Colonel John M. Loomis
After Missionary Ridge, perhaps due to the disastrous attack and devastating Union losses at the Tunnel Hill fight, Loomis’s career in the military was ruined. Letters written to Lincoln and Grant on his behalf requesting promotion to brigadier general were ignored, causing him to resign on April 14, 1864, a little more than one year before Appomattox. In a letter to General Sherman on the same day, he wrote, “The pride and self respect which I cherish is so hurt by the continual promotion over me of my juniors.”
Colonel Holden Putnam
Fire Marshal and, later, Colonel Putnam lies buried in City Cemetery, Freeport, Illinois. The epitaph on his memorial reads as follows:
“Thy Name be thy Epitaph”
E. Elmer Ellsworth
Elmer was the North’s first casualty of the Civil War, and he became an instant martyr for the Union cause. The devastating news of his death saddened thousands of admirers across America. The Lincoln family openly mourned him as his body lay in state at the White House.
General John E. Smith
After Missionary Ridge, John E. Smith marched with Sherman to the sea. During this time, he was promoted to major general and eventually commanded the District of West Tennessee. After being mustered out of volunteer service in April, 1866, he accepted the colonelcy of the Twenty-Seventh Infantry—regular army—serving during the Indian wars until retiring in May of 1881. He died in Galena, Illinois, on January 29, 1897.
“Allie” (Jennie Hodgers)
a.k.a. Albert D. J. Cashier
-Seated to the Right-
Private Cashier (seated on the right) continued through the war unsuspected of being a woman. After Vicksburg she fought with the Ninety-Fifth Illinois during the Red River Campaign and Brice’s Cross Roads, and at the horrific battles of Franklin and Nashville, where there were record casualties. After the war she returned to a hero’s welcome at Belvidere, Illinois, and then worked as a handyman and farmhand in Saunemin. She never married and continued to disguise her gender until 1911 when her leg was fractured in an automobile accident and during medical inspection, the attending physician was shocked to notice her true gender. Her secret was kept for a while, but was exposed two years later, causing a sensation in Northern Illinois and across America. She lived another two years in the limelight and then passed away on October 11, 1915. She was buried with full military honors at the Saunemin Cemetery, leaving her legacy as the only documented woman in the Civil War to fulfill an army enlistment. (Author’s note: In order to avoid any confusion with Jenny Putnam, the name “Allie” was substituted for the first name “Jennie” of Jennie Hodgers legend. According to conflicting historical accounts, Cashier [sometimes recorded as “Cashire”] referred to herself as “Jennie Hodgers” prior to enlistment. Legend has it that Hodgers was a teenage stowaway from Belfast, Ireland, who arrived in America, eventually settling in Northern Illinois near the Rock River in the 1850s.—jwh)
Jenny Putnam
After the Civil War, Jenny moved to Chicago with her mother, Leonora, and her brother, Charlie. After experiencing the Chicago Fire firsthand in 1871, she moved to San Francisco where she also survived the devastating 1906 earthquake. It is not known whether she ever married.
T.J. Lockwood
T.J. returned to his hometown, and despite his blindness, he prospered. Aaron Dunbar’s History of the Ninety-Third Regiment records the following: “He is one of the leading business men of Buda, Ill, and does many marvelous things, in the way of business, for a blind person.”
Trick, a.k.a. Patrick Kane
Trick survived his wound and continued with the Ninety-Third Illinois, participating in Sherman’s March to the Sea. He returned to Buda after mustering out with the rest of the regiment in June, 1865. Margaret Schmitt, Trick’s granddaughter and past curator of the Sheffield Museum in Illinois, remembered well how he would hold his grandchildren on his lap and tell the story of his boyhood friend T.J. who carried him off the Champion Hill battlefield.
Willie Lincoln
Willie died in the White House in 1862.
Tad Lincoln with Father
Tad died nine years after Willie.
Mary Todd Lincoln
Four years after Tad’s death, Mary Todd was committed to an insane asylum by her oldest and only living son, Robert. She was released several months later and traveled abroad for seven years. She died in Springfield, where her fondest memories were, in July 1882.
Major Luther Cowan
After his courageous charge at Vicksburg, Luther (seated) was buried in his hometown of Warren, Illinois. The local newspaper, Warren Independent, wrote on May 31, 1864, “The funeral of Maj. Cowan took place yesterday and was largely attended. Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, the church was full and overflowing.”
Elliott N. Bush
Captain Company G
Ninety-Fifth Illinois Volunteers
Killed June 10, 1864, at Guntown, Mississippi.
Lieutenant Colonel Maltby
Forty-Fifth Illinois Lead Mine Regiment
Promoted to brigadier general, he became the military governor of Vicksburg in September 1867. He remained in that position until his death the following March.
Captain Charles F. Taggart
Captain Taggart, good friend of Colonel Putnam, participated in Sherman’s March to the Sea. He resigned in January 1865 due to health. After returning to Freeport, he became a postal clerk and lived fifteen more years. His obituary in the Freeport Bulletin read, “Capt. Taggart enjoyed the fruits of a well spent life surrounded by the blessings vouchsafed to him in a happy home and children of whom any father might be proud.”
Charlie (Charles Flint Putnam)
A few years after his father’s death at Missionary Ridge, Charlie moved with his sister, Jenny, and his mother, Leonora, to Chicago. Following in his father’s footsteps, he chose a military career and accepted an appointment to the US Naval Academy at the tender age of fourteen. After graduation from the academy in 1873, at his request, he served in the Asiatic Squadron in the Far East and then later conducted rescue missions for stranded expeditions to the North Pole. Just one month after his twenty-seventh birthday, he followed his father’s fate and perished in the line of duty. A monument today stands as a tribute to Charlie on the US Naval Academy grounds that reads: “To the Memory of Charles Flint Putnam, Master, U.S.N., who volunteered for duty on board the U.S. Steamer Rogers, a vessel dispatched to the Arctic Ocean for the relief of the Jeannette Exploring Expedition. After having gallantly succored his shipwrecked companions while returning to his station of Cape Serdze-Kamen, Siberia, he drifted out to sea and perished alone on the ice in St. Lawrence Bay. Behring Straits, about Jan. 11, 1882. This tablet is erected by his friends and brother officers in loving remembrance and as a memorial of his heroic sacrifice.”
Photo credits and primary source documents courtesy of the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL; National Archives, Washington, DC; Galena Historical Society and U. S. Grant Museum, Galena, IL; Bureau County Historical Society and Museum, Princeton, IL; Stephenson County Historical Society, Freeport, IL; and private collections.
Notes
Original Letters &Primary Source Documents
1Elmer E. Ellsworth diary (manuscript copy) by Mrs. Edgar B. Barton, stepdaughter of Private Francis E. Brownell. Minnesota Historical Society, 1921.
2Ibid.
3National Archives Collections, Washington, DC.
4Chicago History Museum Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
5Letters of General John E. Smith. Collection of Kirby Smith (descendant of General John E. Smith), Barrington, Illinois.
6Ibid.
7Civil War Letters and Diary of L.H. Cowan, Galena Historical Society and U. S. Grant Museum, Galena, Illinois.
8National Archives Collections, Washington, DC.
9Civil War Letters and Diary of L.H. Cowan, Galena Historical Society and U. S. Grant Museum, Galena, Illinois.
10Ib
id.
11Letters of General John E. Smith. Collection of Kirby Smith (descendant of General John E. Smith), Barrington, Illinois.
12Civil War Letters and Diary of L.H. Cowan), Galena Historical Society and U. S. Grant Museum, Galena, Illinois.
13Ibid.
14Ibid.
15Letters of General John E. Smith. Collection of Kirby Smith (descendant of General John E. Smith), Barrington, Illinois.
16Civil War Letters and Diary of L.H. Cowan, Galena Historical Society and U. S. Grant Museum, Galena, Illinois.
17Ibid.
18Letters of General John E. Smith. Collection of Kirby Smith (descendant of General John E. Smith), Barrington, Illinois.
19Aaron Dunbar, Civil War Journals of Aaron Dunbar, vol. 2, p.3. Bureau County Historical Society and Museum, Princeton, Illinois.
20Ibid. pp. 23–24.
21National Archives Collections, Record Group 233, Records of the US House of Representatives (December 1, 1862).
22National Archives Collections, Washington, DC.
FRIENDS OF THE WIGWAM: A Civil War Story Page 34
