up at all, compared with the way your Soldier did at Fredericksburg.  I only killed one goose + took one pair stocking.  Rebel.”  

The valentine is in the collection of Gettysburg National Military Park.  A copy is on display in the museum.  Photos courtesy of the Gettysburg Foundation.

Katie Lawhon, Management Assistant

 

Faces of Gettysburg – Francis Ashbury Wallar – Medal of Honor Winner

Frank A. Wallar. NPS

   He went by Frank rather than Francis or Ashbury. When he died on April 30, 1911, Earl Rodgers, Wallar’s former commander of old Company I, 6th Wisconsin, recalled; “Wallar was one of the few soldiers who at no time during the four years of service was absent from roll call. He stood in the ranks and fought in every battle and skirmish.” For a soldier who served in the Iron Brigade this was a high distinction. Few men who served in regiments of that famous unit made it through the entire war.
    Wallar’s post-war photograph suggests a man of determination and grit; someone not to be trifled with; an individual possessed of courage and conviction. A viewer of his photograph is immediately drawn to his eyes. They are steady and determined yet also speak of what he saw and lost in the years of 61-65.
    On July 1, 1863, during the charge of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry upon the Railroad Cut, Wallar captured the flag of the 2nd Mississippi Infantry, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor and promoted from corporal to sergeant for “conspicuous bravery on the battle-field.” By the time he mustered out in July 1865 he was a 1st Lieutenant. During the war no one questioned whether Wallar was due both the medal and promotion for his actions at Gettysburg, but years later two veterans of the 6th Wisconsin claimed that they, and not Wallar, captured the flag of the 2nd Mississippi. The first was Frank Hare, a Company B veteran who had lost a leg from a wound at the Wilderness, who claimed at a reunion in Milwaukee in 1880 that he had captured a flag at Gettysburg “but did not know what-one.” Since it was well known that the 6th had captured only the 2nd Mississippi’s flag at Gettysburg it was clear that Hare was obliquely claiming credit for it. Someone alerted Wallar who wasted no time in securing sworn statements from men in the regiment, and official documents from his service, attesting that he had captured the flag. He confronted Hare with this evidence “who quietly retired from his position.” [“A Settled Question,” Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph, July 29, 1883, copy GNMP Library]
    Cornelius W. Okey, who had served in Company C, 6th Wisconsin, probably was unaware of the business between Hare and Wallar for in 1883 he published an article titled “Echoes of the Iron Brigade,” in which he described, in great detail, how he captured the flag of the 2nd. In Okey’s account, he was badly wounded at the instant he seized the flag and, bleeding profusely, “gave the flag, which was now entirely in my possession, to a sergeant, I think of Company H, and started for the rear.” Okey went on to relate how he eventually ended up a Cuyler Hospital in Germantown, Pennsylvania, soon after July 6. Shortly after his admission to this hospital he claimed that he was surprised by a visit from the sergeant, whose name Okey omits, who gave him the following statement: As near as I can remember I only had the flag in my possession for a few minutes when I was wounded through the thigh. I broke the staff in two taking the butt end for a cane with which to get off the field, and gave the flag to Corporal John F. Waller. Okey did not need to state the obvious – that he and not Wallar should have received the Medal of Honor – any reader would understand this from his account of the event and the alleged “statement” from the unnamed sergeant of Company H, which gave the appearance of legitimacy to his claim. [Echoes from the Marches of the Famous Iron Brigade, (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms Intl., 1978, 62-65]
    By the time Okey published his account, Wallar had moved with his family to Petonka, South Dakota, where he was farming, but someone sent him a copy and asked him to respond. Okey aroused Wallar’s ire and his reply pulled no punches. What follows is Wallar’s full account as published by the Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph on July 29, 1883.

    Yours of the 3d is received, also echoes of Gettysburg. You ask me to read and tell what I know about it. I know that C. W. Okey is a damned liar, and doubt if he was at the battle of Gettysburg at all. I will tell you just how I got the flag. We, the Iron Brigade, was formed in line of battle facing to the north, (if memory serves me aright), and advanced to the edge of a piece of woods where we came to a halt. We had been there but a few minutes when fighting commenced on our right, between a quarter and half a mile away and there was no men of ours on the right of the brigade where the fight was going on and our men were falling back leaving a part of a battery in the hands of the enemy. At this time Colonel Dawes moved his regiment in that direction, at a double quick, arms at a right shoulder shift. When we got within about three hundred yards of the enemy, where they were in a railroad cut just deep enough for good breastworks, they commenced a slow fire and the nearer we got the hotter the fire. And we did not fire on them till we were within less than two hundred yards of them. Then we kept up a steady fire, advancing all the time till within a few rods of the cut; then there was a general rush and yell enough to almost awaken the dead. Up to this time our line was as straight and in as good order as any line of battle ever was, while under fire. After that the line was not in such good order, but all seemed to be trying to see how quick they could get to the railroad cut. I had no thought of getting the flag till at this time, and I started straight for it, as did lots of others. Soon after I got the flag there were men from all the companies there. I did take the flag out of the color bearer’s hand, but just as I made a dash for it someone shot him and he fell forward and the flag had not struck the ground till I had it, and my first thought was to go to the rear with it for fear it might be retaken, and then I thought I would stay, and I threw it down and loaded and fired twice standing on it. While standing on it there was a 14th Brooklyn man took hold of it and tried to get it, and I had to threaten to shoot him before he would stop. By this time we had them cleaned out, when some were ordered to take the two pieces of artillery back that we recaptured. Others were ordered back with the prisoners we had taken. Others were ordered out on the skirmish line, and there was where I was ordered. I still had the flag, and when ordered to go on the skirmish line, asked Colonel Dawes what I should do with the flag, he said, ‘give it to me” and I did. Just then a sergeant of Co. H came up wounded, and was going to the rear, and the colonel told him to take it and take care of it. I then went on the skirmish line, and staid there until the 11th Corps gave way on the right, and we fell back to the edge of the city [actually back to near the Seminary] where battery B was stationed around what was left of us as a support to the battery. We repulsed several charges of the enemy, but when they got even with our right flank we fell back through the city, taking two of the guns of the battery with picket ropes, firing all the way back through the city.
    I afterwards saw the sergeant, after we came home on furlough, and I asked him how the staff got broken and he told me that when he went back to the city he entered a house and went to bed, and when we were driven back he thought that if the flag was left standing in the room they (the rebs) would get it, so he broke the staff in two and put the flag in bed with him, and in that way saved it.
    Now if C. W. Okey has a part of the staff, there is where he got it. I thought very little of the 14th Brooklyn man who tried to steal the flag from me on the battle field, but I think less of Okey to wait almost 20 years and then try to steal the honors of capturing the whole flag, by stealing a piece of the staff 20 years ago. But he is not the first one that has come up and claimed that he got the flag. There was a Co. B man [Frank Hare] at the reunion in Milwaukee, who claimed to have captured the flag. I did not know his object in so claiming, but got a few of the boys to certify to my taking the flag, and I still have them. Perhaps Okey would like to have them read or read them, so I will give you a copy of them. [“A Settled Question,” Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph, July 29, 1883, copy GNMP Library]

1886 Image of the Railroad Cut. Wallar captured the flag of the 2nd Mississippi near the left foregrond of the photograph. The crest of the ridge in the background is where the bridge over the cut is today. NPS

    Wallar did not mention the official after-action report of Lt. Colonel Rufus R. Dawes, who commanded the 6th Wisconsin at Gettysburg, probably because the Official Records of the war had not yet been published. But Dawes report confirmed that it had been Corporal F. Ashbury Wallar who captured the 2nd Mississippi flag before the Confederate surrender occurred. [War Department, War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889, v. 27, pt. 1, 276.]
    But even Wallar’s memory was not infallible and he omitted many details from his story, perhaps because he did not personally observe them in the excitement of battle or did not think they were important. There were several men of the 6th killed or wounded while trying to capture the colors of the 2nd Mississippi before Wallar got them. One of them may very well have been Okey, because he was wounded on July 1, and in a post-war account of the battle Lt. Colonel Dawes mentioned that Okey was shot in the melee for the colors. Elements of Okey’s account may very well be true. Also, the color bearer of the 2nd Mississippi, Sergeant William B. Murphy, was not wounded, but was captured.
    This story is a reminder that combat is a messy, chaotic business, and memory, particularly of a battle like Gettysburg, can be suspect. For some veterans, like Hare, having served at Gettysburg, done their duty and survived was not enough. They sought to rise above the rest and seek honors or glory they had not earned. In other cases, like Okey, they may have felt they were deserving of accolades not received and hence chose to exaggerate their deeds.
    One final note to this post; The Wallar family of DeSoto, Wisconsin sent three sons to serve in Company I, 6th Wisconsin. Frank and Sam joined in the summer of 61. Thomas, the youngest, enlisted in 1864. Miraculously, all three survived the war.

[For further reading about the colors story and the 6th Wisconsin at Gettysburg see, Lance J. Herdegen & William Beaudot, In the Bloody Railroad Cut at Gettysburg.]

D. Scott Hartwig,
Supervisory Historian

Smart Parking Coming to Gettysburg this Summer

Freedom Transit's trolleys provide free transportation between the Museum/Visitor Center and the national cemetery, Steinwehr Avenue, Baltimore Street, and downtown Gettysburg.

On the busiest days of the summer at Gettysburg National Military Park, parking lots at the Museum and Visitor Center can sometimes fill up.  And we haven’t even hit the 150^th anniversary year yet.  Fortunately, thanks to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), the York Adams Transportation Authority, the Gettysburg Foundation and other community partners, a solution is on the way.  “Smart Parking” will be installed and field tested this summer to reduce traffic congestion, reduce CO2 emissions and improve the visitor experience.

The computerized system will be activated when parking lots at the Museum and Visitor Center fill up – including overflow lots along Taneytown Road near the National Cemetery.  Once the smart parking system is activated, new electronic message signs that will be installed along Route 15 will direct visitors to park at The Outlet Shoppes at Gettysburg, located at Routes 15 and 97 (Baltimore Pike).   Freedom Transit shuttle busses will provide transportation from the Outlet Mall to the museum and to additional sites in the town of Gettysburg, for free.

Who Shot J.R.? Part Three

    Four years after his letter to Samuel Bates about Reynolds’ death, in 1880, Joseph Rosengarten gave the keynote address for the presentation of the Ole Balling (a Dutch artist) portrait of General Reynolds to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It was a

Joseph B. Rosengarten. Ed and Faye Max Collection

detailed account of Reynolds life and death that took up 28 pages of text. The story he told to the Historical Society gathering of Reynolds final moments differed in important details from that which he had written to Bates in 1876. In this version Reynolds was “personally attending to the hasty formation for the charge of the ‘Iron Brigade’ when he was fatally wounded by one of Archer’s skirmishers, at a moment when his aides were riding to the various regiments carrying the instructions of the general ‘to charge as fast as they arrived.’” In the same paragraph Rosengarten then proceeded to contradict his account that it was one of Archer’s skirmishers. He continues:
    Reynolds at once ordered it [Iron Brigade] to advance at double-quick, and followed as the leading regiment, the Second Wisconsin, under Fairchild, hurried into the woods, full of rebel skirmishers and sharpshooters; as soon as the troops were engaged there, Reynolds turned to look for his supporting columns and to hasten them on, and as he reached the point of woods he was struck by a ball fired, it is supposed, by a rebel sharpshooter in one of the trees, and was fatally wounded. [Addresses Delivered Before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Upon the Occasion of the Presentation of a Portrait of Maj.-Gen. John F. Reynolds, (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1880, pp. 6-34.]
    For the first time, a member of Reynolds staff suggested that the general had been shot by a sharpshooter. Why the change in story from what he had written Bates? Recall, in that version it was Rebels who “lay on the edge of the woods” that had shot Reynolds. There are other issues with Rosengarten’s account. Veil, a central figure in the letter to Bates, has disappeared. In this version Rosengarten has Reynolds being carried from the field in a blanket “swung over muskets, on the shoulders of his men.” Who are the men? He does not tell us. Rosengarten further has Reynolds personally attending to the formation of the entire Iron Brigade and sending orders to each of its regiments to charge as fast as they arrived, when there is no evidence that he had time to do anything but order the 2nd Wisconsin to charge into Herbst’s Woods. Nearly all of this is at odds with what Rosengarten wrote earlier and is absolutely at odds with Veil’s account and that of Reynolds’ sisters, written within two days of his death and based on information provided them by the staff. Readers of the first post in this series will remember that Veil’s 1864 account of Reynolds death, written for David McConaughy of Gettysburg, is highly consistent with what Reynolds sisters wrote in July 1863.
    Why did Rosengarten alter his account and suggest that Reynolds had been shot by a sharpshooter in a tree?

Confederate Cannons, Yankee Church-Bells

    On West Confederate Avenue, located just to the north of the North Carolina Memorial, stands an interesting artillery piece. It is a 12-pounder, bronze, but cast in the Confederacy, at Memphis, Tennessee in 1862 by the firm of Quinby and Robinson. And thereby hangs a tale; perhaps several. 
    In April of that year, General Beauregard issued a call to the people of the South for the donation of metals to meet the wartime emergency; specifically, bells for the casting of cannon. His request prompted the following poem, which ran in the Memphis Commercial Appeal later that month. Roughly following the meter of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells, the author exhorted his readers to remember that desperate times called for desperate measures.

Romances of Gettysburg: Who Shot J. R.? Part Two

    Before we begin to examine the sources that document Reynolds death and explore what they reveal to us about who might have shot him, it will help those readers unfamiliar with this incident to briefly review the events leading up to this fateful moment. Reynolds had committed one infantry division – Brigadier General James Wadsworth’s 1st Division – of his 1st Corps to relieve General John Buford’s cavalry division and attempt to check the advance of Confederate Major General Henry Heth’s infantry division on Gettysburg. A large interval existed between Wadsworth’s two brigades so that they arrived upon the field independent of one another. Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler’s 2nd Brigade, accompanied by Captain James Hall’s 2nd Maine Battery, arrived first. Reynolds personally placed Hall’s guns on McPherson’s Ridge beside the Chambersburg Pike and ordered Wadsworth to deploy Cutler’s regiments on Hall’s right and left as supports. The time was around 10:30 a.m. Heth had deployed two of his four brigades, Davis’s and Archer’s, and they were advancing on either side of the Pike, Davis north of it and Archer south of it. Cutler’s infantry and Hall’s artillery engaged Davis, but Archer advanced steadily against only light resistance from Buford’s dismounted cavalry. Archer’s regiments threatened to seize the woodlot of farmer John Herbst, located about 350 yards south of the Chambersburg Pike. These were a key to the McPherson’s Ridge position and Reynolds understood they must be held if he hoped to hold the ground west of Gettysburg. After posting Hall’s battery and seeing that two regiments of Cutler’s brigade, the 14th Brooklyn and 95th New York, were moving into position toward the McPherson farm on Hall’s left, Reynolds rode toward Herbst Woods. Having sent most of his staff off to deliver orders he was accompanied only by Captain Robert M. Mitchell, an Aide-de-Camp, Captain Edward C. Baird, the Asst. Adjutant General of Doubleday’s division, and Private Charles Veil, his personal orderly. Company L, 1st Maine Cavalry, served as Reynolds escort and headquarters guard, and while some of this company may have been present there is no evidence that they were with him at this time.