Did I Dream That? Charles Wiggins In The Civil War

    

     Have you ever tried to find a vaguely remembered fact about one of your ancestors? An ancestor whose name you also can't remember? I do that more often than I like to admit. None of my trees have a search function for that sort of thing, so even though the information is recorded, I lose it. However, my blog does have that search feature. So after spending an hour finding the ancestor and his information today, I'm telling his story here where I can find it easily if I forget again. And I will.

     The faded memory was of an indirect ancestor who I recalled was wounded in the civil war and whose case was mentioned in a book about civil war injuries.  After looking through name after name in my records I finally found him; Charles W. Wiggins, member of  Company G of the 9th New York Heavy Artillery, who was wounded during the siege of Petersburg on 25 March 1865. Only two weeks later Lee surrendered to General Grant.  Poor Charles came so close to escaping the war unscathed. The forgotten book was, "Surgical Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion", published by the US Sanitary Commission and available on Google Books. I strongly recommend at least a cursory search of that site when doing research, I've made numerous finds there. Not just famous people made it into publications.

     Until I read to the second paragraph below, the seriousness of Charles' injury escaped me--

Charles Wiggins, aged 21, wounded March 25, 1865. Admitted to Finley Hospital March 28. The ball passed two inches below and an inch within the coracoid process of the scapula, and passed out through the body of the scapula, behind. On the 7th May hemorrhage occurred to the amount of fourteen ounces and the outer third of the right subclavian artery was ligated. He progressed favorably, and was discharged from service on August 3d, 1865.

Pension Examining Surgeon M. D. Benedict reports, August 2d, 1865: "musket ball through right shoulder and axilla, resulting in partial paralysis of corresponding arm and hand; limb is entirely disabled at present; will probably improve. Disability total. Duration two years." In 1872, this pensioner's name was still borne on the rolls

     After reading that and a bit more research, the deadly seriousness of the wound became apparent. As noted in the article, and visible in the photo below, there is a major artery that passes directly in front of the top of the scapula, that large flat bone in the picture, which in Charles' case is the spot the minie ball exited. The corticoid process is the small finger shaped bone sitting atop the left side of the scapula near the artery. The ball that hit Charles passing two inches below that must have missed his artery by a fraction of an inch.

     Minie balls, made of soft lead and cone shaped, inflicted devastating, splintering injuries to bone and terrible damage to tissue when they struck. Charles' case must have been somewhat noteworthy to be included in the book of injuries. Or perhaps the really remarkable thing was the skill of the surgeon whom it appears may well have saved Charles' life when he sutured his artery forty-three days after the initial injury.

     Charles, born in 1842 in Wolcott, New York, was himself the son of a doctor, my third great-grandfather Dr. Richard Wiggins and his wife Hannah Ostrander. They had both passed away by the time Charles was 15, afterwards he lived with his aunt Maria Ostrander Parker, a sister of his late mother, in Cayuga County, New York. Charles enlisted at Fair Haven in Cayuga County on 22 July 1863, a few weeks after the battle of Gettysburg, joining Company G of the 9th NY Heavy Artillery, the same unit his older brother William, (my second-great-grandfather), had enlisted in the previous summer.  In 1865 both brothers were stationed at Petersburg, Virginia during the siege of that place.

     Things in Petersburg had been fairly quiet in early March, but on the twenty-fifth all hell broke loose. The injury that would so alter Charles' life may have been inflicted when the Confederates stormed Fort Stedman at 4 a.m. on the morning of March twenty-fifth, temporarily capturing the fort. Company G was also involved in fighting at Battery Lee and Fort Fisher in Petersburg that same day so any of those may have been the site of his injury.  I hope his brother William was with him to offer Charles what comfort he could.

     At the time of his enlistment Charles stated he was married, so I was surprised to find him after his discharge again living with the Parkers but no wife in the 1870 census. The real surprise was found in column 18 however, the one that asks if deaf and dumb, blind, idiotic or insane? The response was insane! I wonder if Charles suffered from battle fatigue, defined by Webster's as a mental illness that is caused by the experiences of fighting in a war and that causes extreme feelings of nervousness, depression, etc. Today we would call it PTSD, but the effects are the same.

     It would seem Charles' wife had either passed away or left him by 1870. In April of 1879, Charles' marriage in Fair Haven to Sarah, "the widow Fairbanks", was noted in the Lake Shore News. Sarah was older than Charles by twelve or thirteen years, suggesting he may not have been exactly desirable husband material. The 1880 census found Charles and Sarah living in Wolcott, New York, with a border, Charles' nephew Josiah Ostrander, who had also formerly resided with the Parkers. Charles was employed as a farm laborer that year but by 1892, though only 51 years of age, he was not working and wouldn't ever again. He may have still suffered from anxiety or was perhaps in pain or disabled from his old wound. Fortunately he did have the disability pension.

     Sarah died in 1907 in Fair Haven, Charles followed her about two and a half years later in Wolcott. I've had no luck locating the widow Fairbanks before her marriage to Charles or her maiden name. Charles never had children of his own so I'm not surprised neither he nor Sarah have a tombstone.