" We Came To Bury You, Whitey ", Gettysburg's Un-Dead Soldier

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
book edward 1066.jpg

We'd been documenting burials, with men carried to their graves since anyone thought it a good idea, digging them. Image from the Bayeux Tapestry is Edward the Confessor's grand procession in 1066- in July, 1863, a less famous personage was carried to his grave, by the Second Corps Hospital, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Unlike Edward, Luther White, 20th Massachusetts, wouldn't cooperate in being dead.


Nurse Anna Ellis's post war writings are a tad heavy handed on glorious patriotism, little light on the awful conditions she faced. Still, she did a glorious thing, arriving at Gettysburg that July to aid wounded- and sometimes almost forgets to remind us all about how glorious it was to die for one's country. This story is believable for a number of reasons, one of them her simplicity in the telling.

luther 1.JPG

luther 2.JPG


Found him, post war, finally making the distinction between he and a couple more Luther Whites. In 1870, he is still single, in a boarding house, by 1880, not improved by a family surrounding him. At age 51, Whitey married a Maryann Church- 1st marriage for both, in 1883.

His injuries were what helped track him down. Luther lost an ear and from Anna's description of his wounds, would have been disfigured in a way which might have kept the miraculous veteran leading a secluded life. We know these men tended to be terribly self conscious, poor guys. Luther's happy ending may have come 20 years post war but gosh- glad to see it.

Looking at one's grave and refusing to climb in, well, we'll take 100 of him- and at least one less grave at Gettysburg.
 
JPK
The perfect story for Victoria America! From Frankenstein through Edgar Allen Poe’s The Premature Burial, taphophobia---fear of being being buried alive---19th, was at its height of acceptance. Embalming, safety coffins, systems of bells and waiting for the body to putrefy were various efforts to insure only the dead were interred.
Regards
David
 
What a story!!! I'm glad Luther was conscious when the grave diggers arrived on the scene. Otherwise, he likely would have been buried alive.


Right? Some of these men, you become smitten- Whitey is one. Once in awhile I'll go look up their families on Ancestry, to see if they have the story? You never know. I know if Whitey was part of my tree, I'd sure wish to know, so sent a couple head's ups, linking the book.
 
JPK
The perfect story for Victoria America! From Frankenstein through Edgar Allen Poe’s The Premature Burial, taphophobia---fear of being being buried alive---19th, was at its height of acceptance. Embalming, safety coffins, systems of bells and waiting for the body to putrefy were various efforts to insure only the dead were interred.
Regards
David


Ha! Yes, found a few patents for those coffins- posted them here somewhere. Perhaps the most ' iew ' would be the glass viewing windows, where you could look at someone's face from ground level? Goodness, can you imagine?

I'm torn between annoyance with Poe, who seems to have been a confirmed drip, and being impressed our Victorians allowed themselves to be a little more comfortable with death, as a topic, than we are. That full year of mourning for instance, was awfully healthy. You were allowed your grief and time to process the loss. Today, we tend to have a " Aren't you over that yet ? ", bury 'em and get on with life, attitude, towards losing loved ones. To me, that's much more macabre than anything the Victorians came up with, you know?
 
So glad he was conscious.. I know many years ago, many feared being buried alive.

My Dad told me of story of one of his relatives. He was a young boy at time. The dead were laid out in the parlors in homes in rural Kentucky. His grandmother was in parlor. All of a sudden she raised up. It was actually a reflex that can happen. She was dead. But it scared him and his mother so much. They always feared being buried alive. His mother, the grandmother was her mother, would never enter that parlor again. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather moved from that house.
 
This man was carried on the rolls of the 20th Mass. ("The Harvard Regiment"), as Lisher, or Lusher White. Attached below is a "Medical Descriptive List" from his time at Camp Letterman Hospital (Aug. 4 to Sept. 7), before his transfer elswhere. It includes a description of his injuries, which I tried to transcribe, but it uses some medical terms I'm not familiar enough with to try to decipher. It includes the note:

"It is a well authenticated fact in regard to this patient that immediately after the battle and while in a comatose condition he was laid by the grave for interment, but the patient recovering for the moment, requested his considerate friends to delay the ceremony a short time longer."​

He must have had an incredibly strong constitution, for he appears to have responded very well, despite the seriousness of his wound.
 

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Poe was a troubled man mentally who lived in a macabre world. His health declined with age and supposedly he was a heavy drinker. Would it not be exciting to have sat down with him in a dark tavern on stormy night and listened to his stories?
Regards
David
 
This man was carried on the rolls of the 20th Mass. ("The Harvard Regiment"), as Lisher, or Lusher White. Attached below is a "Medical Descriptive List" from his time at Camp Letterman Hospital (Aug. 4 to Sept. 7), before his transfer elswhere. It includes a description of his injuries, which I tried to transcribe, but it uses some medical terms I'm not familiar enough with to try to decipher. It includes the note:

"It is a well authenticated fact in regard to this patient that immediately after the battle and while in a comatose condition he was laid by the grave for interment, but the patient recovering for the moment, requested his considerate friends to delay the ceremony a short time longer."​

He must have had an incredibly strong constitution, for he appears to have responded very well, despite the seriousness of his wound.


New England? Settlers left up there, generations later, had to have been genetically un-killable, no? He is not popular but I've always appreciated Chamberlain's story, where his father told him the method whereby one moves an immovable boulder is to just do it. You recognize the mindset, you know?

Thank you for finding more verification! Nurses were not exactly garrulous, nor given to exaggeration ( they saw things defying belief anyway ) but these stories could raise incredulous eyebrows, no? Love turns of phrase- Whitey must have been a pip, since both accounts include his commentary on finding himself not quite dead, but encouraged to think so.
 
Poe was a troubled man mentally who lived in a macabre world. His health declined with age and supposedly he was a heavy drinker. Would it not be exciting to have sat down with him in a dark tavern on stormy night and listened to his stories?
Regards
David


Ah ha! Yes, for those who adore the delightful chills up one's spine! Heck, he's famous, widely read and his work studied in classrooms for a reason, he was very talented- you're just talking to one of those big chickens who refuses to go to horror movies on the grounds it'll keep me awake for a week. We chickens darkly suspect the Poes of the world of terrifying us on purpose.

Remember summer camp? Have a strong idea Bloody Mary, as related by those swinish camp counselors, did it, age 10 or so. Have avoided dark corners since 1968. :angel:
 
My close friend Russ served in one of the airborne units just as the Vietnam War was heating up. He saw a routine training jump go horribly wrong for another man in his unit, when both the man's primary and secondary chutes failed to open properly. After the poor man hit the ground, Russ and another man were sent to "retrieve the body" for burial. But when they bent to pick the fallen man up, he opened his eyes and warned them to be careful! He had some broken bones but he lived. Russ went to see him in the hospital some days later, and the man related that that jump had been his fifth, and something, though perhaps not as serious, had gone wrong each time. The man said to Russ, "Do you think the Lord is trying to tell me something?"

Some time later, Russ himself was in a helicopter crash when his craft suddenly lost power and fell. Some on board were killed. Russ was the only one still conscious after the crash, but he wasn't unscathed. He needed surgery. He was in the operating room and he had already been prepped and been administered anesthesia. The surgical team thought he was already out, but he remained conscious long enough to hear the surgeon walk into the room and say, "I don't think there's much we can do for this fellow." Fortunately, he was wrong. The surgeon looked decidedly sheepish when Russ quoted his words back to him afterwards.
 
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I think Poe was probably one of those people who could not tolerate liquor. He probably should not have drank, but it was a social thing then. From some accounts, a small amount of alcohol got him drunk. Some people could not tolerate alcohol, but drank anyway. Poe was a very brilliant and troubled man, who lived and loved tragically.
 
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