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- Aug 27, 2011
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One frigid evening in February, 1872, a man found himself trudging through the snow on a roadway near the village of Cleveland, Illinois. He was a strong, able-bodied man, dressed in good working suit, with a pair of new boots on his feet, and a coon-skin cap on his head." In his hand was an oilcloth valise ... and he didn't have any idea who he was, or how he came to be there. He went into Cleveland, looking for help, but found that nobody there knew him. He thought his name was Thompson, but he wasn't sure … he began calling himself Henry Thompson. It was the beginning of a long journey of rediscovery. Over time, some things about his distant past gradually began to come back to him. His immediate past, however. remained shadowy at best (would be for the rest of his life).
"His mind was clouded," one newspaper later said, "but the clouds slowly lifted. Old memories came before him as dreams." In the dreams, he pictured himself lying on a battlefield, bullets whizzing around him. He also dreamed of a log house, and a soldier's cap with the letters "O.V.I." on the crown. Though he learned that the war had been over for years, he became convinced he had been a soldier, member, perhaps, of an Ohio regiment … he couldn't be sure. For, before that cold February evening, he was really sure of nothing.
Slowly, he began to make a new life for himself. "Thompson found work, afterwards went to Iowa, and from there to Minnesota, and in the town of Winona he married Miss Jane Verrey, who would bear him seven children, four of whom are now (1887) living. In 1877 he went to Kansas, where he preempted land.." He became well known locally, and the Kansas press began spreading the story of the "soldier without a past." But, his memories remained vague and spotty at best, more impressions than real memories.
In that valise he had been carrying, besides some clothes, was only a New Testament printed in 1841 (unmarked except for an inscription in rhyme written in a feminine hand on the flyleaf). That book, and those verses would become an important clue to his identity.
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Some years later, in the town of Van Wert, Ohio, an elderly man was facing a crisis. Sick, alone, and unable to care for himself, he, in desperation, decided to apply for a Survivor's Pension, by right of his son Hugh, who had been killed during the war. With help from the local G.A.R., Robert Thompson filled out the pension application, and waited. Weeks later, word came back that a pension could not be granted until proof could be provided of his son's death. Hugh's comrades had seen him fall on September 20, 1863, "struch on the head by a spent canister fragment," on the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga. They had left him behind. He was recorded as "missing and presumed dead." When no prisoner of war record was found after the war's end, it was assumed he was among the war's multitude of unidentified dead. The Van Wert G.A.R. post started making inquiries to try to find more definite information.Just about that time, the G.A.R. of Meade County, Kansas, sent out a circular to all the Posts in Ohio, asking for help in identifying a man without memories, a man called Henry Thompson. The name and his description seemed too close to be coincidence. He was sent a picture of Hugh Thompson during the war, and he returned a recent picture of himself -- there was no longer much room for doubt. Henry Thompson was invited to come to Van Wert to find out for sure. "But the clouded mind of the man contained no clear vision of Van Wert. He remembered vividly the home of his boyhood, and wrote an exact description of it as he had last seen it, a quarter of a century before -- log house and stone chimney, the well with the long sweep to raise the bucket, the high-banked stream that ran through the farm. [So,] with many doubts and as many hopes, he made his way to Van Wert, … and was easily identified by his family and former comrades."
He had arrived in Van Wert on August 29, 1887, and was taken to meet his father, Robert Thompson. The old man had no doubts, and was ecstatic at the return of his Hugh. But, the man without a memory still couldn't "feel" the connection. Finally, he brought out the Testament he had found in his valise, and began to read out loud the verse that was written on the flyleaf. At that moment, a feminine voice from behind him, spoke the rest of the verse for him. He turned, and immediately recognized his cousin, Lydia Hallery, who had given him the book when he marched off to war, and written the verse with her own hand. "When he saw her, he recognized her, and with a glad cry rushed into her arms, and they sobbed and cried like children. It was a reunion the like of which has never been depicted upon the mimic stage."
Memories flooded back to him … not complete, but vivid memories. His life up to that day in Ckickamauga eventually returned in very large part. But the eight years following remain a mystery to this day. At the time of his "return," many conjectures were forthcoming. The Columbus Daily Inquirer suggestion [Sept. 9, 1887]:
Hugh Thompson had enlisted in September of 1861, in Company H, 15th Regiment of Ohio Volunteers. He had served with that regiment for two years, first in the Army of the Ohio, and then, from Nov. 1862, in the Army of the Cumberland.
This story has been put together from a half dozen separate accounts from the 1880s and 1890s. (there are many more). Being newspaper stories, they do not always agree on some details, but I have included what most seem to agree on.
The principal consulted stories appear in:
Cincinnati Post, Aug. 20, 1887
Portland Oregonian, Aug. 27, 1887
Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 30, 1887
Chicago Tribune, January 20, 1888
Grand Rapids Evening Leader, March 17, 1888
Muskegon Chronicle, May 23, 1895
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