A few years ago, I promised a post talking about why so many people in the 40th Virginia went AWOL in the Fall of 1862.
A lot of time has passed since then, but I've finally gotten around to looking at the service records of some of the men. I've also done more reading about the war experience for soldiers, and the incidence and manifestations, during and in the years following the Civil War, of what we would now call PTSD. I'm not saying that these men were suffering from that, but records so far indicate plenty of reasons for particularly high stress at this time.
Here is what happened with my great-great grandfather and his three brothers.
In 1860, in the Stony Hill district of Richmond County, Virginia, there were 15 households headed by Baldersons. For the most part, they were farmers, but not BIG farmers...the largest Balderson farm having a real and personal value of $10,500, and the next largest, $600. Most were much, much smaller, averaging out at $806. By contrast, Robert Wormeley Carter, the largest landowner in the district, had a farm worth $325,000. This is the same parcel on which Ebenezer Balderson, my many-times-great-grandfather and a Scottish immigrant, had worked as an indentured servant during the first half of the previous century.
It's in the household headed by James Bailey Balderson, age 56, that our great-great-grandfather Presley lived. In 1860, Presley was the only son living at home, along with a younger sister, Margaret. The oldest Balderson brother, Charles, was a shoemaker who had been teaching his younger brother, James, the trade. James lived in the home of Charles and Charles' young family. Charles and James, 33 and 25 years old, both enlisted in Company B of the 40th Virginia Regiment on May 25, 1861. Both were musicians, but I have yet to find out what instrument(s) they played.
The second oldest brother, William (29), and Presley, the youngest at 23 (and my great-great-grandfather,) enlisted ten days later, in the Richmond County seat at Warsaw. Both were in Company D, along with some other Balderson cousins who enlisted on the same day.
William was the first casualty among the brothers.
Wounded on June 27, 1862 at the battle of Gaines' Mill, he died 2 weeks later, on July 13 at a hospital in Richmond. For a long time, I was unable to find out where he was buried, but recently I found scanned copies of his service records. Balderson is misspelled as "Bollison" on the records; interestingly, this is exactly how my father, as a small boy, pronounced his grandmother's last name, and she even signed his birthday card "Grandmother Bollison" when he turned three. This might be how everyone pronounced it where they lived. Anyway, Uncle William is buried in the soldiers' section of Hollywood Cemetery, the famous Confederate cemetery in Richmond City. Probably in an unmarked grave.
Charles had been ill shortly before William's death, and was sent to Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond. Three days after William's death, possibly even from the same hospital, he was furloughed and then discharged from service. He had a wife and a few children already at home. He returned to shoe and boot-making, and lived on into the 1890s.
The third brother, James, was a musician like Charles; they had both this and shoemaking in common. In James' records, he is listed as AWOL in the fall of 1862, just a couple of months after William died and Charles subsequently became ill and was discharged home. We don't know where James went or what he did in the months he was gone, but his records include a report of him being a prisoner, paroled on November 25, 1862. By January 1863, he and Presley had returned to service, the only two Balderson brothers remaining in the Army after less than two years of service.
The fourth and youngest brother, Presley, was sent to Chimborazo Hospital for the first time beginning a month after the death of William and Charles' illness and discharge. This was immediately following the regiment's engagement at Cedar Mountain, and he may have been the one casualty listed on the muster list. The reason for his hospitalization was "debilitas," in other words, weakness or feebleness: exhaustion. He remained in the hospital until October 23-- a period of over 2 months, after which he was furloughed and instructed to report back for duty on December 1. He was absent without leave for the month of December, but returned in January, along with his brother James.
That May, the war became very eventful for the brothers with the battle of Chancellorsville. James found himself so close to an exploding artillery shell that he lost his hearing. During the following 6 months, James was hospitalized more than once, going AWOL again in July and August of 1863. He was contracted in the spring of '64 to make shoes for Walker's Brigade, possibly 'alternative' service, due to loss of hearing or other wounds or illness.
Also at Chancellorsville, Presley received a gunshot wound through the left shoulder while defending the regimental flag after its bearer became a casualty (this is the story.....) This wound is renowned in family lore because of the harrowing treatment it received from the surgeon: a red hot poker was driven through it. It's moments like this that can change the trajectory of the future. His hospitalization at Chimborazo and the furlough that followed meant that Presley missed the events in Gettysburg, which proved close to disastrous for his regiment.
Fate intervened again at Weldon Railroad near Petersburg in August of 1864. During the dark and confusing violence, in the pouring rain, Presley was wounded through the left hand, an injury that would cause him pain and difficulty for the rest of his life as he supported his family by farming. While at home recovering in the late summer and early fall, he married his second cousin, Mary Ann Coates, who was probably a relative of Charles' wife, Virginia. Family story says that his old rusty (or bloodstained) bayonet hung over the fireplace at the home of his grandson, Sherwood (my uncle) in Howard County, MD. Sherwood's stepson may have taken it, and its whereabouts are unknown.
So, all of the brothers became absent for a period following immediately, or within a few months of their brother William's death. Charles never returned, and was discharged for reasons unknown.
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During the course of the next twenty four years, Presley and his wife Mary had 5 sons --- Burlington Lafayette, Valverde Manco, Franklin Lesley, Elton Presley, and Wilmore Earle; and 3 daughters --- Dorothy "Dora", Margaret "Maggie", and Emma.
The youngest of Presley's children, born when he was about 50, was my great-grandfather, Wilmore. Wilmore is small and his face is serious in the tintype that was taken of him with his elderly parents in around 1895. His mother appears severe, even a little frightening, dressed in mourning; Presley looks tired, but is smiling broadly as he stands behind his wife and youngest child. Later, when he was a young teenager, Wilmore was the only witness to his mother's death, after a sudden collapse while she was sweeping. She never regained consciousness. At this time his father, who had always been a farmer, was a disabled war veteran, unable to do much work of any kind in his later years. He was finally granted a small pension in 1915, ten years before his death at the age of 88.
When Wilmore grew up, he married Landonia "Tully" Minor, a young woman who had grown up in the same small corner of Virginia. According to my father, her family felt that they were somehow better than my great-grandfather's family.
Wilmore and Tully's first child, a daughter, was born in January, 1912. Her mother almost died following the birth, and Aunt Dora, her husband's big sister, came to the rescue. Aunt Dora took care of the baby for the month or so of my great-grandmother's recovery, and at some point during that time, she named the baby after herself: "Dorothy." Not everyone was thrilled that she did this. Baby Dorothy was my grandmother.
Aunt Dora had married Robert France in 1896, a man whose father had served in the war alongside her father. Their fathers' lives traveled parallel paths and these two must have had some common experiences growing up; they were raised on the same war stories, and probably grew up within each others' sight. They eventually moved up the peninsula and north to Washington D.C., where they had a son and adopted a daughter by the name of Isabelle Galahan.
A little over a year after the birth of Dorothy the younger, Letitia Countee, the local midwife, came to the farm in Newland to deliver Tully's second baby, a daughter. Sadly, Mary Althea lived only 6 hours. She was named after both of her grandmothers.
When Dorothy was very small, her father studied at Lynchburg College to become a minister. Soon after graduation, he and Tully became the parents of a boy who they named Sherwood. In the years that followed, Wilmore and his young family moved here and there in Virginia, the D.C. suburbs, and as far southwest as Harlan, Kentucky, on assignments at different churches. A few years later a third child was born, a second boy named Tennyson Carlyle.
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