Building A Bridge

PART THREE: THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Autumn colors draped the babbling stream; an occasional rumble of a vehicle on nearby Rt. 100 drifted through. I heard the dull thud of a crabapple and flutter of disturbed leaves. As I drove back to the little house for another load of stone, I looked at the contour of surrounding hills and mountains, and marveled that Union soldiers from Stockbridge strode these very fields, observed these same hills and mountains. I thought of those young men who worked these fields, who planted and harvested, who collected sap and boiled it to syrup.

I frequented town hall, perusing official records. I was aware of the great 1927 flood, which swept away half of Stockbridge’s mercantile center of Gaysville. First-hand accounts of that night are harrowing, the amount of physical destruction remarkable, but there was a day worse than that day, or any other, in the history of the small farming community of Stockbridge, Vermont. A day that threw Stockbridge headlong into the stark reality—and suffering—of the Civil War.

On May 5, 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac began the relentless hammering of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, which eventually led to its capitulation. On that day, the belligerents engaged in a dense wood aptly described as, The Wilderness. A neighboring Tunbridge diarist, Wilbur Fisk, described events:

“…the rebels gave us a warm reception. They poured their bullets into us so fast that we had to lie down to load and fire… we were under their fire over three hours, before we were relieved. We were close onto them and their fire was terribly effective. Our regiment lost 264 killed and wounded… where the bullets swept close to the ground, every bush and twig was cut and splintered by the leaden balls… along the whole length of the line I doubt if a single tree could have been found that had not been pierced several times with bullets, and all were hit about breast high. Had the rebels fired a little lower, they would have annihilated the whole line; they nearly did it as it was.”

May 5th proved the worst single day of the war for the state of Vermont, with over 1,200 casualties. Ten were associated with Stockbridge. Shot and wounded that day were eighteen-year-old factory hand Timothy Aldrich as well as Amasa Adams, Edward Brown, Thomas Cunningham, Levi Goddard, George Hale, John Morse, and Frank Sawyer. Blackmer Boulevard’s Perry Pierce was mortally wounded and died that evening. Twenty-four-year-old John Burnham, previously wounded and taken prisoner at Savage Station, who had been paroled, mustered out, and had reenlisted, was Killed in Action.

Enjoying our newly constructed fireplace, I thought of these Stockbridge men and how their war experiences were a microcosm of the entire Civil War. Frank Sawyer, of South Hill Road, had deserted and then returned to the army, before being wounded at The Wilderness. Rodney Thayer was wounded, 21-year-old Jones Smith Mortally Wounded in Action, and 25-year-old Jeremiah Wilson Killed in Action in the same assault in which Vermont’s famous Sleeping Sentinel William Scott lost his life at Lee’s Mills. Smith died three weeks later in a New York City hospital.

At least nine Stockbridge volunteers died of disease during the war, including brothers Selden and Morvalden Barnes, as well as 16-year-old Alfred Curtis. John Burnham and Levi Goddard, before being respectively killed and wounded at The Wilderness, had been captured together at Savage Station and exchanged. Four other Stockbridge men landed in Georgia’s notorious Andersonville prison: Franklin Kimball, Michael Tearney, William Hepworth, and David Johnson, Johnson dying there of scurvy. Twenty-seven-year-old Merrick Paige was Killed in Action four days before the fateful May 5th, in The Wilderness area. Joseph Hale and John Scobie both survived May 5th at The Wilderness, only to be Killed in Action a week later at Spotsylvania.

Cold Harbor inflicted seven more Stockbridge casualties, including farmer Alanson Packard and George Brown, both listed in a dusty town hall ledger as MWIA, Mortally Wounded in Action. And finally, I thought of one of the last Civil War casualties from these surrounding fields and hills. Later that month, in the same engagement in which David Johnson and Michael Tearney were taken prisoner, Oscar Paine was Killed in Action at Weldon Station.

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Oscar Paine… I recalled town hall notes indicating that an Edwina Paine once owned my little house and had lived there until her death in 1902. Was this woman related to Oscar Paine?

Like much historical research, the answer proved easier to determine than the question. This answer lay plainly on Stockbridge common, in Maplewood Cemetery. There I found a pair of identical Vermont white marble gravestones. The left is Edwina’s, and is inscribed, “Wife of Oscar Paine.” The right is a cenotaph, a monument to one buried elsewhere, inscribed, “In Memory of Oscar Paine.” It was all coming together.

NEXT WEEK, PART FOUR: WELDON RAILROAD