What was your home town like at the start of the Civil War?

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What was your home town, city, village, or rural area like at the start of the Civil War? I will go first.

In 1847 the Michigan legislature want to more the State Capital out of Detroit and away from the Canadian border. They selected an area in the dense forest near where the Red Cedar River flowed into the Grand River. The local swamps caused cases of malaria and the area was generally avoided so there were only about 20 people living in three small villages. The new capital caused a population expulsion with about 3,079 people living in the City Lansing at the start of the Civil War. Neither the Grand River or Red Cedar River were not navigable. The swamps kept the city without rail transportation until after the Civil War and the only all weather road was a 20 mile plank toll road to the railhead in Williamston. In the summer a couple of rude trails lead south through the dense forest. However, these could only be used in dry weather.

Being almost cut off by swamp and forest, from Michaign's areas of major population, Lansing was still in many ways a frontier city. The state legislators and favor seekers left the area as soon as the legislation season was over. The city did have two small militia companies and a weekly newspaper.

So in summery, my home town of Lansing was a small city in 1861. At the start of the Civil War my dad's family and half my mother's family lived in a rural area south of Lansing. How does my home town compare with your home town in 1861?
 
My town was a village that was part of Stonington, Connecticut. During the 1860’s it was a farming town but the biggest industry was whaling. Some of the old “captains” homes remain in area as well as the Mystic Seaport Museum that honors the whaling industry. My family was from the farming side.

Many young men answered Governor W.A. Buckingham’s order #99 issued on August 13, 1862 and enlisted in the Connecticut 21st - including some of my ancestors particularly those enlisting in Company “G” recruited by James F. Brown and as they are described: 54 farmers, 9 laborers, 6 mechanics, 4 clerks and 9 others of various calling. ​
 
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I have seen my home town of Los Angeles described as a "cow town" with a population of around 5000 people at the start of the Civil War. Not having ever been to a "cow town" I am not exactly sure what that implies because I don't believe that was the major industry there. But it makes me think of Hollywood westerns.

Whatever you may think of Los Angeles, good or bad, it has at least one socially redeeming value in my opinion. One of my favorite Civil War characters was stationed there in 1860. And, as every Civil War Buff knows, future General Winfield Hancock and his wife Almira, (a most beautiful woman we are told), had their fond farewell with future Confederate General Armistead at Hancock's quarters at 3rd. and Main Streets in what is now downtown L. A.

I wonder what the General and his wife, and their pal Armistead, would think of L.A. now? Quite a change in only 160 years.

John
 
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Alexandria Va. Long story but I'll make it short. 1791 ceded to the government to form Washington. 1814 a British fleet launched forces and captured Alexandria with out a fight. Civil War it was occupied for most of the war. Elmer Ellsworth was killed here. It was home of the so-called "Restored Government of Virginia". In 1863 Mosby rides into town to capture the bogus Virginia Governor Pierpoint, but having been called to Washington he's not at home. Known as the Rose Hill Raid, Mosby now rides to Rose Hill and captures the governors military advisor (Col Dulany) who's son is in fact riding on this raid. Church services were required to include prayers for Lincoln, the pastor of my own church was jailed for refusing to do so. The slave pen became a jail, and escaped slaves flock into the city. Defenses of Washington were built here, a part of Fort Ward has been rebuilt and you can visit.
 
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At the beginning of the Civil War, Westerville OH was just turning three years old as an incorporated village (though the community had been known by that name for twenty years before that, named after the Westerveldt family). The year before, the first volunteer fire department had been organized. The first schoolhouse on Home Street was five years old, and the village already boasted a weekly newspaper, the curiously-named "Nemesis." Nearby Otterbein College had opened in 1847.

I see that the oldest house in the area (predating the village) is the Gideon Hart house.

The railroad would not reach Westerville until the 1870s, so it was still pretty remote.

Three houses that are known Underground Railroad stops still stand today.

ETA: Westerville was, of course, the home of Benjamin Hanby, composer of "My Darling Nellie Gray" and the seasonal favorite "Up on the Housetop." His house still stands in Westerville, albeit not in its original location. Only a few miles north of Westerville is Rosecrans Road, along which "Old Rosy" had been born in 1819... no known generals from Westerville itself, though.
 
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You are right, that very much reminds me of David Lean's 'Oliver Twist [1948]' (especially image 2 and 5).
That movie not released in the USA for 3 years and when it was it had ten minutes missing. The full version of that film was not permitted for full release in the USA until the 1970s. Why? Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagin was deemed offensive and anti-Semitic. [I thought it was Alec Guinness at his best and certainly the best film adaptation of Dicken's novel by far.]
 
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... In 1847 the Michigan legislature want to more the State Capital out of Detroit and away from the Canadian border. They selected an area in the dense forest near where the Red Cedar River flowed into the Grand River. The local swamps caused cases of malaria and the area was generally avoided so there were only about 20 people living in three small villages. The new capital caused a population expulsion with about 3,079 people living in the City Lansing at the start of the Civil War. Neither the Grand River or Red Cedar River were not navigable. The swamps kept the city without rail transportation until after the Civil War and the only all weather road was a 20 mile plank toll road to the railhead in Williamston. In the summer a couple of rude trails lead south through the dense forest. However, these could only be used in dry weather.

Being almost cut off by swamp and forest, from Michaign's areas of major population, Lansing was still in many ways a frontier city.
The city I grew up in was Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas which didn't come into existence until around the time of WWI, a fact that always made me despise it as being non-historical. (I have plenty of other reasons now and would never consider returning.) So instead, I'll describe the town and area in which I currently reside, which had a lot in common with what you have to say about Lansing.

When created about the time of Texas statehood, the county was fairly large, more than thirty miles square and has since been "trimmed" along with the other contiguous counties for land to create two smaller neighbors. As usual the county seat was placed near the geographic center, which proved to have a similar problem with yours, surrounded as it was on the north and south by branches of a river that flooded in Spring thereby isolating it. The county immediately to the north of the river was essentially Unionist in sympathy; south of it, secessionist. Caught in between, the original county seat became isolated both geographically and politically during the war. Huge nearby "thickets" throughout the river bottoms and adjacent land became places of refuge for Unionists, draft evaders, and outlaws of all stripes.

Following the war this part of the state was racked by violence as returning ex-Confederates clashed with the emerging Unionists and Freedmen. A gang led by Benjamin Bickerstaff from another nearby settlement but hiding in and operating from one of the thickets terrorized the Freedman and harassed neutrals and Union men, leading to Federal troops being garrisoned in the county and the county seat being removed south of the river to what had been a "secessionist" town but one that was accessible in all weather. Things soon became so serious, the small garrison even built a stockade for their own protection as well as serving as a corral for their mounts! Following the relatively brief Union occupation, there was an unsatisfactory return to the former original county seat site, so it was permanently placed and the original site was allowed to wither into nothingness; today it is pastureland with nothing but a cemetery and roadside historical marker remaining to show where it once had been.
 
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Plan_of_Seattle_1855-6.jpg

At the time of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, my home town was a dank, squalid, sodden lumber camp with a handful of shipping provisions suppliers and traders with a defensive blockhouse surrounded, as this map from 1856 shows, by "Hills and Woods thronged with Indians."

The Territorial militia had a handful of .54 caliber M1841 "Mississippi" rifles and some cannon, mostly because of a threatening territorial dispute over some islands in the fjord on which the town is located, but farther north near the international border. That dispute, which a year before Abraham Lincoln's election had looked like a possible armed clash, arose due to an American farmer shooting and killing a large black pig rooting up and devouring his potatoes. The hog's owner, an Irish employee of Hudson's Bay Co. who had lived relatively neighborly with his American denizen next door, refused the offer of 10 dollars in damages, and insisted the American farmer should have ensured his potatoes stayed outside his deceased pig without killing it. The Royal Navy arrived, and so some U.S. soldiers, including Rhode Islander Colonel Silas Casey--later a Major General in the Civil War--and an obscure Virginian Captain who'd graduated 59th in a class of 59 at West Point, but served with distinction as a 2nd. Lt. in the storming of Chapultepec in the War with Mexico, George Pickett by name, gained some notoriety when his token force of 90 or so men stood up to three of Her Majesty's warships with the line: "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it!" Neither John Bull nor Uncle Sam ("Brother Jonathan?") wanted war, and in the United States, the sectional conflict was clearly a major concern. Notwithstanding, Sir James Douglas ordered Rear Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes to land Royal Marines and blue jackets and engage the offending Americans. Fortunately, Baynes refused, noting that two great nations must never come to blows over the fate of a hapless pig. :pig:
Order prevailed, although joint occupation continued until long after the Civil War, and during the U.S. ordeal, some among the British thought it was high time to simply negate American claims over the fjord and seize it back.

Three months before the Civil War ended, the town was actually chartered with a populace of maybe 350 people. Two years later, the charter was revoked, however.

This engraving below from Harpers shows the place five years after the war ended:
Seattle_1870.jpg
 
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Not having ever been to a "cow town" I am not exactly sure what that implies because I don't believe that was the major industry there.
Good question.
Fort Worth has a section of town still called Cow Town but it was on the old cattle trails that ran across Texas and Oklahoma.
 
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View attachment 384707
At the time of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, my home town was a dank, sodden lumber camp with a handful of shipping provisions suppliers and traders with a defensive blockhouse surrounded, as this map from 1856 shows "Hills and Woods thronged with Indians."

The Territorial militia had a handful of .54 caliber M1841 "Mississippi" rifles and some cannon, mostly because of a threatening territorial dispute over some islands in the fjord on which the town is located, but farther north near the international border. That dispute, which a year before Abraham Lincoln's election had looked like a possible armed clash, arose due to an American farmer shooting and killing a large black pig rooting up and devouring his potatoes. The hog's owner, an Irish employee of Hudson's Bay Co. who had lived relatively neighborly with his American denizen next door, refused the offer of 10 dollars in damages, and insisted the American farmer should have ensured his potatoes stayed outside his deceased pig without killing it. The Royal Navy arrived, and so some U.S. soldiers, including Rhode Islander Colonel Silas Casey--later a Major General in the Civil War--and an obscure Virginian Captain who'd graduated 59th in a class of 59 at West Point, but served with distinction as a 2nd. Lt. in the storming of Chapultepec in the War with Mexico, George Pickett by name, gained some notoriety when his token force of 90 or so men stood up to three of Her Majesty's warships with the line: "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it!" Neither John Bull nor Uncle Sam ("Brother Jonathan?") wanted war, and in the United States, the sectional conflict was clearly a major concern. Notwithstanding, Sir James Douglas ordered Rear Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes to land Royal Marines and blue jackets and engage the offending Americans. Fortunately, Baynes refused, noting that two great nations must never come to blows over the fate of a hapless pig. Order prevailed, although joint occupation continued until long after the Civil War, and during the U.S. ordeal, some among the British thought it was high time to simply negate American claims over the fjord and seize it back.

Three months before the Civil War ended, the town was actually chartered with a populace of maybe 350 people. Two years later, the charter was revoked, however.

This engraving below from Harpers shows the place five years after the war ended:
View attachment 384709
Super cool man.
 
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The city I grew up in was Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, which didn't come into existence until around the time of WWI, a fact that always made me despise it as being non-historical. (I have plenty of other reasons now and would never consider returning.) So instead, I'll describe the town and area in which I currently reside, which had a lot in common with what you have to say about Lansing.

When created about the time of Texas statehood, the county was fairly large, about thirty miles square and has since been "trimmed" along with the other contiguous counties for land to create two smaller neighbors. As usual the county seat was placed near the geographic center, which proved to have a similar problem with yours, surrounded as it was on the north and south by branches of a river that flooded in Spring thereby isolating it. North of the river was essentially Unionist in sympathy; south of it, secessionist. Caught in between, the original county seat became isolated both geographically and politically during the war. Nearby "thickets" throughout the river bottoms became places of refuge for Unionists, draft evaders, and outlaws of all stripes.

Following the war this part of the state was racked by violence as returning ex-Confederates clashed with the emerging Unionists and Freedmen. A gang led by Benjamin Bickerstaff from another nearby settlement but hiding in and operating from one of the thickets terrorized the Freedman and harassed neutrals and Union men, leading to Federal troops being garrisoned in the county and the county seat being removed south of the river to what had been a "secessionist" town. Things became so serious, the small garrison even built a stockade for their own protection as well as serving as a corral for their mounts! Following the relatively brief Union occupation, there was an unsatisfactory return to the former original county seat site, so it was permanently placed and the original site was allowed to wither into nothingness; today it is pastureland with nothing but a cemetery and roadside historical marker remaining to show where it once had been.

Unless I'm utterly mistaken about your adopted home town, the county I reside in and yours both have old courthouses designed by architect J. Riely Gordon, no? :showoff::wink:
 
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View attachment 384707
At the time of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, my home town was a dank, squalid, sodden lumber camp with a handful of shipping provisions suppliers and traders with a defensive blockhouse surrounded, as this map from 1856 shows, by "Hills and Woods thronged with Indians."

The Territorial militia had a handful of .54 caliber M1841 "Mississippi" rifles and some cannon, mostly because of a threatening territorial dispute over some islands in the fjord on which the town is located, but farther north near the international border. That dispute, which a year before Abraham Lincoln's election had looked like a possible armed clash, arose due to an American farmer shooting and killing a large black pig rooting up and devouring his potatoes. The hog's owner, an Irish employee of Hudson's Bay Co. who had lived relatively neighborly with his American denizen next door, refused the offer of 10 dollars in damages, and insisted the American farmer should have ensured his potatoes stayed outside his deceased pig without killing it. The Royal Navy arrived, and so some U.S. soldiers, including Rhode Islander Colonel Silas Casey--later a Major General in the Civil War--and an obscure Virginian Captain who'd graduated 59th in a class of 59 at West Point, but served with distinction as a 2nd. Lt. in the storming of Chapultepec in the War with Mexico, George Pickett by name, gained some notoriety when his token force of 90 or so men stood up to three of Her Majesty's warships with the line: "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it!" Neither John Bull nor Uncle Sam ("Brother Jonathan?") wanted war, and in the United States, the sectional conflict was clearly a major concern. Notwithstanding, Sir James Douglas ordered Rear Admiral Robert Lambert Baynes to land Royal Marines and blue jackets and engage the offending Americans. Fortunately, Baynes refused, noting that two great nations must never come to blows over the fate of a hapless pig. :pig:
Order prevailed, although joint occupation continued until long after the Civil War, and during the U.S. ordeal, some among the British thought it was high time to simply negate American claims over the fjord and seize it back.

Three months before the Civil War ended, the town was actually chartered with a populace of maybe 350 people. Two years later, the charter was revoked, however.

This engraving below from Harpers shows the place five years after the war ended:
View attachment 384709

A great story.

Did the Irishman ever get a replacement pig? [Based on a price of about 6.75 cents per lb a 200lb hog should have deserved at least $13 - [link] so the offer of $10 seems mean.]
 
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Such a great thread.

My hometown in Upstate New York is still pretty rural. The main road network is exactly the same as it was in 1861, just paved now. Lots of 5th, 6th, 7th generation properties (no longer farms, but the land is still in the family - including mine). Not much industry then or now. The railroad came through in the late 1860s, but had little reason for existence, and by 1957, the tracks were ripped out.

Interestingly, it was one of the few towns in my home county to go for McClellan in 1864. I have no idea why that is - all the towns around it went for Lincoln.
 
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I grew up in Bethesda Maryland:

With its location along the Washington and Rockville Turnpike, Bethesda guarded the roads to Washington. Union armies constructed several forts in Bethesda, the largest of which was Fort Sumner, named for General Edwin Vose Sumner, a veteran of the Black Hawk and Mexican wars.

Into 1862, the prevailing mantra was “All quiet on the Potomac.” Yet while that was true, occupied forts were a reminder of the broader conflict. Manned forts provided a ready market for Bethesda goods, but they also led to the occasional disappearance of a chicken or missing fence post taken for firewood. The push and pull of warring armies soon exasperated—and endangered—the local population.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee began his audacious push into Union territory after the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August 1862. Lee hoped that a successful campaign would win European support for the Confederacy, and, by putting Union forces on the defensive, allow Virginia farmers an opportunity to harvest their crops.

Four months later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It had no direct effect on Maryland or any of the Border States, although it led to an increase of runaway slaves and those joining Union forces in battle.

To support Lee for the pending and climactic Battle of Gettysburg on July 1–3, 1863, James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart pushed northward through Montgomery County with three cavalry brigades. As he reached Bethesda, he intercepted the tail end of a train of 150 Union supply wagons.

jeb-stuart.jpg
J.E.B. Stuart (Library of Congress)
Stuart captured 125 wagons and hundreds of prisoners, including local pro-Union civilians. Many Confederate sympathizers in Bethesda welcomed him and cheered his achievement. After releasing his prisoners, Stuart continued northward. But his circuitous route—and ignorance of the position and progress of other Confederate armies—caused him to arrive at Gettysburg too late to support Lee. His absence in the early fighting, traced to his detour in Bethesda, is often cited as a primary cause of Lee’s loss in the Civil War’s most pivotal battle.

jubal-early.jpg
Jubal Early (Library of Congress)
Skirmishes led by Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early against Union forces on the Washington and Rockville Turnpike caused brief panic in July 1864, with some Bethesda residents burying valuables and running away in anticipation of a full-scale attack. A one-day engagement took place at the Old Stone Tavern (Darcy's Store) in Bethesda, dismissed as a raid by Union authorities but later, and more dramatically, recounted as the Battle of Bethesda.

On November 1, 1864, Maryland abolished slavery, though the fate of the Peculiar Institution was in no doubt by then—Congress passed the 13th Amendment in January 1865. For newly freed blacks, abolition failed to address the persistent social, economic, and political equality.

Civil War hostilities, in the East, officially came to a close on April 8, a week before Lincoln’s assassination. Despite 620,000 Civil War deaths and the abolition of slavery, the Bethesda area, having purged itself of reliance on tobacco decades before and with only a scant population, quickly returned to its antebellum life as a quiet, rural town. (From Fox Hill Residences)
 
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My hometown is pretty much the same, Williamson NY. The core of apple country is our slogan on our welcome to signs. Small rural farming community right on Lake Ontario. Probably the most notable pre-civil war claim to fame is that our town was one of the last stops on the underground railroad. Capt. Throop a Great Lakes ship captain would transport run away slaves to Canada aboard his ship. Part of the 111th NY infantry was recruited here as well as part of the 9th NY heavy artillery. The most notable thing we have now is the Mott's applesauce factory.
 
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