Cheshire Connecticut during the Civil War years 1861 – 1865

Aug 17

4 min read

Richard Reggie Smith Research/Editor Cheshire Connecticut Phoenix News

Creative Commons 4.0

The Episcopal Academy—today’s Cheshire Academy—has become a military school under the steady hand of the Reverend Sanford Jackson Horton. Sixty-five state-issued muskets with full accoutrements have arrived from Hartford, and General John Arnold is putting the scholars through their paces right where the granite war monument now stands.

July morning in 1864 and the air still carries the sharp scent of gun oil mixed with cut grass and the faint sweetness of ripening orchards. The Episcopal Academy—today’s Cheshire Academy—has become a military school under the steady hand of the Reverend Sanford Jackson Horton. Sixty-five state-issued muskets with full accoutrements have arrived from Hartford, and General John Arnold is putting the scholars through their paces right where the granite war monument now stands. Townspeople gather along the edges of the green. Some cheer. Others watch in silence. These are not abstract recruits. These are the sons of local farmers and shopkeepers learning the drill that may soon carry them south.

Cheshire's own Sergeant Eri D Woodbury would earn the Medal of Honor — Sergeant Eri D Woodbury

While those boys marched and wheeled on the Cheshire green, the nation itself was locked in a

struggle that felt both distant and terrifyingly close. By 1864 the war had already dragged into its fourth year. Abraham Lincoln was fighting for re-election against former General George B. McClellan. The Democratic platform talked of peace and negotiation; the Republicans, under the temporary “Union” banner, insisted the rebellion must be crushed. In the western theater Sherman’s army was closing on Atlanta. In the Shenandoah Valley Sheridan was about to smash Early’s forces at Cedar Creek—the very battle where Cheshire’s own Sergeant Eri D. Woodbury would earn the Medal of Honor. Farther east, Grant’s Army of the Potomac was locked in the grinding Overland Campaign, pushing toward Richmond and Petersburg at a cost in blood that made every northern village flinch when the casualty lists arrived.

The war reached into every corner of daily life. One hundred and twenty-six Cheshire men enlisted. Many joined Company A of the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; others filled the ranks of the 27th. The casualty lists that arrived after Chancellorsville in May 1863 struck hard. Corporal Titus Moss of the 20th was among the dead, along with Privates Reuben Benham and John L. Preston of the same regiment and William Burke of the 27th. Those names were read near the post office. The silence that followed settled into certain houses and stayed there for years.

Hartford, only a short ride north by the Canal Railroad, served as both state capital and emotional nerve center for Connecticut. Governor William A. Buckingham, a staunch Union man, had already been re-elected once and was fighting to keep the state firmly in the Republican column. The Hartford Courant filled its columns with telegraphic dispatches from the front, lists of Connecticut dead and wounded, and sharp political commentary. When the legislature met, debates over bounties, the draft, and the $300 commutation clause grew heated. In November 1863 two Cheshire representatives—Benjamin A. Jarvis and Charles Ives—found their names printed on a partisan “Black List” for refusing to support a state bounty meant to encourage enlistments. The Courant and other papers used such lists to shame men they considered soft on the rebellion. At the same time, Hartford’s Soldiers’ Aid societies collected bandages, clothing, and food, and Cheshire farmers answered by loading an entire railroad car with vegetables and fruit for the New Haven Soldiers’ Aid Society so the boys at the front might taste something grown in their own soil.

At the same time, Hartford’s Soldiers’ Aid societies collected bandages, clothing, and food, and Cheshire farmers answered by loading an entire railroad car with vegetables and fruit for the New Haven Soldiers’ Aid Society so the boys at the front might taste something grown in their own soil.

Cheshire itself remained a farming town of dirt roads, stone walls, and modest frame houses. The Canal Railroad rattled through a couple of miles north of the center, carrying passengers, coal, and the occasional car of produce. On one Friday the noon train ran over a cow near Cheshire station, throwing a coal car off the track and damaging the engine; no one was hurt, but the delay reminded everyone how fragile the link to the wider world could be. Farther up the line, near the Cheshire-Prospect border, two local men hunting near Roaring Brook killed fifteen poisonous adders in a single afternoon—small reminders that the countryside still held its own dangers.

The war reached into every corner of daily life. One hundred and twenty-six Cheshire men enlisted.

Many joined Company A of the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; others filled the ranks of the 27th. The casualty lists that arrived after Chancellorsville in May 1863 struck hard. Corporal Titus Moss of the 20th was among the dead, along with Privates Reuben Benham and John L. Preston of the same regiment and William Burke of the 27th. Those names were read near the post office. The silence that followed settled into certain houses and stayed there for years.

Even as the lists came in, ordinary disasters continued. The wooden factory at Mixville—once John Mix’s gimlet works, later used by Waterbury parties for cotton manufacturing—burned to the ground one Wednesday night, throwing a considerable number of operatives out of work. On a Sunday night thieves entered Levi Munson’s store, cracked the safe, and took about twenty-five dollars in cash plus a quantity of goods. A barn belonging to Joseph E. Lanyon went up in flames, suspected of being set by an incendiary. A passenger train jumped the track two miles above Cheshire after a broken rail; Mrs. Bradley of Cheshire was found on the roof of a car, badly hurt, while a New Haven doctor suffered a broken thigh. These local calamities unfolded beside the larger grief, the way a cracked teacup sits on a table where a letter of condolence has just been opened.

Social life did not entirely stop. Members of the Cheshire Lodge of Good Templars traveled to a large picnic at Compounce Pond, sailing and driving with lodges from Plantsville and Hartford. The Cheshire Agricultural and Horticultural Fair still drew entries of working cattle, cows, and steers. After Appomattox the Academy’s baseball nine played match games against New Haven clubs and celebrated victories with holidays and suppers. The Reverend Charles Little was installed as pastor of the Congregational Church. Young Dr. C. E. Hemerston, a Cheshire native and recent Yale Medical School graduate, drowned while bathing in the Naugatuck River—another local loss that had nothing to do with battle yet still felt like part of the same hard season.

When the guns finally fell quiet in the spring of 1865, Cheshire did not wait long to mark what it had given. Plans took shape for a granite soldiers’ monument twenty-four and a half feet high, to cost two thousand dollars. On the Fourth of July 1866 the obelisk was dedicated on the town green. It originally carried the names of fourteen Cheshire men who never came home. Stand there today and you are standing on the same ground where Academy cadets once drilled under General Arnold, where produce wagons rolled toward the railroad, and where the names of Titus Moss and the others were first spoken in grief. The Academy buildings have changed. The Mixville factory site is quiet. The old dirt roads are paved. Yet the story remains right under your feet—small-town history that helped decide the fate of the nation, one enlistment, one casualty list, and one carved name at a time.