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You are here: Home / Archives for 19th century

[FEATURED EXHIBIT] Daguerreotype of Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry

September 4, 2017 By James Mitchell Varnum

Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry
Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry

This photograph at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum shows Private Cyrus H. Brackett. Born in Acton, Maine, 20-year-old Cyrus Brackett enlisted in the First New England Cavalry as a resident of Dover, NH on October 12th 1861. He was mustered into Co. K on October 24th. Comprised of one battalion of New Hampshire men and two battalions of Rhode Islanders, the regiment was re-designated the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry in early 1862. In one of their first combat actions of the American Civil War, the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry heroically fought and captured the Confederate-held town of Front Royal, Virginia, which marked the upper reaches of the strategic Shenandoah Valley. Not satisfied with the town’s capture, the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry continued after the Rebels.

Though the retreating foe sent back their compliments in the form of shot and shell, our riders dashed fearlessly on and came upon their hastily formed line of infantry, beyond the farthest bridge, on the Winchester road, and here made one of the most bold, thrilling, magnificent charges on record. They smote the enemy like a tornado and broke their line. Here heroically fell most of the men we this day lost. Here slept in death the bravest of soldiers by the side of fallen horses and dying enemies. The memorable spot was in the vicinity of General Banks losses just one week before; thus refluent are the bloody waves of war. Never fell truer, braver men.

Private Cyrus H. Brackett was one of those brave men that fell to his death while making that fateful charge on May 30, 1862.

Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry
Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry
Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry
Private Cyrus H. Brackett, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry

Filed Under: Museum Exhibits, Varnum Memorial Armory Tagged With: 19th century, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry, civil war, varnum memorial armory

[FEATURE ARTICLE] A Civil War Angel of Mercy: Katherine Prescott Wormeley

September 4, 2017 By Brian Wallin

Katherine Wormeley, Lady Superintendent of Portsmouth Grove Hospital
Katherine Wormeley, Lady Superintendent of Portsmouth Grove Hospital

In the early days of the American Civil War, few military officers knew or cared much about the medical care rendered to their men although organized medical departments existed in both the Union and Confederate Armies. However, the South suffered from a lack of resources throughout the war. Military doctors varied in their qualifications from outright charlatans or ill-qualified political appointees, to a cadre of dedicated men who made the most of the limited assets and medical knowledge of the time.

The war claimed some 620,000 lives among the armed forces of both sides and another 50,000 civilian deaths. Medical care was, as noted, both primitive and in many areas, limited. There were only about 150 hospitals in the entire country and no formal nursing education programs. The idea of splitting nursing practices with msn vs dnp like today was a long way to come too, more on that later. Fortunately, civilians on both sides rose to the occasion and provided much-needed assistance in the delivery of care and services to wounded and ill soldiers. Perhaps one of the most important contributions was that provided by growing numbers of volunteer women nurses who braved the battlefield and the challenging conditions in military hospitals. The exact number of women who served is unknown, but certainly was in the thousands. Some historians suggest as many as 8,000 on both sides. Because of the volunteer and sometimes anonymous nature of their efforts, an accurate number may never be known.

The practice of medicine itself had barely begun to leave the dark days of the previous centuries. Battlefield technology had advanced rapidly, as it does in all wars, but the pace of medicine did not. Often, a minor wound became fatal due to inappropriate care, infection or simple ignorance. The horrific carnage of the war, coupled with rampant disease, took a heavy toll. Attention was forced on the issue.

Help was forthcoming almost after the hostilities began. The U.S. Sanitary Commission (USSC) was established on June 18, 1861, as a private non-profit relief agency to serve the medical needs of Union forces. Through a variety of efforts, it raised some $25 million dollars (comparable to nearly $400 million today to support sanitary standards in army camps, improved care, staffing and supportive services in military hospitals.

There was no similar private organization in the South, although individuals and states did what they could through such entities as the Ladies’ Soldiers’ Relief Society and the Association for the Relief of Maimed Soldiers. As in the North, there were few trained female nurses but those who volunteered learned by doing and quickly proved that a woman’s strength was not confined to home and family whether in the environment of a wealthy mansion or a log cabin.

Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.
Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.

The Union Army quickly authorized the establishment of military hospitals across the northern states to bring the sick and wounded closer to their homes. One such facility was Lovell General Hospital, also known as the Portsmouth Grove Hospital. Rhode Island Governor William Sprague, facilitated its creation in the village of Melville on the shore of Narragansett Bay, on the site of a former summer hotel. The first patients arrived by military hospital steamship on July 6, 1862. During the following years up to the end of the war, some 10,000 servicemen passed through the hospital’s facilities. The hospital greatly benefited from the presence of a number of dedicated women nurses, both paid and volunteer, under the able leadership of the focus of this month’s article, Katherine Prescott Wormeley.

The role of women as nurses in the war expanded rapidly. At first, the horrors of war injuries were thought to be too much for the sensitive female nature. But, that soon changed thanks to the assertive efforts of women like Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott, Annie Etheridge, Dorthea Dix (who was named superintendent of the female nurses in the Union Army) and many others who brought solace, comfort and attentive medical support to sick and wounded Union soldiers and sailors. Their counterparts in the South rendered similar care, although often with far fewer resources.

Katherine Wormeley (1861)
Katherine Wormeley (1861)

Our story this month looks at one dedicated and energetic woman who, although from a well-to-do and refined background, threw herself totally into a highly successful role as the Lady Superintendent of Portsmouth Grove Hospital. Katherine Prescott Wormeley (her name is sometimes spelled “Katharine”) was born in Ipswich, England in 1830. Her father was a Royal Navy officer and her mother, an American from Boston. On her father’s death, mother and daughter returned to the U.S. and settled in Newport. Katherine was of somewhat frail health, but that did not stop her from becoming a driving force in the general work of the Sanitary Commission and, specifically, at Portsmouth Grove. This writer’s fellow Rhode Island historian, Frank L. Gryzb’s 2012 book Rhode Island’s Civil War Hospital: Life and Death and Portsmouth Grove, 1862-1865, is an excellent chronicle of the hospital’s creation, existence and legacy and highlights the contributions of Katherine Wormeley and the women who joined her at Melville.

At first, the hospital suffered a lack of nurses as they had no on site housing, had to find their way to and from Melville every day and often could not afford the cost of transport, by private, coach, train or steamboat. Here’s where Katherine enters the picture.

She was already hard at work at the age of thirty-one supporting the war effort through the Newport Ladies’ Aid Society. She had secured a government contract to sew much-needed shirts for Union soldiers. Hiring local needy women, and paying them with her contract funding, she supplied some 50,000 shirts over a relatively short period during the early days of the war (the Army complimented her on the quality of the work). Soon after, she volunteered first at the battlefront in Virginia and then aboard a military hospital transport ship bringing sick and wounded soldiers north for care. This in itself was a daunting task, as the men were often in poor condition, and their seaborne journey didn’t help.

Katherine was a breed apart. Like many of her early nursing counterparts, she was a clear-thinker, not afraid to tackle a challenge and she put the needs of her patients above all else including government red tape and often prejudiced military officers. Her efforts during the Peninsular Campaign brought her to the attention of Surgeon General William Hammond. He offered her the position of Lady Director, in effect the superintendent of Portsmouth Grove in August of 1862, not long after the hospital opened. The role was, in effect, that of a superintendent, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the hospital in support of the commanding officer and medical director. At this point in time, Katherine’s own health was failing, but she still took on the challenge.

Calling on several of her friends to join her as assistants, they organized a highly efficient system of individual ward-based care by dozens of nurses. Wormeley soon had a residence building for her nurses and then got to work overseeing appropriate meals based on each patient’s needs, clean laundry (provided through a steam powered wash house), and improved individual patient records to ensure each man’s medications and general medical care were properly addressed and documented.

Layout of Map showing location of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.
Layout of Map showing location of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.

In its final configuration, Portsmouth Grove was a large and impressive facility on a twelve-acre site. Surrounding and administration building (the former summer hotel) were twenty-eight 160-foot by 25-foot buildings housing separate wards each accommodating 59 sick or injured men and staffed by nurses and aides. There was a general mess hall (which served mostly nutritious, although sometimes unappetizing meals), a barracks for the Union soldiers who served as hospital guards, and other buildings including a chapel, bakery, laundry (capable of washing and drying thousands of pieces of linen daily), carpenter and blacksmith shops, a stable, an ice house and a building for the sutler (in effect, the hospital PX).

Katherine Wormeley made sure that all of domestic services operated at maximum efficiency. She immediately earned the respect of the Army officers at the facility as well as the affection of the men for whom she and her nurses cared. Her administrative nursing assistants included her friends, a trio of sisters from New York: Sarah, Jane and Georgeanna (“Georgie”) Woolsey. She also recruited her cousin, Harriet Whetten, who later went on to become the superintendent of the Carver Military Hospital in Washington, D.C. These women had already been working with the Sanitary Commission and gladly accepted Katherine’s invitation. Female nurses reporting to them were paid $12 a month plus room and board. In comparison, a male nurse received $20 a month.

Map showing location of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.
Map showing location of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.

Katherine kept up her involvement with the Sanitary Commission, reaching out to them for assistance with special foodstuffs for holiday meals, and other needs. The Commission supported its activities across the North with a series of Sanitary Fairs, charitable community events. For one of these in Boston, Katherine turned out an eleven-page brochure in rapid time. It proved to be a popular item and sold well in support of the Commission’s efforts.

Katherine’s health continued to deteriorate, not helped by the frenetic pace at which she worked. She was forced to resign her post for health reasons in September of 1863, but her influence on the hospital remained throughout Portsmouth Grove’s existence. As her health permitted, she kept active in the work of the Sanitary Commission and served as associate manager of the New England Women’s Auxiliary Association, responsible for Rhode Island where she saw to the needs of returning veterans.

After the war, she lived for a time in Newport in a college built by Stanford White. Katherine became a well-known translator of French literature, including the works of Honore de Balzac and Moliere. In 1892, she published a collection of her communications for the Sanitary Commission under the title Letters from Headquarters during the Peninsular Campaign: The Other Side. Katherine Wormeley never married and died at the age of 78 in Jackson, New Hampshire.

Engraving of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.
Engraving of Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth, RI.

The end of the Civil War also quickly brought to a close the need for Portsmouth Grove. The hospital ceased operations in 1865 and its assets were auctioned off in September of that year. Gradually, the buildings were torn down or sold. During its operation, some 308 soldiers who died at the hospital were buried on the property. With the exception of a few bodies that were claimed by family or friends, the majority of remains were transferred to the Cypress Hills (NY) National Cemetery were they were interred in Section 1B of the Union Grounds. The hospital’s site saw another military use in 1901 when the Navy established a coaling station (later a fuel oil depot) and in 1942 when the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center was established. Their story is contained in a chapter of our book World War Two Rhode Island. Today, Melville is the site of a major commercial yachting center.

Without a doubt, the Civil War focused attention to the need for positive change in the delivery of healthcare, not the least of which was the importance of the role of nurses. Military hospitals, although they varied in quality on both sides, were a harbinger of well-equipped and centralized inpatient hospitals and better-trained physicians. The nurses of the Civil War earned the thanks from and respect by the men for whom they cared and paved the way for today’s skilled nursing profession. As Katherine Wormeley’s friend and colleague Jane Woolsey, in her in her post-war book Hospital Days wrote “It has been a tiresome march, but think of the results.”

— END —

Filed Under: Feature Article Tagged With: 19th century, civil war, Portsmouth

[FEATURED EXHIBIT] American Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island

July 20, 2017 By James Mitchell Varnum

U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island

Another great exhibit at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum…

The American Brass Band of Rhode Island was formed as a state-chartered military band in 1837 with Joseph C. Greene as its leader. The drum was donated to the band by the First Light Infantry of Rhode Island in 1845. In 1853, the band was incorporated into the Second Brigade, Rhode Island Militia.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, “the Band left for Washington, with an immense crowd witnessing their departure amid tremendous cheering. Each man gave his signature and voted to go irrespectful of compensation for their services.”

On July 21, 1861, the Band was present at the first major battle of the U.S. Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run. Band members helped care for and transport the wounded to safety. The drum was likely present at the battle. Being with the first unit to come under fire, the band quickly put down their instruments to act as stretcher bearers for the killed and wounded.

Military bands played an important role in the American Civil War. They kept troops in order on the march, intimidated the enemy in combat while simultaneously motivating their fellow soldiers to stay brave in the face of imminent danger.

U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island
U.S. Civil War Drum from the American Brass Band of Rhode Island

Filed Under: Museum Exhibits, Varnum Memorial Armory Tagged With: 19th century, civil war, drum, varnum memorial armory

[FEATURED EXHIBIT] Civil War Tintype of 2nd Lt. John K. Knowles

July 2, 2017 By James Mitchell Varnum

John Knowles Civil War Tintype Photo
John Knowles Civil War Tintype Photo

A new tintype photograph is now on display at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum. It is an image of 2nd Lt. John K. Knowles of Co. A in the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers. He enlisted on 14 August 1861 serving at New Bern, (possibly) Antietam, and Fredricksburg. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Crater (Petersburg) on July 30th, 1864. His body was never recovered as fighting continued for some days until a truce was finally called to bury the dead of both sides. From their regimental history, it reads:

Those bodies that were recognized and could be lifted on to stretchers without falling to pieces, were carried into our lines and buried. Pits were dug twenty or thirty feet long and about four feet deep for the rest. The poor fellows were then rolled, and in some cases, shovelled onto the stretchers, and dumped or laid in the holes, one on top the other, until within a foot of the top, and then covered with loose earth.

In course of time these bodies decayed. Subsequent storms washed the loose covering of earth down through, and for months after, until the end of the war, long rows of bleaching skeletons marked this field of awful slaughter.

John Knowles’ body still rests in one of these pits today. RIP and we should never forget his sacrifice to enable what Abraham Lincoln called, “a new birth of freedom”.

John Knowles Civil War Tintype Photo
John Knowles Civil War Tintype Photo

Filed Under: Museum Exhibits, Varnum Memorial Armory Tagged With: 19th century, civil war, museum exhibit

Varnum Continentals help preserve 1843 militia flag in North Kingstown

June 24, 2017 By James Mitchell Varnum

1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers

The Varnum Continentals are providing assistance in saving yet another Rhode Island historical treasure. This time, it’s a rare and beautiful, hand-painted, silk 1843 militia flag currently in storage at the North Kingstown Free Library. The flag will be professionally conserved and mounted for display at a site to be determined.

The militia unit depicted on the flag, The Wickford Pioneers who formed just after the Dorr Rebellion, existed for just a few years before they disbanded. They reformed at the start of the U.S. Civil War. What became of them is unknown … for now.

As an organization, the Varnum Continentals are thrilled to help preserve and protect history across the state of Rhode Island and beyond.

1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers
1843 Silk Flag from the Wickford Volunteers

Filed Under: Historic Preservation Tagged With: 19th century, dorr rebellion, flag, preservation

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[MAR. 20 DINNER MEETING] Maria Vazquez on Conservation of the USS Constellation Anchor

March 5, 2023 By James Mitchell Varnum

On Monday, March 20, Varnum Armory Vice President Maria Vazquez is the featured speaker for our monthly members meeting. Her presentation, “A Brief History of Anchors and the Conservation of the USS Constellation Anchor,” will give an account of the history of anchors, how they developed, and how they were used. The presentation will continue with Maria’s insight into the thought and research that went into conserving an anchor from the USS Constellation, a sloop-of-war ship.

About the Varnum Continentals

The Varnum Continentals are committed to the preservation of the historic heritage of our community, our state, and our nation. Please take a virtual tour of our museums to learn more about our mission to encourage patriotism. You can participate with us through active membership and/or philanthropic support in our non-profit organization. Donations are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Museum tours are welcomed and our facilities may be rented for suitable events.

Our Mission

The Varnum Continentals are committed to encourage patriotism through the Varnum Armory Museum, the Continental Militia, and the James Mitchell Varnum House and thus to preserve, support, and communicate the military history of our community, our state, and our nation.

Recent Posts

  • [MAR. 20 DINNER MEETING] Maria Vazquez on Conservation of the USS Constellation Anchor
  • [DEC. 12 DINNER MEETING] Speaker Greg Banner on The Halifax Disaster
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