To their living sons and daughters, the soldiers in blue and gray are flesh and blood, not distant figures in history books. Iris Lee Gay...
To their living sons and daughters, the soldiers in blue and gray are flesh and blood, not distant figures in history books. Iris Lee Gay Jordan, 92 (left), and Fred Upham, 93 (right)—two of the few remaining children of veterans of the Civil War—appear as they might have had they lived in the 1860s. The photographs are tintypes, made on a chemical-coated wet plate with a lens manufactured in 1862. By David A. LandePUBLISHED NOVEMBER 11, 2014 How many people alive today can say that their father was a Civil War soldier who shook hands with Abraham Lincoln in the White House? Fred Upham can. Despite sounding like a tall tale and a mathematical impossibility, it's documented truth. Fred's father,William, was a private in the Union Army's Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was severely wounded at the First Battle of Bull Run, in 1861, and later personally appointed by President Lincoln to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. William H. Upham as a West Point cadet Fred's in exclusive company—the dwindling group of children of soldiers who fought, North against South, 150 years ago. All are very old "children" (Fred, 93, is not the oldest among them), born mostly in the 1910s and 1920s to Civil War veterans and young brides. The fathers, typically on second marriages, were in their 70s or 80s when these children were born. Fewer than 35 of these remarkable offspring are now on the rolls of heritage groups that keep track of them. They're referred to as "real" sons and daughters and are given a place of honor at the ongoing events commemorating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. (See [url=http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/civil-war-sketches/katz-text]"A Sketch in Time: Bringing the Civil War to Life,"[/url]in National Geographic magazine.) Fred Upham, in a Stetson hat, looks as if he's stepped directly out of his father's time. Fred still wears a duplicate of William's 1866 West Point ring. "He was a loving father," Fred says. "Very kind and soft-spoken. I never heard any yelling." "A Treasure""They're a true link to another part of this country's history," says Gail Lowman Crosby, president of the real daughter club for the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). "Whether Confederate or Union, they're a treasure. The stories they tell today are the stories they heard as they sat on their daddy's knee." Iris Lee Gay Jordan is one of only 11 surviving daughters of Southern soldiers documented by the UDC. She was nine when her father, Lewis F. Gay, died, in October 1931. Her eyes still well up with tears as she remembers him. "Mostly, he told stories on Sundays," she says. "I could sit on the porch and listen to his stories all day." Corporal Gay had been in the Confederate Army's Fourth Florida Volunteer Infantry. He saw combat in numerous bloody battles across the South: in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. He was reportedly one of only 23 soldiers left in the Fourth Florida by war's end. Iris's and Fred's fathers were lucky. After being captured in separate battles in 1861 and put in prisoner of war camps—William Upham was sent south to Libby Prison, in Richmond, Virginia, and Lewis Gay north to Fort Delaware, near Wilmington—both were released the next year in a prisoner exchange that swapped Union soldiers for Confederates. Lewis F. Gay, Fourth Florida Volunteer Infantry Their treatment as prisoners, they both said, was humane at this early stage in the war—in contrast to the horrors that happened later on in notorious places like Andersonville, in southwest Georgia. "Prisoners were exchanged only sporadically for part of the war," says Derek Mills, educator at the National Civil War Museum, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Those who were exchanged early on were very lucky. As the war dragged on, exchanges broke down and didn't happen much again until the war was nearly over." Iris and Fred say their fathers held no animosity toward their captors. "My father said that the men in the North were just like he was," Iris says. "He told us, 'We were all far away from home, and we all would much rather have been home with our families.' There was no bitterness on his part at all." #financial_support_div{ display:none; position: absolute; width:300px; height:180px; margin-left: -150px; margin-top: -70px; /*- half of width and height */ top:50%; left:50%; padding: 5px; opacity:0.9; filter:alpha(opacity=90); z-index:1000; background-color:#000; color: white; } .close_box{ background: gray; color:#fff; padding:1px 3px; display:inline; position:absolute; right:1px; margin-right: -13px; margin-top: -13px; border-radius:3px; cursor:pointer; border: 1px #000 solid; } $(document).on("click",".close_box",function(){ $(this).parent().fadeTo(300,0,function(){ $(this).remove(); }); }); Loading the player ... Less
