52 in 2014 Challenge: #25: Dreamer

I have no idea if Horace H. Newberry was a dreamer.  I didn’t even know who he was until I came upon his gravestone at the First Congregational Church in South Windsor, CT. I’m enjoying a morning bike ride when I come upon the old cemetery behind the church, and the veteran’s flags placed on Memorial Day stood out against the grass and headstones. This one stuck out both because of his age (only 19) and the location – Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Most kids at that age have their dreams, and if he was like a lot of the youth that went off the fight in the Civil War, he probably had more than a few.  Many thought of their look in the uniform, of the camaraderie with their friends and neighbors, and the misplaced notion of the romanticism of war.  Most of the soldiers had never left their home state prior to the war.  While many from the North were fighting and dying in the Mid-Atlantic, Horace H. Newberry was designated to go to Louisiana.  I can only imagine how a kid from Connecticut reacted to being in Louisiana in March.

 

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Unfortunately, he never had the chance to fulfill his dreams.  It isn’t clear he ever saw battle:

 ” March 22nd, Sunday. We were ordered to be ready for inspection but there was none on account of some of the rifles being loaded. Toward night we were ordered to be ready for marching, and have such things as we could get along without, packed in boxes. It was raining as we were getting ready for another start. Horace Newbury of our company died last night and we laid him to rest this morning under a beautiful magnolia tree.”(1)

Horace H. Newberry was a member of the 25th Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers (2). The unit was recruited in the central Connecticut area in the fall of 1862. They were mustered into service on November 11, 1862, and by mid-December were in  Baton Rouge as part of the Army of the Gulf under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks (3). The unit would take part in the siege of Port Hudson, the Battle of Irish Bend, and numerous other skirmishes.  The unit sustained heavy casualties, and was mustered out of service on August 26th of 1863. (1)

 

 

(1)The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut
Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion, by George P. Bissell and Samuel K. Ellis and Thomas McManus and Henry Hill Goodell

(2) http://distantcousin.com/Military/CivilWar/CT/Volunteers/25thRegiment/

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Prentice_Banks#The_Army_of_the_Gulf