RARE Civil War Letter 1862 Soldier Charles Barber Suicide & War Geneseo NY

  
RARE Original Civil War Letter. I do not know as I shall ever see you again... For offer, a rare letter! Fresh from a prominent estate in Upstate NY. Never offered on the market until now. Vintage, Old, Original, Antique, NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed! This letter was found in some papers I bought from a local estate. Written from the newly formed Camp Union in Geneseo, New York - off to war. Interesting history of this camp. More than 700 men were. Service under the direction of. Became Companies A-G of the. Known as the "Wadsworth Guards". Interesting letter, with embossed logo of Eagle and George Washington at upper lh corner, and red and blue edges.

Years ago, as book was written with the letters of Charles Barber, a free mason of the town. Touching letter at end to his son Willie, telling him he may not see him again, and to be a good honest boy, etc. In good to very good condition.

If you collect 19th century Americana history, American military, etc. This is a treasure you will not see again! Add this to your image or paper / ephemera collection. Important genealogy research importance too.

Geneseo /dnsio/ is a village in and the county seat of Livingston County in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States, [4] south of Rochester. The name "Geneseo" is an anglicization of the Iroquois name for the earlier Iroquois town there, Gen-nis-he-yo, which means "beautiful valley". The village of Geneseo is lies within the western part of the town of Geneseo at the junction of State Routes 39 and 63 with U. The village's population was 8,031 at the 2010 census, [6] out of 10,483 in the town.

The United States Department of the Interior designated part of the villagethe Geneseo Historic Districta National Historic Landmark in 1991. The town of Geneseo was established in 1789, before the formation of Livingston County. Settlement began shortly after James and William Wadsworth arrived in 1790. The Wadsworths were participants in the negotiations of the Treaty of Big Tree between Robert Morris and the Senecas at the site of Geneseo in 1797. Geneseo, as well as nearby Mount Morris, were part of the Morris Reserve that Morris held back from his sale of much of western New York to the Holland Land Company.

The village of Geneseo became the county seat of Livingston County in 1821 and was incorporated in 1832. The State Normal School, now SUNY Geneseo, opened in 1871. A portion of the village was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior in 1991. By 1835, the village consisted of 83 families, and the streets were Main, Second, North, South, Center and Temple Hill. The village grew steadily, and in the 1850s Elm Street was opened.

The advent of the State Normal School in 1871 brought a surge of development, and Oak Street opened in the late 1880s. The private Temple Hill Academy, part of which still stands on Temple Hill Road, educated Chester A. During the Civil War, Union soldiers trained at Camp Union, located at what is now the corner of Lima Road and Rorbach Lane. During World War II, a prisoner-of-war camp was built in Geneseo; it housed mostly Italian soldiers. The Livingston County Courthouse and offices are located at the end of Main Street.

In its addition of Geneseo to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, the National Park Service said, [7]. One of the most remarkably preserved villages in northwestern New York, Geneseo is one of the best examples of "picturesque" architecture and town planning as expounded by American landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing (18151852) in his enormously popular and influential books. The cohesive quality of the surviving town displays a textbook of styles and is almost unique in American architectural history. The relatively sophisticated and imposing structures included in the district reflect the village's early-19th century prosperity as a market place for the valley's farming communities.

The valley of the Genesee is wide and fertile, with some of the best agricultural land in New York, but it was prone to flooding, and Geneseo suffered several bad floods until the Army Corps of Engineers' construction of the Mount Morris Dam upstream of the community in the 1950s. [5] Agriculture is still a large contributor to Geneseo's economy, but many use the area as a bedroom community for jobs in the Rochester area to the north. The village of Geneseo is governed by a mayor and four trustees. The Association for the Preservation of Geneseo (APOG) is a civic organization dedicated to preserving, improving, and restoring the places of civic, architectural, and historic interest to Geneseo and to educate members of the community to their architectural and historical heritage. Additional aims and purposes are to encourage others to contribute their knowledge, advice, and financial assistance.

In addition to the Geneseo Historic District, one individual building, The Homestead, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the village's landmarks, a fountain in the middle of Main Street built in the 1880s, was damaged when a tractor trailer crashed into it on April 7, 2016. The 104th New York Volunteer Infantry ("Wadsworth Guards" or "Livingston County Regiment") was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 104th New York Infantry was organized at Geneseo, New York beginning in October 1861 and mustered in for three years service on March 4, 1862 under the command of Colonel John Rohrbach.

The regiment was attached to Wadsworth's Command, Military District of Washington, to May 1862. 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Department of the Rappahannock, to June 1862. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, III Corps, Army of Virginia, to September 1862.

1st Brigade, 2nd Division, I Corps, Army of the Potomac, to March 1864. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, V Corps, to June 1864. 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, V Corps, to August 1864. 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, V Corps, to September 1864.

Provost Guard, V Corps, to May 1865. 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, V Corps, to July 1865. The 104th New York Infantry mustered out of service on July 17, 1865.

Left New York for Washington, D. Duty in the defenses of Washington, D. Expedition to Front Royal, Va.

To intercept Jackson, May 28-June 1. Picket duty on the Shenandoah and at Front Royal until June 10. Duty at Catlett's Station, Warrenton and Waterloo, Va. Battle of Cedar Mountain August 9.

Pope's Campaign in northern Virginia August 16-September 2. Fords of the Rappahannock August 2123. Battles of South Mountain September 14; Antietam September 1617. Duty near Sharpsburg until October 30. Battle of Fredericksburg, December 1215.

At Falmouth and Belle Plains until April 27, 1863. Chancellorsville Campaign April 27-May 6.

Operations at Fitzhugh's Crossing April 29-May 2. Battle of Chancellorsville May 25. Gettysburg Campaign June 11-July 24.

Battle of Gettysburg, July 13. Pursuit of Lee July 524. Duty on line of the Rappahannock and Rapidan until October. Advance to line of the Rappahannock November 78. Mine Run Campaign November 26-December 2.

Demonstration on the Rapidan February 67, 1864. Campaign from the Rapidan to the James May 3-June 15.

Battles of the Wilderness May 57; Laurel Hill May 8; Spotsylvania May 812; Spotsylvania Court House May 1221. Assault on the Salient May 12. North Anna River May 2326. On line of the Pamunkey May 2628. White Oak Swamp June 13.

Siege of Petersburg June 16, 1864 to April 2, 1865. Mine Explosion, Petersburg, July 30, 1864 (reserve). Reconnaissance toward Dinwiddie Court House September 15.

Warren's Raid on Weldon Railroad December 712. Dabney's Mills, Hatcher's Run, February 57, 1865. Appomattox Campaign March 28-April 9.

Lewis Farm, near Gravelly Run, March 29. White Oak Road March 31. Fall of Petersburg April 2. Pursuit of Lee April 39.

Appomattox Court House April 9. Surrender of Lee and his army. Grand Review of the Armies May 23. Duty at Washington until July.

The regiment lost a total of 233 men during service; 5 officers and 81 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, 2 officers and 145 enlisted men died of disease. Colonel John Rohrbach - discharged October 21, 1862 due to disability. Skinner - commanded at the Battle of Antietam. List of New York Civil War regiments. New York in the Civil War. James Samuel Wadsworth (October 30, 1807 May 8, 1864) was a philanthropist, politician, and a Union general in the American Civil War. He was mortally wounded in battle during the Battle of the Wilderness of 1864. Wadsworth was born to wealthy parents in Geneseo in Livingston County in western New York State. His father, James Wadsworth, was the owner of one of the largest portfolios of cultivated land in the state, and young Wadsworth was groomed to fulfill the responsibilities he would inherit. He attended both Harvard University and Yale University, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but had no intention of practicing. He spent the majority of his life managing his family's estate.

Wadsworth built Hartford House in Geneseo, NY upon his marriage in 1834 to the former Mary Craig Wharton of Philadelphia. He was president of the New York State Agricultural Society in 1842 and 1843.

Out of a sense of noblesse oblige, he became a philanthropist and entered politics, first as a Democrat, but then as one of the organizers of the Free Soil Party, which joined the Republican Party in 1856. In the 1860 presidential election, he was a presidential elector for Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamiln. [3] In 1861, he was a member of the Washington peace conference, an unofficial gathering of Northern and Southern moderates attempted to avert war. But after war became inevitable, he considered it his duty to volunteer.

Despite his complete lack of military experience at the outbreak of the Civil War, Wadsworth was commissioned a major general in the New York state militia in May 1861. He served as a civilian volunteer aide-de-camp to Maj.

Irvin McDowell at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 8. McDowell recommended him for command and, on August 9, Wadsworth was commissioned a brigadier general; on October 3 he received command of the 2nd Brigade in McDowell's Division of the Army of the Potomac. He then led the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, of the I Corps of the army until March 17. From March 17 to September 7, 1862, Wadsworth commanded the Military District of Washington. [4] During the preparations for Maj. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, Wadsworth complained to President Abraham Lincoln that he had insufficient troops to defend the capital due to McClellan's plan to take a large number of them with him to the Virginia Peninsula. Lincoln countermanded McClellan's plan and restored a full corps to the Washington defenses, generating ill feelings between McClellan and Wadsworth. Seeing no prospects for serving in McClellan's army, Wadsworth allowed his name to be put into nomination for governor of New York against antiwar Democrat Horatio Seymour, but he declined to leave active duty to campaign and lost the election. Wadsworth during the American Civil War. After McClellan left the Army of the Potomac, and after the serious Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Wadsworth was appointed commander of the 1st Division, I Corps on December 27, 1862, replacing Brig. John Gibbon, who had been promoted to command of the 2nd Division in the II Corps. He led this division until June 15, 1863, with two brief stints commanding the I Corps in January and March for about ten days combined.

Wadsworth and his division's first test in combat was at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He made a faltering start in maneuvering his men across the Rappahannock River below Fredericksburg and they ended up being only lightly engaged during the battle. His performance at the Battle of Gettysburg was much more substantial.

Arriving in the vanguard of Maj. Reynolds's I Corps on July 1, 1863, Wadsworth's division bore much of the brunt of the overwhelming Confederate attack that morning and afternoon. They were able to hold out against attacks from both the west and north, providing the time to bring up sufficient forces to hold the high ground south of town and eventually win the battle. But by the time the division retreated back through town to Cemetery Hill that evening, it had suffered over 50% casualties. Despite these losses, on the second day of battle, Wadsworth's division was assigned to the defense of part of Culp's Hill. When most of XII Corps was ordered to the left flank of the army, Wadsworth sent three regiments to reinforce the brigade of Brig. Greene, which was holding the summit of the hill. I Corps had been so significantly damaged at Gettysburg that, when the Army of the Potomac was reorganized in March 1864, its surviving regiments were dispersed to other corps. After an eight-month leave of absence, much of it spent inspecting colored troops on duty in the Mississippi Valley, Wadsworth was named commander of the 4th Division, V Corps, composed of troops from his old division and that formerly led by Maj. This speaks well for his performance at Gettysburg, because a number of his contemporaries were left without assignments when the army reorganized or were sent to minor assignment elsewhere. Wadsworth (seated, far right) and his staff. Scene of General Wadsworth's death. Tree in foreground was shattered by shell that killed his horse. At the start of Lt. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign, Wadsworth led his division in Maj. Warren's V Corps at the Battle of the Wilderness. On this day Wadsworth was Grant's oldest divisional commander at 56 years old, about nine years older than the next oldest. On May 5, Wadsworth was ordered to counter march and help defend the left of the Union position. However, he had lost his direction in the dense Wilderness underbrush and drifted to the north, exposing the left of his division to a sudden and harsh attack, which in turn led to the same treatment of the Union division next to Wadsworth. Wadsworth was mortally wounded on May 6, trying to turn his two intact brigades (his other brigade had collided with the Federal units on his left and lost cohesion) when he was shot in the back of his head. Wadsworth fell from his horse and was captured by Confederate forces that were pursuing his retreating men. He would die two days later in a Confederate field hospital. [6] Wadsworth's son-in-law, Montgomery Harrison Ritchie, went into the Confederate camp to retrieve his body. The day before he was wounded, he was promoted to major general, but this appointment was withdrawn and he received instead a posthumous brevet promotion to major general as of May 6, 1864, for his service at Gettysburg and the Wilderness. Wadsworth's remains were brought back to Geneseo, New York, and buried there in Temple Hill Cemetery.

Weeks after his father-in-law's death, Montgomery Ritchie died of disease contracted in battle. Fort Wadsworth in South Dakota was named for him in 1864. Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, one of the defenses of New York Harbor, also is named for the general; it is in the shadow of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Wadsworth, Nevada, was also named in his honor. His daughter Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair (18371921) became prominent as matriarch of Glenveagh Castle in County Donegal, Ireland, and the large JA Ranch in the Texas Panhandle.

His son, James Wolcott Wadsworth, Sr. Were successful New York politicians. His younger daughter, Elizabeth S. List of American Civil War generals (Union).

The American Civil War (also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865, fought between northern states loyal to the Union and southern states that had seceded to form the Confederate States of America. [e] The civil war began as a result of the unresolved controversy of the enslavement of black people and its disputed continuance.

War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, just over a month after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the president of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North, which also included some geographically western and southern states, proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery. States in February 1861, seven Southern slave states were declared by their state governments to have seceded from the country, and the Confederate States of America was organized in rebellion against the U.

The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states, and it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from native secessionists fleeing Union authority. These states were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave states, Delaware and Maryland, were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed due to intervention by federal troops.

The Confederate states were never diplomatically recognized as a joint entity by the government of the United States, nor by that of any foreign country. [f] The states that remained loyal to the U. Were known as the Union. [g] The Union and the Confederacy quickly raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought mostly in the South for four years.

Intense combat left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, [14] along with an undetermined number of civilians. [h] The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, [i] and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War. The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E.

Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the Southern states followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring June 23. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved Black people were freed.

The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The Civil War is one of the most studied and written about episodes in U. History, and remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate.

Of particular interest are the causes of the Civil War and the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The American Civil War was among the earliest industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships and iron-clad ships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts. The item "RARE Civil War Letter 1862 Soldier Charles Barber Suicide & War Geneseo NY" is in sale since Tuesday, January 26, 2021.

This item is in the category "Collectibles\Militaria\Civil War (1861-65)\Original Period Items\Correspondence, Mail". The seller is "dalebooks" and is located in Rochester, New York. This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Modified Item: No
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Theme: Militaria
• Original/Reproduction: Original
• Conflict: Civil War (1861-65)