Footsteps to the Past

Today I took a drive back in time to walk among the fields that long-ago ancestors once walked. However, these fields were not youthful playgrounds for young boys to lose themselves in childhood games, but battlefields where young boys became men.  As I stood on the edge of the field and looked at the expansive space I tried to imagine what it might have looked like in 1864 during one of the bloodiest battles in American history.

During the Civil War Union armies launched a series of offensives across Virginia known as the Overland Campaign.  Here Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee faced each other with aggressive assaults at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna River, Totopotomoy Creek, and Cold Harbor.

I began my trip at Cold Harbor battlefield where for thirteen days Union and Confederate armies faced each other. The battlefield still showed the trench lines that separated the opposing forces by 150 yards as they launched massive assaults against each other.  It’s hard to imagine what it might have looked like back then; the smoke-filled field from canon fire, the noise of gun fire piercing the air, the sounds of men injured or dying on the field. Today, it was serene. The air was filled with the sweet smell of late summer sweet grass, the birds tweeting, squirrels busy collecting food for the winter, and crickets chirping.

It was on this battlefield that two of my ancestors, Dustan S. Walbridge and Isaac N. Watts fought on the side of the Union troops against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate troops. On June 1 and 3, 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant collided with Lee in headlong assaults that resulted in enormous losses for Grant and a fatal injury for Dustan Walbridge.

Lt. Dustan S. Walbridge

Dustan S. Walbridge was born 25 Oct 1832 in Wolcott, Lamoille, Vermont and died 19 June 1864, just 17 days after sustaining a fatal wound in the battle of Cold Harbor.  Dustan served in Company A, 1st Regiment, Vermont Heavy Artillery.  His rank when he enlisted was Private, and his rank the day he died was Second Lieutenant.  During the battle, a mini ball shattered his right arm just above the elbow, splintering the bone. Sergeant Soper applied a cord as a tourniquet which saved Dustan from bleeding to death on the battlefield. Sergeant Soper and another soldier took him to the rear of the field where an amputation was performed. Lieutenant Walbridge was later moved to the Douglas General Hospital in Washington, D.C. where he died from his wounds. Lieutenant Walbridge served his country with honor and saw action in Spottsylvania, North Anna River, Pamunkey River, Hanover Court House, and Cold Harbor battles.  He was regarded by the men in his company as one of the truest soldiers of the many true ones in Company A. His rapid promotion from the rank of Private to that of Second Lieutenant bears testimony of his fidelity to his country.  Lieutenant Dustan S. Walbridge is buried in Peacham Cemetery, Peacham, Vermont.

Sergeant Isaac N. Watts

During the same time that Lieutenant Walbridge was sustaining his fatal wound, his half-brother Isaac N. Watts attached to Battery M, 1^st Regiment of the Vermont Heavy Artillery was also at Cold Harbor. Isaac’s rank in was that of Corporal and rank out, First Sergeant. Sergeant Watts’ regiment fought in some of the most famous battles of the Civil War to include; Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Winchester, and Cedar Creek. Isaac was a prolific writer and kept two diaries between 1864 and 1865 about camp life, drills, inspections, duty, marches, and events as they unfolded. However, it was his letters home to his family that gave more detailed descriptions of what life during the Civil War really looked like.

When Isaac mustered out of the army in August 1865 having served since 1863, he wrote of his 22^nd birthday, “I who was the youngest boy, the baby as it were, of the family, am getting to be quite old, and am a dirty, ragged soldier.”  At 22, he felt old and by all accounts had seen and experienced more in those 3 years of battle than a man of 22 today.

Dustan and Isaac were not the only two brothers from the same family that served, their brother Lyman S.

Lyman S. Watts

Watts also served the Union as a civilian.  Lyman was appointed by the office of the U.S. Christian Commission, an office that promoted spiritual and temporal welfare to the men of the army, as a delegate to serve one month in the Union Army.  Lyman had completed his seminary course and was serving as a pastor in Massachusetts when he was assigned to the 20^th Corps in Washington, D.C.  It is here that he spent long days giving sermons, leading prayers, and comforting men. 

As I travelled North from Cold Harbor stopping along the way at each significant battlefield that Dustan and Isaac fought at, I took the time to walk slowly on the fields, touching the ground where so many gave their lives and where these two brothers, my 4^th great uncles served their country, one with his life.