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01/09/2010
Historical trove found at museum
By: Jeffery Kurz , Record-Journal staff
Photos by Rob Beecher / Record-Journal
Marie Secondo, curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington, holds one of the 152 original letters sent home from the Civil War by Andrew Upson of Plantsville.
Marie Secondo was near the end of her first year as curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington when, in the midst of organizing a supply closet, she came across a small shoebox that held a time-erasing bundle. Inside were letters, most of them still in the envelopes in which they'd been sent. She opened a few and, as she recalled, said, "Holy cow, can these be real?"
Though the letters were dated nearly a century and a half in the past, they were in fine enough shape to convey a sense of immediacy.
"You'd be surprised," she said. "The paper quality back then was excellent."
Some still showed the stain of peach preserves from a spilled container sent from a Southington farm to a war front nearly 150 years ago.
The writing was equally fresh, and Secondo found herself submerged in the words, so much so that when she read the last of the 152 missives, she felt a mood of depression at having reached the end. It was as though the letters had been written to her, as though she'd been with the person who had written them.
Secondo spent the following year, 2005, mostly in her spare time, transcribing the letters, and they're now available for anyone to peruse via the Web site of the Southington Public Library: www.southingtonlibrary.org.
Readers are likely to find themselves just as entranced with the story of Capt. Andrew Upson, as told mostly through his letters to his wife in Plantsville during the Civil War. Upson was involved in many of the major battles of the conflict and was wounded and taken prisoner in one of its most significant. Because he was an educated man, a graduate of Yale College, his writing is erudite and insightful, often touching, and at moments rises to poetic sublimity.
"What I have seen of human nature, its vices, follies, weaknesses - this has enlarged my views much & left impressions that will not be effaced," wrote Upson to his wife, Elizabeth, in August 1863, a year into his service in the war.
The letters are also full of more practical considerations. A month later, he tells his wife he needs a hat:
"I want a hat. The one I got at Annapolis is already broken in three places and looks seedy enough - it will decidedly be the worst looking on any officer soon."
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Upson grew up on a family farm in Plantsville and was in his late 30s, with four children, when he enlisted on July 21, 1862, as a first lieutenant in the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.
He did not live to see the end of the war. He died, at age 39, of wounds suffered in a gun battle with rebel guerrillas in Tennessee in February 1864, a year and two months before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House.
His wife died in 1910. A letter from the Department of Interior pension office in 1873, which Secondo has yet to transcribe, informs Elizabeth that she is entitled to a $20-a-month pension, plus a couple of dollars for each of her children, including back pay dating to her husband's death.
After Elizabeth Upson died, the box of letters likely went to one of her sons, Frank Upson, and then to his daughter, Leila Upson Barnes, the wife of Bradley Barnes, who lived in the house that is now the Barnes Museum. There they waited until Secondo uncovered them.
During his service in the war, Upson had his encounters with greatness, including seeing Ulysses S. Grant, the future president who became the general President Abraham Lincoln had long been looking for as the military leader to defeat Robert E. Lee's Confederate army.
"Gen. Grant passed through here last evening, a little before dark - I had a good view of the hero," wrote Upson to his wife in October 1863. "The news that he was aboard the train gathered a large crowd speedily & the boys called him out - He came to the rear platform of the car, walking with a cane, for he is a little lame, & said, 'I am glad to see you: but I can't make a speech, I never talk.' "
Upson was at the battle of Fredericksburg, one of the bloodiest of the war, in which the Union lost 12,600 men.
He was wounded and taken prisoner months later, during the battle of Chancellorsville.
Upson taken prisoner
Chancellorsville, in early May 1863, was one of the battles in which Lee gained victory by defying military convention and splitting his army in the face of superior forces. But the glory came with a high casualty cost, including the death of Lee's most effective general, Stonewall Jackson, who was fatally wounded by friendly fire.
"I lost my hat, boots, wallet, suspenders, pistol, belt, note book, knife, everything but my watch," wrote Upson to his wife a few weeks after the battle. Upson describes a rebel charge and a call for retreat which he did not hear. He found himself in the midst of fire, and taking a weapon from a fallen comrade, was firing back. "In this way I was engaged when suddenly someone called upon me to surrender," he wrote.
"The fellow who called to me was about 6 rods off and close to him stood 15 or 20 Union soldiers who had surrendered - 'Throw down your gun' said he - 'I won't' went back. 'You must surrender' - 'I won't surrender.' I was loaded and my hand all ready to draw if he made any advance. Had he not stood in the midst of our men I should have given him a leaden pill."
This particular antagonist having turned away, Upson ignored additional calls to surrender, tried to escape the surrounding enemy and then decided to play dead. He did this for hours, in the hope that friendly forces would rally, and was continually poked and prodded by enemy passersby, losing all but his watch, until "two decent looking fellows" came along.
"Their conversation indicated that they were gentlemen," wrote Upson. "They concluded I was an officer. One of them, feeling my hand, said I was not dead and ought to be taken care of - I thought no more of this then, they were the means of my final capture, for they went to their field hospital and reported a federal officer severely wounded up in the woods ..."
Upson, who was returned to his army in a prisoner exchange, also had opportunity, later that month, to describe to his wife his imprisonment.
Of being transported by railroad to Richmond, he wrote, "I had many discussion with rebel officers and citizens - They inquired if I voted for Lincoln. 'Yes and did my best to help elect him - I was wide awake' - That made some staring - Finally one inquired if I would do the same again - 'Certainly & more too" - 'Would you enlist to fight us again?' 'Yes, fight you till you get sick of rebellion ...'"
Upson, who was promoted to captain in October 1863, had not returned to his company by the time of the battle of Gettysburg, generally regarded as the turning point of the war. It was the defeat of Lee's attempt to invade the North and force negotiations to end the conflict.
After Gettysburg, the South's fortunes were in decline, but Upson was characteristically guarded, and prescient, about celebrating too soon.
"I tell you Jeff Davis will have the heart ache when he hears of all these disasters," wrote Upson, referring to the Confederacy's president. "But our people must not go into extravagant ecstasies too soon - We may yet have to drink deeply of disappointment & defeat."
"I wish people were not so easily swayed from the extremes of hope & despair," he wrote. "A defeat knocks us flat - A success elevates us to the mountain tops - We are not balanced right - I see it all through the army - When reverse & retreat comes too many are ready to give over all effort & surrender the cause - I never shall forget how our company surprised me after the Fredericksburg affair - Those are the times that test men - the spirit of those who are true rises higher in proportion as difficulties and dangers thicken."
When the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was mustered out of the service on June 13, 1865, Upson had been dead more than a year. It was in Tennessee, where he'd seen Grant, that he met his end.
A drawn-out death
In Tennessee, he was put in charge of a company, and told his wife he had two good officers, including Lieut. E.N. Doolittle. "He is a cousin of the Doolittle from Cheshire and used to live there himself," Upson wrote. "He is a son of Warren Doolittle - Guess father used to know him."
After a few months in Alabama, Upson was back in Tennessee with his company, guarding the railroad and lines of communication. From there, he reports that "Lieutenant Doolittle of my company is sick and not expected to live," and, later in the letter: "His duties at times have been burdensome and the opinion is that he has greatly overtaxed his strength. He is a young man, unmarried, having parents living in New Haven."
The letters reveal only Upson's side of the conversation with his wife, but even without Elizabeth's correspondence it's clear this is a love story as well as an account of warfare.
"Now My Dear Wife I am over flowingly grateful to you and wish I could say it at your lips rather than your eyes," he writes at the beginning of 1864.
Upson at the time was in Tracy City, Tenn., and assures his wife that he has finally been placed in a comfortable situation she had for so long wished for him, headquartered in the home of an English family with children that remind him of his own.
He did not have long to enjoy the comfort. In his second letter of January that year, Upson takes his time before mentioning his wounds, and when he does, it's with reassurance: "Today I am handling myself in bed and in all probability shall soon be out of it."
Elizabeth was not reassured, and her anxiety must have increased as Upson's subsequent letters became more and more brief.
"It is a beautiful day the 12th since I was wounded," he writes on Feb. 1. "I am alive and for ought I can see shall continue illustrating how low and weak man can be reduced & still survive."
Elizabeth apparently wanted to come see her husband, but the trip was considered too treacherous. His final letter to her is dictated: "You can hardly know the difficulty of dictating a letter under my present circumstances," he writes on Feb. 15. "And it is only my extreme desire to relieve your anxiety that I do as much as this."
In Elizabeth's stead, Upson's brother, M.U. Upson, made the trip, and reported on Feb. 17 that "while I should have enjoyed your company, I have had many occasions to see the wisdom of the course adopted. A lady could much easier go to Chattanooga than to this place."
"We were misinformed of the character of his wounds," the brother wrote. "His neck was slightly hurt. The ball which struck under the left shoulder blade instead of passing down, or around the body & then up to his chin as we supposed - passé(d) through to the neck going through one lung & under the collar bone & was extracted on the side of his neck. How much damage it has done is impossible to estimate."
On April 10, S.M. Smith, a Union private, wrote to Mrs. Upson, telling her how the wounds that had killed her husband had occurred. Elizabeth had apparently written to him, expressing gratitude for his support.
Smith's letter describes how he and Upson were ambushed by rebel guerrillas: "The whole squad started after us firing as they came on arriving in the bushes we got separated & seeing the impossibility of escape by running. I ran into a log house & hid behind the door but had scarcely done so before the building was surrounded & I was dragged out & robbed of watch post money ..."
Asked who is in command, Smith said, "Captain U," but is told that Upson is dead. Later, he hears that Upson is alive and asking to see him.
"I found him laying face downwards & apparently unconscious or insensible," wrote Smith. "I turned him over & asked him if he knew me he said he did & told me that 'the villains shot him after he surrendered.' The 2 guards denied it & told me to go back with them."
Smith took Upson to a home where at first the family refused to help. But other residents of the town were concerned about Upson, who had planned to establish a school at Tracy City. The first day of school was supposed to be the day after the raid.
" ... the citizens all seemed to be very sorry & would often come to the sick bed to look at & enquire 'how the poor Captain was getting along,' " wrote Smith.
"He was not retained as a prisoner nor paroled either as they did not think he would live," Smith said. "His chief concern seemed to be about his family especially his wife - was fearful that it would make you sick. I used to open your letters and hold them up so that he could read them which he always did himself."
Upson died Feb. 19, 1864. He is buried at Quinnipiac Cemetery, in Plantsville.
What's unique about the collection of Upson letters is not that they date from the Civil War; there are hundreds of thousands of letters from that era. What makes them unique is that they were written by an educated and articulate author, who provided a great deal of detail, said Matthew Warshauer, a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University.
"He's kind of pouring his heart out and expressing things on a sophisticated, intellectual level, and that's the stuff you don't always find," said Warshauer.
Warshauer is chairman of a statewide committee planning a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, starting April 2011. Part of the plan includes helping middle school and high school teachers spread the word about Connecticut's important role in the conflict. Warshauer says he's argued that the Union could not have survived without Connecticut, which helped provide arms, money and equipment, along with soldiers, for the war.
Upson's letters will now play a role in delivering that message.
Historical trove found at museum
By: Jeffery Kurz , Record-Journal staff
Photos by Rob Beecher / Record-Journal
Marie Secondo, curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington, holds one of the 152 original letters sent home from the Civil War by Andrew Upson of Plantsville.
Marie Secondo was near the end of her first year as curator of the Barnes Museum in Southington when, in the midst of organizing a supply closet, she came across a small shoebox that held a time-erasing bundle. Inside were letters, most of them still in the envelopes in which they'd been sent. She opened a few and, as she recalled, said, "Holy cow, can these be real?"
Though the letters were dated nearly a century and a half in the past, they were in fine enough shape to convey a sense of immediacy.
"You'd be surprised," she said. "The paper quality back then was excellent."
Some still showed the stain of peach preserves from a spilled container sent from a Southington farm to a war front nearly 150 years ago.
The writing was equally fresh, and Secondo found herself submerged in the words, so much so that when she read the last of the 152 missives, she felt a mood of depression at having reached the end. It was as though the letters had been written to her, as though she'd been with the person who had written them.
Secondo spent the following year, 2005, mostly in her spare time, transcribing the letters, and they're now available for anyone to peruse via the Web site of the Southington Public Library: www.southingtonlibrary.org.
Readers are likely to find themselves just as entranced with the story of Capt. Andrew Upson, as told mostly through his letters to his wife in Plantsville during the Civil War. Upson was involved in many of the major battles of the conflict and was wounded and taken prisoner in one of its most significant. Because he was an educated man, a graduate of Yale College, his writing is erudite and insightful, often touching, and at moments rises to poetic sublimity.
"What I have seen of human nature, its vices, follies, weaknesses - this has enlarged my views much & left impressions that will not be effaced," wrote Upson to his wife, Elizabeth, in August 1863, a year into his service in the war.
The letters are also full of more practical considerations. A month later, he tells his wife he needs a hat:
"I want a hat. The one I got at Annapolis is already broken in three places and looks seedy enough - it will decidedly be the worst looking on any officer soon."
Advertisement
Upson grew up on a family farm in Plantsville and was in his late 30s, with four children, when he enlisted on July 21, 1862, as a first lieutenant in the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.
He did not live to see the end of the war. He died, at age 39, of wounds suffered in a gun battle with rebel guerrillas in Tennessee in February 1864, a year and two months before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House.
His wife died in 1910. A letter from the Department of Interior pension office in 1873, which Secondo has yet to transcribe, informs Elizabeth that she is entitled to a $20-a-month pension, plus a couple of dollars for each of her children, including back pay dating to her husband's death.
After Elizabeth Upson died, the box of letters likely went to one of her sons, Frank Upson, and then to his daughter, Leila Upson Barnes, the wife of Bradley Barnes, who lived in the house that is now the Barnes Museum. There they waited until Secondo uncovered them.
During his service in the war, Upson had his encounters with greatness, including seeing Ulysses S. Grant, the future president who became the general President Abraham Lincoln had long been looking for as the military leader to defeat Robert E. Lee's Confederate army.
"Gen. Grant passed through here last evening, a little before dark - I had a good view of the hero," wrote Upson to his wife in October 1863. "The news that he was aboard the train gathered a large crowd speedily & the boys called him out - He came to the rear platform of the car, walking with a cane, for he is a little lame, & said, 'I am glad to see you: but I can't make a speech, I never talk.' "
Upson was at the battle of Fredericksburg, one of the bloodiest of the war, in which the Union lost 12,600 men.
He was wounded and taken prisoner months later, during the battle of Chancellorsville.
Upson taken prisoner
Chancellorsville, in early May 1863, was one of the battles in which Lee gained victory by defying military convention and splitting his army in the face of superior forces. But the glory came with a high casualty cost, including the death of Lee's most effective general, Stonewall Jackson, who was fatally wounded by friendly fire.
"I lost my hat, boots, wallet, suspenders, pistol, belt, note book, knife, everything but my watch," wrote Upson to his wife a few weeks after the battle. Upson describes a rebel charge and a call for retreat which he did not hear. He found himself in the midst of fire, and taking a weapon from a fallen comrade, was firing back. "In this way I was engaged when suddenly someone called upon me to surrender," he wrote.
"The fellow who called to me was about 6 rods off and close to him stood 15 or 20 Union soldiers who had surrendered - 'Throw down your gun' said he - 'I won't' went back. 'You must surrender' - 'I won't surrender.' I was loaded and my hand all ready to draw if he made any advance. Had he not stood in the midst of our men I should have given him a leaden pill."
This particular antagonist having turned away, Upson ignored additional calls to surrender, tried to escape the surrounding enemy and then decided to play dead. He did this for hours, in the hope that friendly forces would rally, and was continually poked and prodded by enemy passersby, losing all but his watch, until "two decent looking fellows" came along.
"Their conversation indicated that they were gentlemen," wrote Upson. "They concluded I was an officer. One of them, feeling my hand, said I was not dead and ought to be taken care of - I thought no more of this then, they were the means of my final capture, for they went to their field hospital and reported a federal officer severely wounded up in the woods ..."
Upson, who was returned to his army in a prisoner exchange, also had opportunity, later that month, to describe to his wife his imprisonment.
Of being transported by railroad to Richmond, he wrote, "I had many discussion with rebel officers and citizens - They inquired if I voted for Lincoln. 'Yes and did my best to help elect him - I was wide awake' - That made some staring - Finally one inquired if I would do the same again - 'Certainly & more too" - 'Would you enlist to fight us again?' 'Yes, fight you till you get sick of rebellion ...'"
Upson, who was promoted to captain in October 1863, had not returned to his company by the time of the battle of Gettysburg, generally regarded as the turning point of the war. It was the defeat of Lee's attempt to invade the North and force negotiations to end the conflict.
After Gettysburg, the South's fortunes were in decline, but Upson was characteristically guarded, and prescient, about celebrating too soon.
"I tell you Jeff Davis will have the heart ache when he hears of all these disasters," wrote Upson, referring to the Confederacy's president. "But our people must not go into extravagant ecstasies too soon - We may yet have to drink deeply of disappointment & defeat."
"I wish people were not so easily swayed from the extremes of hope & despair," he wrote. "A defeat knocks us flat - A success elevates us to the mountain tops - We are not balanced right - I see it all through the army - When reverse & retreat comes too many are ready to give over all effort & surrender the cause - I never shall forget how our company surprised me after the Fredericksburg affair - Those are the times that test men - the spirit of those who are true rises higher in proportion as difficulties and dangers thicken."
When the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was mustered out of the service on June 13, 1865, Upson had been dead more than a year. It was in Tennessee, where he'd seen Grant, that he met his end.
A drawn-out death
In Tennessee, he was put in charge of a company, and told his wife he had two good officers, including Lieut. E.N. Doolittle. "He is a cousin of the Doolittle from Cheshire and used to live there himself," Upson wrote. "He is a son of Warren Doolittle - Guess father used to know him."
After a few months in Alabama, Upson was back in Tennessee with his company, guarding the railroad and lines of communication. From there, he reports that "Lieutenant Doolittle of my company is sick and not expected to live," and, later in the letter: "His duties at times have been burdensome and the opinion is that he has greatly overtaxed his strength. He is a young man, unmarried, having parents living in New Haven."
The letters reveal only Upson's side of the conversation with his wife, but even without Elizabeth's correspondence it's clear this is a love story as well as an account of warfare.
"Now My Dear Wife I am over flowingly grateful to you and wish I could say it at your lips rather than your eyes," he writes at the beginning of 1864.
Upson at the time was in Tracy City, Tenn., and assures his wife that he has finally been placed in a comfortable situation she had for so long wished for him, headquartered in the home of an English family with children that remind him of his own.
He did not have long to enjoy the comfort. In his second letter of January that year, Upson takes his time before mentioning his wounds, and when he does, it's with reassurance: "Today I am handling myself in bed and in all probability shall soon be out of it."
Elizabeth was not reassured, and her anxiety must have increased as Upson's subsequent letters became more and more brief.
"It is a beautiful day the 12th since I was wounded," he writes on Feb. 1. "I am alive and for ought I can see shall continue illustrating how low and weak man can be reduced & still survive."
Elizabeth apparently wanted to come see her husband, but the trip was considered too treacherous. His final letter to her is dictated: "You can hardly know the difficulty of dictating a letter under my present circumstances," he writes on Feb. 15. "And it is only my extreme desire to relieve your anxiety that I do as much as this."
In Elizabeth's stead, Upson's brother, M.U. Upson, made the trip, and reported on Feb. 17 that "while I should have enjoyed your company, I have had many occasions to see the wisdom of the course adopted. A lady could much easier go to Chattanooga than to this place."
"We were misinformed of the character of his wounds," the brother wrote. "His neck was slightly hurt. The ball which struck under the left shoulder blade instead of passing down, or around the body & then up to his chin as we supposed - passé(d) through to the neck going through one lung & under the collar bone & was extracted on the side of his neck. How much damage it has done is impossible to estimate."
On April 10, S.M. Smith, a Union private, wrote to Mrs. Upson, telling her how the wounds that had killed her husband had occurred. Elizabeth had apparently written to him, expressing gratitude for his support.
Smith's letter describes how he and Upson were ambushed by rebel guerrillas: "The whole squad started after us firing as they came on arriving in the bushes we got separated & seeing the impossibility of escape by running. I ran into a log house & hid behind the door but had scarcely done so before the building was surrounded & I was dragged out & robbed of watch post money ..."
Asked who is in command, Smith said, "Captain U," but is told that Upson is dead. Later, he hears that Upson is alive and asking to see him.
"I found him laying face downwards & apparently unconscious or insensible," wrote Smith. "I turned him over & asked him if he knew me he said he did & told me that 'the villains shot him after he surrendered.' The 2 guards denied it & told me to go back with them."
Smith took Upson to a home where at first the family refused to help. But other residents of the town were concerned about Upson, who had planned to establish a school at Tracy City. The first day of school was supposed to be the day after the raid.
" ... the citizens all seemed to be very sorry & would often come to the sick bed to look at & enquire 'how the poor Captain was getting along,' " wrote Smith.
"He was not retained as a prisoner nor paroled either as they did not think he would live," Smith said. "His chief concern seemed to be about his family especially his wife - was fearful that it would make you sick. I used to open your letters and hold them up so that he could read them which he always did himself."
Upson died Feb. 19, 1864. He is buried at Quinnipiac Cemetery, in Plantsville.
What's unique about the collection of Upson letters is not that they date from the Civil War; there are hundreds of thousands of letters from that era. What makes them unique is that they were written by an educated and articulate author, who provided a great deal of detail, said Matthew Warshauer, a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University.
"He's kind of pouring his heart out and expressing things on a sophisticated, intellectual level, and that's the stuff you don't always find," said Warshauer.
Warshauer is chairman of a statewide committee planning a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, starting April 2011. Part of the plan includes helping middle school and high school teachers spread the word about Connecticut's important role in the conflict. Warshauer says he's argued that the Union could not have survived without Connecticut, which helped provide arms, money and equipment, along with soldiers, for the war.
Upson's letters will now play a role in delivering that message.