"Effects"

[johan_steele]

I was researching 4th MN VI at the historical society today and ran across a rather disturbing document. It was lists of effects of dead Union soldiers and it detailed how they were sent home from a hospital. Date of entries from January to March 1865.

For example:

Pvt Tennessee Robbins, I Co, 4th MN Veteran Volunteer Infantry
Died 20 Feb 1865, Consumption resulting from wounds received October 1864. (Alltoona perhaps?)

5 feet 9 & 1/2 inches in height light complextion, brown eyes and hair. Civilian Occupation: Farmer

Inventoried Effects: $21.90, packet of letters, 1 blanket, 1 pr boots, 1 pr drawers, 1 hat, 1 pr sox.

Inventoried 20 Feb 1865 4 o clock. Packaged and placed in care of postal service with receipt to be signed and returned as proof of delivery.

There were several hundred on the list from this unnamed hospital.

It had to be one hell of a package to receive and judging from the document there were many like it most w/ similar gear. Though one soldier, a Sgt had $340.55 plus his clothing & such... gambler maybe. I was suprised to see some odd items. One soldier had a "chair" listed in his effects another a "brass spitoon" but perhaps the oddest was that of a Captain who sent home a "sewing machine." Perhaps 2/3 listed a bible among their effects and many several books though w/ the exception of bible they were listed only as "book".

Inventory of effects must have been one very depressing job, not one I would have preffered.

[blue_zouave]

Johan, that unlucky job fell to the hospital steward or someone under his command. I agree, must have been very depressing. A lot of times the surgeon or steward would also write letters home to the families.

Zou

[scone]

My guess is a chaplain could have taken care of the effects as well.

A sad thing to do for sure would be no more diffrent than a officer of mess mate writing to inform someone of a lost loved one.

[CChartreux]

Shane -

Thanks for posting about your experience today.

I wish there was a way to express with some clarity and precision the emotional force and intense profundity of coming upon a small and trivial personal item carried by some anonymous soldier 140 years ago (whether a document conveying such information about those things...or the actual items themselves). Some true relic of an individual...that rather dwarfs the more clinical cluster of facts and figures. They're like little beacons totally unobstructed by the passage of time and it seems that it is in that place where the soul becomes engaged in its bewildering ability to hold the terrible and the sublime in one hand. How is it that those tiny and small things, like personal effects (even the comical and unexpected ones), betray some intimate exponential capable of stunning one's thoughts to stillness?

I should remain jealous of poets that might possess such collections of words sufficient to the task...some way to actually say it and give it a name.

[Fifth Iowa]

Yes, this was a side duty that had to be performed. I have another example posted on one of my web pages: www.scriptoriumnovum.com/e/flanders.html

[gary]

In the field, a trusted friend would have collected the belongings and sent it home either through someone in the regiment who was returning home or by express. Sometimes the officer(s) collected the personal effects and sent them home. At other times, if it lacked sentimental value, they auctioned it off and sent the proceeds home. I recall reading in some service record (at the National Archives) where the personal effects were missing and the officers did that. A lengthy explanation had to be sent to the father of the deceased.

[william42]

Shane, wasn't "consumption" another term for what we call pneumonia now? Or maybe tuberculosis. I'm not sure.

CChartreux: Thank you for such an eloquent tribute to the fallen boy. Very well expressed. It gives meaning to the suffering he endured from October of '64 to February of '65, contrasting with the few notes in the ledger documenting his death, and the final disposition of his few meager possessions. Your words could easily be applied to each of the 620,000 fallen soldiers on both sides, and I doubt than any of them would object.

Terry

[CChartreux]

Terry - thanks for your kind compliment!

[The 'personal effects' get me every time!]

[blue_zouave]

Originally Posted by william42

Shane, wasn't "consumption" another term for what we call pneumonia now? Or maybe tuberculosis. I'm not sure.

Consumption was tuberculosis. So called because the victim wasted away... was consumed by the disease, so to speak.

[johan_steele]

I'm going to betray my ignorance on things medical but I have to ask this of those more learned than I. I have seen several references to men dieing of consumption resulting from wounds... can wounds cause TB? Or is it a matter of wounds weakening the immune sys enough for consumption to take hold.