Father Patrick O’Brien: Soldier, Citizen, Orator, Writer, and One of Toledo’s Eloquent Irish Catholic VoicesGood Shepherd Catholic Church, Toledo, Ohio Even though there is not a statue in downtown Toledo celebrating his life in concrete, Father Patrick O’Brien left an indelible mark on the history of Toledo and northwestern Ohio. Traces of his life can be found in old biographies, yellowed newspapers, archives, and parish histories.[1] During his life time he successfully pastored several Catholic churches in the area and helped to establish the Diocese of Toledo, but his life spilled beyond the altar and into the community and nation. Father O’Brien fought in the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, making lifelong friendships and community connections with northwestern Ohio. He devoted many of the speeches in his oratorical career to championing the cause of Irish Freedom that his Grandfather had fought for in the Battle of Wexford in the 1798 Irish Rebellion against Britain. The Irish patriots won the battle of Wexford and on May 30, 1798 entered Wexford Town unopposed and declared Ireland’s first republican government even though they lost the overall war against Britain. William O’Brien, Patrick’s father, told Patrick and his brothers and sisters the story of Wexford and what it meant to Irishmen, inspiring them with the same love of Irish freedom. As well as being an orator, Father O’Brien developed considerable skill as a writer and poet and the newspapers in Toledo and the region regularly published his poetry and articles. His articles reflected a spirit of ecumenism and tolerance predating Vatican II by at least fifty years. He wrote for several Catholic newspapers, founded the ’98 Club, commemorating the Wexford Victory, helped found the Toledo Irish Association, and served as one of the founding fathers and presidents of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, a local and national Temperance organization. Father O’Brien was a community activist, involving himself in the politics of East Toledo where he lived and the community at large for 55 years. The transcripts of his speeches and poetry in the yellowing Toledo and Catholic newspapers reveal that Father O’Brien was a passionate Irish Republican, an American patriot, a committed Catholic and an enthusiastic people person. When he died in June 1930 at age 86, Father Patrick O’Brien was the oldest priest in northern Ohio, including both the dioceses of Toledo and Cleveland.[2] Toledoans of his generation loved him, and those after his generation remembered him. His personality breathes life into old newsprint and gives twenty-first century people a glimpse of his importance to Toledo’s Catholic history. Born in Pilltown County, Wexford, Ireland on February 14, 1845, Patrick O’Brien enjoyed the beauty and culture of South East Ireland for thirteen years. He explored the wonders of Forth Mountain, and the magnificent view of the Wexford coast where on a clear day you can see Wales. He absorbed Irish names like Ferrycarrig Castle and Carrig Church and graveyard. He probably visited the grave of Colonel Jonas Watson. Patrick’s grandfather fought with the Irish rebels who shot Colonel Watson while he and his men attacked the Three Rocks rebel camp. The 1798 upraising did not bring positive political or economic change into Ireland and the lives of the William O’Brien family, so June1857, William and Bridget O’Brien and their children Patrick, Michael, and their two daughters immigrated to America. They landed in Quebec, Canada on June 21, 1857, then made their way to Lorain County, Ohio. The O’Brien family was part of the three phase Catholic immigration to Ohio. The first wave of Catholic immigrants to Ohio came between 1822 and 1842 and were predominantly German. The second wave, comprised of Irish and German people, with the Irish predominating and including William O’Brien’s family, took place between 1842 to 1865. The third wave started in 1865 and continues to the present day.[3] Irish workers came to Toledo to work on the canals, including the Miami and Erie and the Wabash and Erie, and later the railroads. People huddled together in the Irish shanty towns of Toledo and poverty and disease helped to earn the Irish a reputation for crime and squalor. Also, the Nativist American Movement spread across the country, symbolized by the Know-Nothings and other “America for the Americans” groups. These social forces that were in many guises solidified in the legal and criminal justice systems across America, caused many Irish immigrants to respond with violence and desperation fueled by a deep-seated hopelessness. Many of the Irish-Catholics turned to their religion for comfort, stability and affirmation and Catholic Dioceses grew accordingly.[4] Ten years before the O’Brien family came to Lorain County, Pope Pius IX granted a request from John Purcell, Bishop of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which would profoundly affect the life of the O’Briens, Patrick especially, and other Irish immigrants in Ohio. Father Purcell requested the Pope to divide the Cincinnati Diocese and create the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. Pope Pius IX granted the request, thus creating the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland and naming Father Amadeus Rappe, a French missionary priest, the new bishop of the new Diocese. Bishop Rappe had been working among the struggling Irish workers in the Toledo area since 1840. The Irish immigrants were digging the new canal connecting the Wabash River in Indiana with the Maumee River near Toledo and they loved Bishop Rappe who felt special concern for their problems. Bishop Rappe was prominent in Toledo’s Catholic history. He helped found St. Mary’s German Catholic Church and the Diocese of Toledo. In years to come, Father Patrick O’Brien himself would be instrumental in creating the Diocese of Toledo. When other Catholic clergymen opposed the plan, Father O’Brien corresponded with church officials in Cincinnati, Washington, and Rome and brought his campaign for a Diocese of Toledo to a successful conclusion.[5] But still a teenager, unaware that he would someday unalterably change his Cleveland Diocese, thirteen-year-old Patrick attended the local schools in Cuyahoga County for three years, and when he turned sixteen, his father apprenticed him to a tailor. Then, once again, war changed the lives of the O’Brien family, this time, the American Civil War. America provided a crucible for Patrick to forge his Irish Republican ideas and shape them to fit the American oppressed class, the Negro slaves. He became an immediate Abolitionist, as ardent an Abolitionist as an Irish Republican. As a young man he was not overtly political, but the first vote he ever cast when first exercising his citizenship was for an Abolition candidate that the Republican party nominated. Although he opposed slavery, Patrick was proud of his American citizenship and venerated America as the land that offered asylum to him and his downtrodden countrymen. He considered his American citizenship better than a lordship or dukedom.[6] Patrick easily negotiated the ideological jump from Irish Republicanism to Abolitionism and fighting for the Union and joined the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry when he was 18 years old. His regiment was part of the 3rd Brigade, 6th Division, 14th Army Corps. The Regiment in March 1864 moved to Ringgold, where it performed severe duty constructing corduroy roads, pickets, and outposts between Ringgold and Chattanooga. On May 9th it moved on Dalton, Georgia, driving the enemy’s soldiers to Tunnel Hill where it encountered the enemy in force. The Regiment fought at Atlanta and lost heavily in officers and men. It also fought at Kennesaw Mountain in May and June of 1864 and finally participated in Sherman’s “March to the Sea” and though the Carolinas to Goldsboro and Raleigh. After Lee’s surrender, the Regiment went to Washington where it joined the Grand Armies of the Union in the Grand Review in front of President Lincoln and his cabinet. On June 15, 1865, the Regiment went to Louisville, Kentucky where it was mustered out. It left for home, reaching Cleveland, Ohio on July 14, 1865. Cleveland citizens enthusiastically received the Regiment and the men enjoyed several celebrations and orations before the Regiment was paid off and disbanded. A majority of its members reached Toledo on July 21, 1865. The citizens of Toledo received the veterans with admiration and thanksgiving. Patrick O’Brien probably stayed in Cleveland to be mustered out, because had definite plans for his future.[7] Patrick O’Brien had the inspiration and example of his grandfather who was a soldier in the Rebellion of 1798 and his father, William, born in May 1804, who was a soldier in the American Civil War, along with his son Patrick. Born amidst the battlefields of the 1798 Irish Rebellion and mingling for years with the survivors, William learned the history of the Rebellion from eyewitnesses and passed that knowledge on to his sons Patrick and Michael. After he immigrated and the American Civil War broke out, William decided that even though he was over fifty years old, he would play a part in it. He was assigned to the quartermaster’s department at Nashville, Tennessee, and served for three years. In 1883, William and his wife Bridget moved to Toledo and when Bridget died, William moved in with his son Father Patrick O’Brien on Orchard Street in the Fifth Ward. William lived with his son until his death. Time did not dim the ardor of the two O’Brien soldiers toward America or the flag. In January 1899, Father Patrick O’Brien appeared before the National Veteran Women of America at Memorial Hall in Toledo. The National Veteran Women had just formed their organization in Toledo a few months earlier, but already camps had sprung up in surrounding cities. Mrs. Eva Murray acted as chairman of the entertainment and a number of prominent ladies and gentlemen occupied the handsomely decorated stage with her. Honorable Charles Griffin explained the purpose of the Veteran Woman as helping aged and infirm soldiers and their widows spend their declining years together instead of the widow in the poor house and the veteran in the soldier’s home. Judge Griffin introduced Father O’Brien as the principal speaker of the evening and he endorsed all that Judge Griffin had said about the necessity of comfortable homes for soldier’s widows. He said that when soldiers go to war to battle for the flag, they should not have to worry about their families at home suffering from hunger or any other creature comforts. Father O’Brien then made some remarks that were controversial for 1899. He said that women were as brave and as willing as men to lay down their lives for their country, and that every woman who “places her life on her country’s altar” should be given a military funeral. He said: God bless those noble women of Toledo and the businessmen too who assist in maintaining our Toledo institutions, The Toledo Hospital, St. Vincent’s Hospital, the Old Ladies’ Home, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Old Men’s Home, the Day Nursery, the Boy’s Home, and the Newsboys’ Association, all speak eloquently of Toledo’s Christianity. It is true religion whether it be Protestant or Catholic.[8] He added that he was proud of Toledo’s Christianity, the new Methodist church on Madison Street and the new St. Patrick’s church, commenting that he hadn’t built his church yet, but it would be a sight to see. Then he spoke of the noble Catholic men and women who were working among the lepers of the Sandwich Islands, discussing the horrific conditions that the lepers endured. He said that American women in nun’s garb had gone to work among the lepers knowing that they themselves would almost certain to contract the disease. Father O’Brien closed by reciting a patriotic poem, “Up with the Flag,” that he had written to express his feelings about America. He presented the same poem at a party given at the Ford Post of the G.A.R. in Coad’s Hall in East Toledo, in November 1899, with just a slight change in the title: Up with Old Glory Up with the old flag, let it float o’re the land! Divided we fall, united we stand, Up with the old flag, long may it wave, O’re the land of the free and the home of the brave, ‘Tis the flag of our fathers, O raise it on high, And swear by its memories to do or to die. “Tis the flag that our sires triumphantly bore, In defense of our freedom through channels of gore, ‘Tis the flag that floated o’re Washington’s head, When the Redcoats, defeated, ingloriously fled, ‘Tis the flag that waved o’re the brave boys in blue, When they fought for the Union, and saved it too. ‘Tis the flag that waved o’re Manila Bay, When Dewey’s brave sailors did conquer the day, “Tis the flag that floated over Hobson that night, When the Merrimack sank in the enemy’s sight. ‘Tis the flag that now waves o’re Cuba’s fair land, Where Roosevelt’s Rough Riders made their brave stand, ‘Tis the flag of our country, O yes! Let it fly! Who dares pull it down let the vile traitor die! ‘Tis the flag of no section, party or clan, ‘Tis the flag of Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, Let it fly o’re the Philippines from steeple and mast, Let its folds to the breeze o’re fair Cuba be cast, Lift it up! Lift it up! Let its folds be unfurled! ‘Til it circles the globe and waves ‘round the world.[9] The remainder of the program for the evening included contests for the young people with Miss Olive loop winning a gold watch, Miss Maggie Hollister a gold ring, and Charles Boetsch a meerschaum pipe. Dancing until the wee hours of the morning rounded out the evening. The patriotism of the veterans and their generation and the entertainments, prizes, and dancing of the younger people provide an interesting contrast in the story illustrates how time-even a short period of time – changes the nature and practice of patriotism. Judging from his actions and words, Father O’Brien spent his entire life practicing patriotism without changing the content and substance of his attitudes toward Irish Republicanism and Abolitionism, but the flame flickered and varied in intensity in the next generations and Father O’Brien struggled to keep it steadily burning. Captain George Scheets who lived to be 86, a regimental comrade of Patrick O’Brien, felt the same intensity about his Civil War experiences. Captain Scheets wrote a book about the Civil War experiences of members of the Ford Post G.A.R. and served as a member of the Soldiers’ Relief Commission. When he died in February 1929 at age 86, his funeral services were held at the Good Shepherd Church in Toledo and his comrade Reverend Patrick O’Brien assisted at the services. Just over a year later, Father O’Brien also died at age 86.[10] But in 1865 at the end of the Civil War, death for Patrick O’Brien stretched 65 years ahead and after his discharge from the army, he began his education for the life that he wanted to carve out for himself. Patrick entered the preparatory seminary at Louisville, Stark County, Ohio to study for the priesthood at the age of 21 and remained there for four years. While he worked through his courses, he also operated a tailoring business part time to earn money for college expenses. In 1869, he entered the Catholic Theological Seminary at Cleveland, Ohio, and Right Reverend Richard Gilmour ordained him to the Catholic priesthood on July 21, 1872. After his ordination, Father O’Brien served in the Diocese of Cleveland, first in Youngstown for a year, and then at Rockport in Cuyahoga County for two years. Father O’Brien Meets Toledo In August of 1875, Father O’Brien arrived in Toledo, Ohio to become the pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd on the East side of the city. Reverend Robert A. Byrne had organized the congregation and build the Church of the Good Shepherd in 1873 and Father O’Brien succeeded him in August 1875. Father O’Brien had this to say about his new church. According to a 1964 historical overview that one of his parishioners wrote, Father O’Brien said that when planning for the church began in the late 1800s, there were few houses in East Toledo. He said that “Corn, hay field pastures, and woods surrounded the church, and it presented a rather wild appearance at that time,” the priest was quoted as saying. “I do not believe the whole population of the East Side was more than 2,000 in 1875.”[11] He quickly established a reputation as a top pulpit orator and lyceum lecture and won the love of Toledo people, especially Irish Catholics. After a short time at Good Shepherd, Father O’Brien was transferred to Immaculate Conception Church where he served for eleven years from 1876 until 1887. He served at St. Patrick’s Church in Cleveland for four years, and at St. Anne’s in Fremont for another four. In 1897, twenty-two years after he left Good Shepherd in Toledo, he returned to build a new church and take over the pastorate from Father Barry who had died. He served at Good Shepherd until he retired, and then as a Chaplain at Notre Dame Academy in Toledo. When Father O’Brien left Immaculate Conception in Toledo in 1890 to become pastor of St. Anne’s Church in Fremont, Ohio he gave a farewell address in which he thanked his congregation for the gem-studded chalice that they had given him as a parting gift. He said: Whenever I shall use it in celebrating the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, the highest and most solemn rite of the Catholic worship, I will call down upon your heads, and upon the head of every citizen of Toledo, Catholic, Protestant, and Jew, for I love them all, the abundant mercies of the Great God.[12] Father O’Brien thanked the Grand Army, and the medical and business colleges, and his fellow German, French and Jewish and other citizens for the gift and expressed regret at having to leave Toledo after fifteen years of pastoral work in the city. He ended his address by saying, “Farewell, Toledo, the city of my love, my own sweet home.”[13] Father O’Brien served as pastor of St. Anne’s Church in Fremont for four years, 1891-1894, but he was also active in the Catholic Total Abstinence Union and in the Ninety-Eight Club both of which he helped create. Temperance had long been an issue in American culture, but became more important after the Civil War with the influx of immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s. The population of Lucas County in 1880 was 67,377 and Germans numbered 8,267 and Irish 3,284 of the county’s foreign-born inhabitants.[14] Irish and German immigrants, especially, brought their drinking customs to America with them and the church leaders grew alarmed at what they considered the Irish intemperance and the German custom of opening their beer gardens on Sundays. Father O’Brien fervently believed in and advocated temperance work but from the very beginning opposed the idea of Temperance by law. A total abstainer from liquor and tobacco, he denounced alcoholism and intemperance from hundreds of lecture platforms, but he never agreed that temperance could be ushered in by legislation. In 1930, he called the 18th amendment “one of the greatest curses that has come upon the country.[15] Combing his ideas about temperance with his ecumenical outlook, Father O’Brien made southern trip in the interests of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union in April 1895 while he still was pastor of St. Ann’s Church in Fremont, Ohio. During a visit to Knoxville, Tennessee, Father O’Brien conferred with several Protestant ministers about Temperance work. Reverend T.C. Warner pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Knoxville told his congregation about his visit with Father O’Brien. Some Protestants in Knoxville complained about cooperating with Catholics and Reverend Warner addressed this attitude from his pulpit: You doubtless all remember the visit, a short while ago of Father O’Brien of Fremont, Ohio, to this city, in the interest of the total abstinence movement in his church and the big temperance rally at the opera house on that occasion…I have no apology for having improved the opportunity to take Father O’Brien by the hand and wish him God speed in the temperance work in which he was engaged. I only wish I had the opportunity to do so every day in the year. [16] Reverend Warner pointed out that clergymen of both the Catholic and Protestant faiths occupied the platform together and pledged to work together in the Temperance cause. He said that working together would promote understanding between the two religions and that Father O’Brien had spearheaded this movement. Continuing his temperance travels, Father O’Brien journeyed to New York in August 1895 as the guest of honor at the New York meeting of the Ninety-Eight club and also as a delegate from the Catholic Total Abstinence Union. Thomas Barrett, President of the Ninety-Eight Club of New York, presented Father O’Brien with an embossed speech which celebrated the sturdy sons of Wexford willing to follow in the footsteps of the heroic actions of their forefathers at Wexford almost a century ago. In 1898, the Ninety-Eight club pledged to celebrate the Wexford centennial in a fitting manner. In the middle of the hearty Irish cheering that surrounded the acceptance of his plaque, Father O’Brien reiterated his attitude toward America and Ireland: There is no honor except the honor of the holy priesthood that gives me more pleasure than being enshrined in the hearts of the men of Wexford. Your ancestors and mine are gone but they left us a legacy: the spirit of ’98 still lives. It will never die until Ireland is free. We love America and are ready to die for her as our foster mother; and Erin our mother we are also ready to die for.[17] While Father O’Brien served as pastor of St. Anne’s Church in Fremont, he also held the office of State President of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of Ohio, part of the national Catholic Total Abstinence Union. Since the 1870s, the Catholic Total Abstinence Unions throughout the country had been crusading for Temperance and joined with organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Young Men’s Christian Association. A look at Father O’Brien’s Temperance activity in 1895 reveals its scope and breadth. On June 21, 1895, Father O’Brien issued a call for the 24th Annual Convention of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union on July 8, 1895 in Warren, Ohio. St. Ann’s Cadets accompanied Father O’Brien to the convention. Since issuing the June Official Bulletin, Father O’Brien reported that the creation of the Father Elliott Society of Youngstown with 140 members and St. Mary’s Society of Conneaut, with 35 members and he expected quite a number of new societies to join the Catholic Total Abstinence Union before the convention.[18] On February 6, 1895, Reverend O’Brien delivered a lecture in the Opera House at Greenville, Darke County, Ohio. Among those attending were all the ministers of the different Protestant churches and many of their parishioners. The members of the local branch of the W.C.T.U. came in a body. The crowd received the lecture with pleasure and approval, and twenty charter members organized a Catholic Total Abstinence Society. Father F.J. Brummer of Grenville and J.A. Burns of Marion, Ohio, assisted Father O’Brien and Burns also delivered a short address.[19] The Official Bulletin reported that on October 12, 1895, the organization met in Youngstown and held a daytime parade and an evening rally in the opera house which was only able to seat about one-half of those attending. Reverend Patrick O’Brien addressed the rally. On Thanksgiving evening 1895, the Fremont societies held a grand rally in the city hall. Honorable Thomas McSheehy acted as chairman and Father Patrick O’Brien was speaker of the evening.[20] The Official Bulletin of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of Ohio for December 18, 1895, noted that on the second Sunday of February 1896 the Niles Catholic Total Abstinence Union would hold a joint meeting in the hall occupied by the Young Men’s Christian Association. Professor F.J. Roller, Superintendent of Public Schools, a noted scholar and Temperance Advocate, would be chairmen, and President of the Ohio Catholic Total Abstinence Union, Father Patrick O’Brien would be the featured speaker. Before he left St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Fremont to return to Good Shepherd in Toledo in 1897, Father O’Brien traveled for Temperance throughout the East and South and Mid-Atlantic states and a year later, he traveled to Europe, including Rome to see the Pope and to Ireland, his homeland. Father O’Brien sent letters to his sister Ettie and her husband Frank Tiernan of Collingwood Avenue in Toledo. He wrote them from the R.M.S. Germanic on his voyage to Europe in January 1893 that the weather was fine but the seas were very rough, so rough that even a man who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope eight times suffered seasickness. Father O’Brien wrote that he was “feeling splendid” and looking forward to his journey.[21] In February 1893, Father O’Brien wrote to his sister Ettie and brother-in-law Frank Tiernan that he was pleased that the Catholic Universe Newspaper of Cleveland was printing his letters every week. He told them that he thought it best “not to write to the Toledo Blade as requested because it might offend the proprietors of the Universe. As my letters are Catholic in tone they would not set so well for the Blade.”[22] The letters that he wrote from Rome and the Holy land reveal the depth and conviction of his Catholic faith. Writing from Rome he described his audience with Pope Leo XIII and his visit to St. Peters in terms that probably would have been too religious for the secular Toledo Blade. The papacy can exist without Rome but Rome cannot exist Without the papacy…I was amazed at the grandeur of the great St. Peters, the most magnificent temple thus far erected to the creator of the world. O, how I wish that every Catholic could behold this grand edifice before passing out of this life. Taking a position under the dome, and looking around the church, the eye is delighted and the soul rejoices with the ravishing beauty of this house of God.[23] In September of 1897, the Fremont Daily News carried the entire text of Father Patrick O' Brien's farewell sermon. He was leaving St. Ann’s at Fremont to return to Good Shepherd Catholic Church on Toledo’s East Side. People overflowed St. Ann’s Church and many wiped tears from their eyes as Father O’Brien preached his farewell sermon. In his sermon Father O’Brien revealed his human as well as priestly side when he said: If in the fulfillment of my pastoral duties I may have Hurt the feelings of anyone, I now ask pardon… If I sometimes have acted impatiently in money Manners, forgive me. I do not like the business Affairs of my profession, but duty compels me To attend to financial business as well as my Spiritual duties. Pardon me if I have given you The least scandal by the quickness of my temper. I am blest (if I may call it so) with a quick temper. I wish that I were more patient than I am, but I Am as God made me and I have a heart that can Hold no ill against anyone nor has the sun ever Gone down upon my anger.[24] Father O’Brien also expressed high regard and appreciation for the non-Catholics of Fremont and thanked the non-Catholic press of the city for being so kind to him. He left Fremont on the late train for Mt. Clemens, Michigan, where he planned to rest for a week before assuming his duties in Toledo. Several hundred of his parishioners and friends gathered at the station to say goodbye to him.[25] The Toledo Blade ran a two-column story and picture about Father O’Brien’s return on Saturday September 18, 1897, speaking about his zealous labors for the Immaculate Conception parish and his lifting of a large debt from the parish. The story said that he took a prominent part in Toledo public affairs and had gained a reputation not only as a pulpit orator, but as a lecturer and public speaker. The article said that the citizens of Toledo were delighted about Father O’Brien’s return to Toledo and that no clergyman ever held a warmer place in the affections of a community. In a separate editorial, the Blade said: As will be noted by an article in the local columns Of today’s issue, Rev. Patrick O’Brien returns to Toledo as the pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd. Not only his co-religionists but citizens of Toledo Of every other faith and his comrades of the Grand Army Will most heartily welcome him back to the city After his eight years’ absence.[26] When Father O’Brien assumed the pastorate of Good Shepherd Catholic Church for the second time in 1897, his charge included building a new church, which he successfully completed two years later. The Toledo Review noted that “ground was broken for this noble edifice on the morning of March 17, 1899 on St. Patrick’s Day, one of Father O’Brien’s favorite holidays. A copper box containing the names of church and secular officials and Catholic and secular newspapers including the Toledo Bee and Catholic Universe of Cleveland was placed in the cornerstone. The cornerstone itself was inscribed, “Church of the Good Shepherd, July 2, A.D. 1899.”[27] The East Side of Toledo was busily engaged in building, transforming itself from a swamp to a community. In June 1899, Eastsiders considered building a new bridge from the foot of Jefferson Street to the intersection of Utah and First street. The city on both sides of the river was so situated that the present bridges did not sufficiently accommodate the traffic. The Cherry Street bridge was congested from early morning on with wagons, street cars and vehicles of all kinds. Traffic was so heavy that it was necessary to use the sidewalks for bicycles to lessen the risk of someone getting hurt. The Fasett Street bridge further up did not help the majority of Eastsiders and when the Ford Glass Company finished building their plant, the company would appropriate the bridge for its own use. A bridge crossing the Maumee at Oak Street would help stimulate business growth on the East Side. If the city council will not help raise the capital to build the bridge, then business men of the city would be justified in building and operating a toll bridge. Father O’Brien, a zealous East Toledo booster, tried to reconcile the two sides and get another bridge built across the Maumee River.[28] It wasn’t until 1929, the year before he died, that Father O’Brien enjoyed the satisfaction of speaking at the ground breaking of Toledo’s new high-level bridge slated to be built the next year.[29] During the second term of Toledo Mayor Samuel Milton “Golden Rule” Jones, Father O’Brien warned the East Side against the proposed city charter that he felt would concentrate political power on the West Side of the Maumee River. In a newspaper article, he pointed out that under the proposed measure the West side of the city would hold a disproportionate amount of power. Father O’Brien stated: There is no use in denying the fact that there is a prejudice on the West side against the East side having very much power in the city government, and if the residents of the East side allow the power of government to be centralized on the West Side, we will not doubt get left as we have in the past in several instances. I do not believe in placing the power that the charter delegates into the hands of any one man for mayor. The power is too great and too autocratic, and not in accordance with the Republican way of doing business. Now a body of seven men cannot run this city better than twenty or thirty men who represent every ward in the city. [30] In disagreeing with the mayoralty of Golden Rule Jones, Father O’Brien opposed a fellow immigrant who came to America with his family from Wales in 1846, the same Wales that the O’Brien family could glimpse from Wexford on a clear day. Samuel Milton Jones born in North Wales on August 3, 1846, immigrated to New York with his family when he was three years old. At age eighteen, Samuel worked in the oil fields of Titusville, Pennsylvania, and learned different methods of oil production, to becoming a producer himself in 1870. After his first wife died, he moved to Ohio and in 1886, he made a big oil strike in Lima. In 1892 he married Helen W. Beach from a prominent Toledo family and they settled in Toledo.[31] Mayor Jones, elected in 1897, 1899, 1901 and 1903, earned his nickname “Golden Rule” by operating his Toledo factory, the Acme Sucker Rod Company, on principles of paying employees a fair wage and treating them according to the Biblical Golden Rule. Progressive in city government as well, Mayor Jones preached Christ’s teachings, supported the ideal that men are equal, and solved some of Toledo’s problems of poverty and unemployment.[32] Throughout his life, Father O’Brien carried his Irish pride as high as his clerical hat. The Toledo Times published a letter to the editor from F.J. Scott, son of Jesup W. and Susan Scott who was the editor and part owner of the Toledo Blade. F.J.Scott sought to improve the metropark system and in 1873, helped his brother William H. write a bill requesting the establishment of a public library.[33] Among others, F.J. articulated and wrote an article in the Toledo Blade, containing the old charges that “half savage sons of Erin” dug the canal between the Maumee and the Ohio and implied that all Irishmen were in needed of civilizing. Father O’Brien published a passionate reply to F.J. Scott in which he said that he did not deny that there were drunken and lawless Irishmen in the early days as there were in the present, but he protested maligning an entire race because of the drunkenness and lawlessness of a few of its number. He took issue with what he termed as Scott’s patronizing remarks that he as an Irishman should be proud of the rapidity of the advancement in civilization of the Irish race since coming to America instead of finding fault with him for calling attention to their former ‘barbarism.’ Father O’Brien considered Scott’s statement an insult instead of a compliment. He declared that the Irish did not need to come to America to become civilized and that “Ireland is one of the most civilized and law-abiding countries in the world, notwithstanding centuries of brutal persecution.”[34] Father O’Brien pointed out that Mr. Scott was a traveler in foreign lands like he was and that Scott would bear him out when he said that the crimes of rape and burning at the stake were unknown in Ireland. He said that the “white glove” was often given to the judges of the courts because there were no criminal cases to be tried, but that “the judges of Lucas County courts or any other country in America would never get a “white glove” on those conditions.[35] Father O’Brien continued his letter by asking Mr. Scott that if the old Irish canal diggers were as “barbarous” as he said, how could many of them purchase homes from their meager earnings in the city and farms in the surrounding countryside? The priest pointed out that many of the early Irish settlers were alive and would resent his unjust charges. Father O’Brien was not flattered by Mr. Scott’s reference to the “good he had done in Toledo since he arrived in the city.” Father O’Brien waxed incredulous at F.J. Scott’s statement that the early Irish immigrants, of whom Father O’Brien numbered himself, “were thoroughly barbarous and lawless” and he even placed them below the Chinese and the scum of Naples, Italy. Father O’Brien said that he had been in Naples, Italy, which made him feel the insult more intensely. According to Father O’Brien, F.J. Scott compared a Christian people to the “heathen Chinese” and placed the latter above the former, and still Scott wondered why Father O’Brien should feel insulted? Father O’Brien felt that Scott should apologize to him and his Irish brethren and scorned the idea that his Irish priestly presence was needed to help civilize the Irish in Toledo. Father O’Brien pointed out that when he came to Toledo, he found a flourishing Irish colony of thrifty, law abiding honorable citizens living there, excepting the drunkards and criminals “you will find among all races.” He concluded: Their churches and schools built in the early days were then monuments of their civilization and Christian character. Since then as a class, they have maintained their good standing in this community, and today, no residents of our city, not even the wealthiest can point to such magnificent monuments of Christian civilization as the church of St. Patrick on the West Side and the church of the Good Shepherd on the East Side. There is a colony of 10,000 Irish and their descendants In Toledo who are among the most peaceable and law-abiding people of our flourishing city. No class for their means, has done more to build up this town than the Irish.[36] Father O’Brien’s rousing defense of his Irish race and heritage is ironic in that defending the honor of Irish people he is highly insulted at the thought of F.J. Scott comparing the Irish to “the heathen Chinese.” In 1901, American churches and American policy considered Asians to be the “yellow peril”, needing to be civilized by missionaries and economic evangelism, but there is something tragically assimilated American about Father O’Brien’s defending his Irish ethnic group by calling the Chinese heathen or pagan. He was an American of his time, considering that he technically he was still a first-generation immigrant. For the remainder of his career, Father O’Brien remained at Good Shepherd Church on Toledo’s East Side. When he retired, he served for a time as Chaplain of Notre Dame Academy. In his later years he still continued to write and speak and helped found the Toledo Irish Association. An article in the Toledo Blade in June 1929, just a year before he died, spoke of his involvement in the Irish Association. The Blade noted: Father O’Brien has been a good patriot. At the same time he has never let his love of old Ireland fade from His memory and his heart. It was to be expected that He would be one of the founders of the new Toledo Irish Association.[37] The Blade article said that the purpose of the Toledo Irish Association was to unite Irish men and women in Toledo and in the vicinity of Toledo in a bond of common interest and sentiment. According to the Blade, Father O’Brien displayed fine tolerance by cordially inviting men and women of any religious faith to join the Irish Association. Father O’Brien sought men and women of all religious denominations, those who love Ireland and who are sincerely interested in her general welfare. The article concluded by saying that Father O’Brien was far advanced in years, “but the candle of his spirit burns with the brightness of youth.”[38] The candle of Father O’Brien’s spirit went out a year later, on Sunday June 22, 1930. He died in St. Vincent’s Hospital at age 86, close to the Maumee River which he loved equally as much as he did the river near his Irish home in Wexford. Father O’Brien wrote one of his poems about the Maumee River which he dedicated to the Webster Literary Society of Toledo High School. His poem distilled his feelings about his new home in Toledo: The Maumee River Come with me on a summer’s day, Where Maumee’s waters gently glide, Up the river and down the bay, No fairer scenes in the world wide. I’ve seen fair rivers o’re the sea, In lands through which I once did roam, By dearer far than all to me, Is the river flowing by my home. I’ve seen the Nile and Jordan roll, Their muddy waters toward the sea, Though their history stirred my soul, They’re not so fair as our Maumee. O, lovely sweet, romantic stream, How gently dost thy waters glide, It seems like vision in a dream, To glide on thee to Erie’s tide. Thy emerald glens and wooded shores, Are pleasing to my raptured eye, I’ve scanned thy beauty o’re and o’re, And on thy banks, I wish to die.[39] Father O’Brien got his wish. He died on the banks of the Maumee instead of the River Shannon in his native Ireland. Toledoans and people all over northwestern Ohio and beyond mourned the passing of Father Patrick O’Brien. A letter from the Lucas County Treasurer, written on June 23, 1930, a day after his death, expressed how people felt. Father O’Brien’s sister Ettie, Mrs. Frank Tiernan of Collingwood Avenue, received a letter from Grant Northrup, Lucas Country Treasurer. Northrup wrote: To you, I am unable to find words that will express the sympathy of Mrs. Northrup and myself. We can only point to Father O’Brien’s fine character and his long useful life which was his devotion to Country, Church, City and State and in these we pray for your comfort…”[40] In his farewell sermon that he preached when he left Fremont to return to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Toledo, Father O’Brien said that he loved Toledo…” I love its people Protestants and Catholics…”[41] Toledo’s Protestants and Catholics felt the same way about Father Patrick O’Brien. END NOTES [1] Under the guidance of Father Paul Kwiatkowski, Immaculate Conception Church of Toledo transferred its records for microfilming to the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Father Patrick O’Brien is included as part of the church history, the years of his pastorate there being from about 1878-1889. [2] Toledo Blade, June 23, 1930, Death Claims Father O’Brien, Leader for Many Years in Toledo Religious and Civic Affairs Succumbs at 86. [3] The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XI (Robert Appleton Company) Online Edition, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11225d.htm [4] Carleton Beals, The Brass Knuckle Crusade: The Great Know Nothing Conspiracy, 1820-1860 (New York: Hastings House, 1960) [5] Toledo Blade, June 23, 1930, Death Claims Father O’Brien. Leader for Many Years in Toledo Religious and Civic Affairs Succumbs at 86. [6] The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio in the Nineteenth Century, Reverend Patrick O’Brien, http://moa.umdl.umich.edu [7] Clark Waggoner, History of Toledo and Lucas County (New York: Munsee & Company, 1888) p. 1-38. [8] Toledo Blade, January 19, 1899. Never Lower the Flag. Brilliant and Patriotic Address of Toledo’s Popular Priest Before National Veteran Women [9] Toledo Blade, November 23, 1899, “Poem A Feature” [10] Obituary, Captain George Scheets, Toledo-Blade, February 9, 1929. Perrysburg Journal, February 8, 1929, p. 1. [11] Parishioner History, 1964. Toledo Blade Article, Closing of Good Shepherd Church, https://www.toledoblade.com/Religion/2015/07/13/Good-Shepherd-Parish-to-close-Aug-24-join-with-nearby-church.html [12] Reverend Father O’Brien’s Farewell Address. Typescript, St. Mary’s of the Assumption Archives, St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Toledo, Ohio. [13] Ibid. [14] Clark Waggoner, History of the City of Toledo and Lucas County (New York: Munsell & Co. 1888)p. 740. [15] Toledo Blade, June 23,1930, “Death Claims Father O’Brien.” [16] Toledo News Bee, April 26, 1895. “Liberal-Minded Men. Preachers of the Methodist Church who Deprecate Fanatic Hostility to Rome.” [17] Catholic Union, Cleveland, Ohio , August 11, 1895. “The ’98 Club’s Outing. Grand Reception to Rev. Patrick O’Brien-Rousing Addresses.” [18] Toledo News Bee, July 18, 1895, Official Bulletin Catholic Total Abstinence Society. [19] Ibid. [20] Official Bulletin, Catholic Total Abstinence Union of Ohio, Office of the State President, Fremont, Ohio, December 18, 1895. [21] Father Patrick O’Brien to Ettie and Frank Tiernan, Toledo, Ohio, from aboard the H.M.S. Germanic, Friday, January 20, 1893. [22] Letter from Reverend Patrick O’Brien to Frank and Ettie Tiernan, Toledo, Ohio. February 7, 1893. [23] The Catholic Universe, Cleveland, Ohio, October 1, 1893. Travels Abroad. [24] The Fremont Daily News, September 13, 1897. “Farewell, Father O’Brien Delivered a Touching Farewell Sermon.” [25] Ibid. [26] The Toledo Blade, Saturday, September 18, 1897 “Father O’Brien Returns” [27] The Toledo Review, Volume I. No. 19, Toledo, Ohio, June 30, 1899, “Good Shepherd New Church.” [28] The Toledo Review, June 30, 1899 [29] Toledo Blade, June 23, 1930, “Death Claims Father O’Brien, Leader for Many Years in Toledo Religious and Civic Affairs Succumbs at 86.” [30] Toledo News Bee, Toledo’s East Side News, Father O’Brien Warns East Side Against New Charter, February 1901. [31] Morgan Barclay and Charles Glaab, Toledo: A Gateway to the Great Lakes (Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1982), p. 84. [32] John Killits, Toledo and Lucas County, Ohio 1623-1933, vol 1 (Toledo: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1923), p. 307. [33] Toledo’s Attic, Woodlawn Cemetery Necrology, William H. Scott. http://www.attic.utoled.edu/att/WOOD/SCOTTw.html [34] Toledo Times, Letter to the Editor, “Father O’Brien Insists, Toledo, October 18, 1901 [35] Ibid. [36] Ibid. [37] Toledo Blade, June 13, 1929. Call to Toledo Irish Men and Women [38] Ibid. [39] Toledo Blade, January 20, 1899. “The Maumee River,” Poem by Father Patrick O’Brien. [40] Letter, Treasurer Lucas County, Grant F. Northrup, Treasurer, June 23, 1930 [41] Fremont Daily News, September 13, 1897, “Farewell, Father O’Brien Delivered a Touching Farewell Sermon.”
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The mystery of James Andrews and the part he played in the hijacking of The General, the steam locomotive that hauled supplies for the Confederacy between Atlanta and Chattanooga, is just as intriguing in the 21st Century as it was in April 1862 when the whole story began. Andrew's past life is a mystery even today. The documented part of his life began in 1859, when he appeared in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. He took up house painting and clerking in the local hotel and settled into the community, where he became liked and respected as a solid citizen. James Andrews Formulates a Plan The Civil War that divided the United States in 1861, also deeply divided Kentucky. Union and Confederate advocates competed for the loyalty of Kentucky citizens, and sowed the seeds for CIA type intrigue in the Blue Grass State. During the winter of 1861-1862, James Andrews participated enthusiastically in this intrigue. He smuggled medicines into the Confederacy and returned with intelligence reports for the Union forces Kentucky. In the course of his intelligence work, James Andrews had seen many Confederate railroads and came up with a brash plan to sabotage one of them. He pitched his idea to General Ormsby Mitchel, then the head of a division of Union Forces in Kentucky. General Mitchel appreciated the possibilities of Andrews' sabotage plan because he recognized that railroads were the key to winning battles. The South found itself at a railroad disadvantage to the North. It had less than half of the North's railroad mileage and its system, at least for military purposes, was erratically laid out. Only one direct line linked the eastern and western theaters of the Confederate armies. To complicate things more, only one line linked Atlanta, the second most important munitions center after Richmond, into the one Confederate line to the battlefront. Chattanooga, Tennessee was the tie in point for these important railroads. Chattanooga also happened to be just seventy miles from General Mitchel's headquarters tent. Andrews and General Ormsby and according to his later report, General Buel, came up with a plan to eliminate Chattanooga from this important Confederate railroad equation. General Ormsby Mitchel Helps James Andrews Andrew's focused his plan on the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which wound 138 miles north from Atlanta through the mountains of northern Georgia to Chattanooga. The railroad was financed and owned by the state of Georgia, and was one of the premier railroads of the South. It consisted of a single track line with sidings at all principal stations. It crossed several major streams on covered wooden bridges and tunneled under Chetoogeta Mountain. It Chattanooga it tied into a line from Lynchburg, Virginia. From Memphis it tied into the Memphis & Charleston. With the aid of General Mitchel, Andrews recruited 23 volunteers from Company H. 33rd Ohio Infantry, and the 2nd and 21st Ohio Infantry. All three regiments were serving in Tennessee at the time and when their officers told them they were needed for a special secret mission behind Confederate lines, the 23 volunteered.The oldest man was 32 and the youngest 18. One man, William Campbell, was a civilian and all of them wore civilian clothes and were armed with pistols. One of the soldiers described how impressed the men were with Andrews. He said that Andrews was about 35, "a large, well-proportioned, gentleman with a long black silken beard, black hair, Roman features." Andrews revealed his plan. They would form small parties and make their way through enemy lines to Chattanooga. Everyone would meet there the following Thursday afternoon. From Chattanooga they would take the Western & Atlantic evening train south to Marietta, Georgia, just above Atlanta. If anyone stopped and questioned them, the story would be that they were Yankee-hating Kentuckians on their way to enlist in the Confederate Army. On Friday morning at Marietta, they were to board the first northbound train and commandeer it. Their goal, Andrews told them, was to burn enough bridges behind them to cripple the Western & Atlantic. They would ride their stolen train through Chattanooga and westward on the Memphis & Charleston to meet General Mitchel's division, which by then would have pushed southward across the Tennessee border to Huntsville, Alabama. This action would enable Mitchel to capture Chattanooga and move on through Tennessee and Alabama from there. James Andrews and His Men Highjack the General Although the party was two men short, Andrews and his men boarded the evening train at Chattanooga on Friday April 11, 1862. They rode without incident, noting the numerous bridges across Chickamauga Creek that had to be burned. At midnight they left the train at Marietta to barter for beds in the town's two hotels. On Saturday morning, April 12, 1862, Andrews assembled his men in his hotel room for a final briefing. He told them to board the northbound morning mail train and get ready to act during the 20 minute breakfast stop at Big Shanty, Georgia, eight miles up the line. Andrews told them that when the crew and passengers left the train for breakfast, he and engineers William Knight and Wilson Brown and fireman Alf Wilson, all recruited from the Ohio Regiments for their previous railroad experience, would commandeer the engine. The other men were to move quickly into one of the head cars after the railroad men had uncoupled it from the cars behind. The morning mail train from Atlanta arrived at Marietta station right on schedule. Pulling it was a locomotive called the General, a powerful wood burner built for the Atlantic & Western in 1855 by Rogers, Ketchum and Grosvenor Works in Paterson, New Jersey. The General pulled three empty boxcars which were to bring commissary stores out of Chattanooga on the return trip, and a string of passenger cars. The Yankees boarded the train, still two short, and rode to Big Shanty. When the train hissed to a stop at 6:45 a.m., everyone hurried over to Lacy's Hotel for breakfast. The train crew consisting of conductor William Allen Fuller, engineer Jeff Cain, and foreman of the W & A’s machine shops went for their breakfast as well. As soon as the hotel door closed behind the last person, Andrews, Knight, Brown, and Wilson swiftly got down on the off side of the train, pulled the coupling pins from the three boxcars and made sure the switches were in their favor. The other Yankees sauntered up to the General and climbed aboard and Andrews waved the rest of the men into the third boxcar. They did this right under the puzzled noses of sentries at a Confederate training camp just 50 feet away. Andrews signaled and Knight threw open the throttle. The General's wheels spun for a minute, and then the locomotive chugged away. The Confederates Pursue the General Meanwhile, in the hotel dining room, Murphy shouted to conductor Fuller and his crew that someone had moved the General. The crew piled out to the platform, rousing the nearby Confederate camp. The sentries fired a few futile shots at the General, disappearing around a curve. Fuller, Cain and Murphy decided to pursue the stolen train, but they had to immediately find something to use for the pursuit. Big Shanty didn't have a telegraph station so they couldn't even send a warning up the line. Conductor Fuller, 25, didn't give up, though. He took the hijacking of his train personally, so he acted personally. He started running along the track, and Cain and Murphy tagged along. The Yankee highjackers, in the meantime, rolled towards the North and freedom and fame. They stopped to get a crowbar from a repair crew working on the track and tore up rails to slow down anyone chasing them. They stopped again past the first telegraph station to cut the telegraph wire. They rushed on towards Kingston, thirty miles north of Big Shanty. According to their timetable, at Kingston they would meet the first of the southbound trains from Chattanooga. In the meantime, conductor Fuller continued to pursue the train jackers. He ran two and a half miles down the track and reached the repair crew. They told him about their earlier encounter with the train, and Fuller began to suspect that he was dealing with professional trainmen and not Confederate deserters heading for home. Fuller took the repair crew's pole car, a small handcar pushed along by poles, and hurried to pick up Murphy and Cain. They headed north and discovered the break in the telegraph line. This made Fuller even more certain that they were chasing a band of Yankees bent on serious mischief. The Yankees and Confederates Fight over the General During the next six hours, the fortunes of the chase seesawed between the Yankees and the Confederates. Fuller and his two fellow Georgians managed to impress a small switching engine named the Yonah from Etowah station, which made it easier to pursue the Yankee highjackers. The Yankee highjackers themselves were delayed for over an hour at Kingston by extra trains on the line. Fuller and his small crew were stymied by the extra trains and switching problems as well and once again, Fuller had to take to his feet to commander a train at Rome, Georgia to continue his pursuit. The Yankee highjackers continued on their mad dash for Chattanooga, now pushing hard for Adairsville, which was ten miles north of Kingston. So far as they knew, there was no pursuit. They had a good cover story about hauling extra ammunition for General P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of the field army at Corinth, Mississippi, and they had cut the telegraph lines and torn up track as extra precautions. Just to be safe, Anderson stopped four miles short of Adairsville to take up more rails and load up with crossties to use as fuel for their bridge burning. While the men were busy taking up the track, they spotted the smoke of a pursuing train. They wretched the last rail loose and continued their trip to Adairsville. Stopped by the wrecked track, Fuller abandoned the Rome engine and once again headed north on foot. He felt both anger and desperation. He knew the timetable and he realized that once the General got beyond Adairsville, the Yankees would have a clear track all the way to Chattanooga. The Yankee highjackers pulled into the Adairsville station and found the local freight waiting on the siding. There was still confusion in Chattanooga because the high command in the city was evacuating stores and rolling stock to counter the threatening Yankee force at Huntsville. The confusion meant extra trains and more delays for the Yankee highjackers. Andrews talked his way out of the Adairsville station by promising to run slowly and send a flagman ahead at every curve. As soon as they pulled out of Adairsville, he ordered Knight to open the throttle wide, because they had to reach Calhoun station before the Chattanooga train did or they would be blocked in. The Yankees reached Calhoun by a narrow margin. The southbound passenger train had just pulled out of the station when its engineer heard the General's whistle and moved far enough to clear the siding switch. Again Andrew's used his story of rushing to General Beauregard's rescue and again gained the main line. The highjackers had a clear track ahead, but behind them the Confederates worked steadily to equalize the race. Just below Adairsville Fuller and Murphy had met a southbound local freight. It was pulled by a locomotive, the Texas, the same class as the General. They hurried aboard, put all of the freight cars off at the Adairsville siding, and raced north. Now the Georgians commanded a locomotive capable of overtaking the General. They too, stopped at Calhoun, and told the local militia about the Yankee highjackers. The long trestle over the Oostanaula River, five miles north of Calhoun, about halfway between Big Shanty and Chattanooga, was one of the Yankee Bridge burner's main targets. They stopped to cut the wire, and take up rail for what they hoped was the last time. As they bent their backs, prying up the spikes with their crowbar and trying to wrench the rail loose with a fence rail, they heard the whistle of the pursuing Texas, loud and clear from the south. Here, James Andrews seemed to lose his nerve. He had brought his nineteen men through improbable adventures and peril. He had every reason to believe the track ahead was clear. The rail they were trying to lift was nearly loosened and just needed a few more minutes of effort to come off. When this rail was off, they could go about their bridge burning in peace and safety. But Andrews didn't stand and fight long enough to finish tearing up the rail. None of the men knew why. One of the men wrote that Andrews "delighted in strategy" rather than "the plain course of a straight out- and-out fight with the pursing train." The Locomotive Texas Finally Captures the Locomotive General The General started up again, leaving the rail loose but still intact. The pursing Fuller and Murphy guided the Texas over the loose rail and continued the chase. Andrews tried to take advantage of his dwindling lead. He ordered the last boxcar uncoupled, reversed the General, and sent the boxcar hurtling down the track toward the Texas. Fuller too reversed course, skillfully picked up the runaway boxcar in full flight, and headed after the General, pushing the boxcar ahead of him. The Yankees dropped a second box car in the middle of the covered bridge over the Oostanaula. Fuller just shunted the two cars off at Resaca and continued north. Above Resaca, the Western & Atlantic wound through rough country. The Yankees tossed crossties on the track behind nearly every curve. Fuller perched on the tender and signaled to Murphy and Pete Bracken, the Texas' engineer, when the track ahead was blocked. They heaved over the forward lever, and the Texas, spinning its driving wheels, would stop, sometimes on a dime. On a straight stretch of track near Tilton, the Yankees lengthened their lead enough to stop of wood and water. With their engine refueled, they tried again to stop Fuller's pursuit. One team of men cut the telegraph line, another pulled up wood on the track, engineers Knight and Brown checked and oiled the locomotive, and the rest of the party labored to lift a rail. Several of the Yankees pleaded with Andrews to conduct an ambush assault on the Rebel train, but he refused to do so. The pursing Texas chugged into view. and the Yankees chugged off, leaving the track undamaged. The General and the Texas thundered on, sometimes running a mile a minute. They raced through Dalton, through the long tunnel under Chetoogeta Mountain, across the first of the long bridges over Chickamauga Creek, and past Ringgold Station. Near the Georgia-Tennessee border, about a mile short of Graysville, the General started to slow down. Water for the boiler was low and the firewood gone. The General had carried them nearly one hundred miles from Big Shanty, but now it could carry them no further. Later, fireman Alf Wilson testified that "Andrews now told us all that it was 'every man for himself,' that we must scatter and do the best we could to escape to the Federal lines." Before dashing into the woods, engineer Knight threw the General into reverse, but by now steam pressure was very low. The Texas easily picked up the slow moving engine. Fuller sent a messenger back to the militia garrison at Ringgold to order a roundup of the fugitives. "My duty ended here," he said. After six hours of pursuing the Yankee highjackers, he had recaptured his train. The Yankee highjackers didn't fare well in Georgia. Within hours, Confederate cavalry patrols guarded every crossroad and examined every farm lane. The farmers formed posses and tramped the fields with tracking dogs, hunting the Yankees. James Andrews posed as a Confederate officer and got within 12 miles of Bridgeport, Alabama, with two of his men before they were captured. All twenty two of the Yankee raiders were captured in civilian clothes deep inside Southern territory. James Andrews is Tried and Convicted of Spying The Confederate authorities were urged to try them as spies. The Yankees realized their one hope was the claim that they had acted under orders and were subject to the rules of war for military prisoners. James Andrews knew this line of defense wouldn't work for him. The Confederate authorities knew about him because of his earlier medicine smuggling into the South. It was now obvious to them that he was a double agent, and he knew exactly what they would do to him. Late in April, 1862, a military court in Chattanooga tried him as a spy. Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker and President Jefferson Davis reviewed the case and on May 31, the verdict was announced. James Andrews was found guilty as charged and sentenced to death by hanging. On the night of May 31, 1862, James Andrews and Private John Wollam used a jackknife they had managed to conceal to pry the bricks loose in the wall of their Chattanooga jail and escape. Andrews was retaken two days later and Wollam a month later. James Andrews wrote two letters from prison before he died. He addressed the letters to County Attorney David McGavic of Flemingsburg, Kentucky, and said that he was to be executed on the 7th of June for his part in the train highjacking. He instructed McGavic to settle his affairs and sent regards to Mr. and Mrs. Eckels, and the young ladies of Flemingsburg, "especially to Miss Kate Wallingford and Miss Nannie Baxter." In another letter, Andrews asked McGavic to take possession of a trunk and black valise at the City Hotel in Nashville and asked him to take an empty lady's trunk he would find at the Lousiville Hotel to Mr. Lindsey's near Mill Creek Church on the Maysville and Flemingsburg Pike and "request him to present it to Miss Elizabeth J. Layton for me." Perhaps the most interesting request Andrews made of McGavic was dated Flemington, February 17, 1862 and directed the cashier of the Branch Bank of Louisville, at Flemingsburg, to pay to David S. McGavic a sum of twelve hundred dollars. When he gave McGavic the note, Andrews told him that he was engaged in a rather critical business and might never get back. If he should not get back, Andrews said, "I want you to draw the money out of the bank, loan it out and the proceeds to go to the poor of Fleming County perpetually." On June 7, 1862, Andrews was taken to a gallows a block from Peachtree Street and hanged. Conductor of the General, William Fuller, said that he "died bravely." Modern visitors can find The General in the Kennesaw Civil War Museum in Kennesaw, Georgia. References Bonds, Russell. Stealing the General: The Great Locomotive Chase and the First Medal of Honor. Westholme Publishing, 2006. O’Neill, Charles. Wild Train: the Story of the Andrews Raiders. Randon House, 1959. Pittenger, William. Daring and Suffering: A History of the Andrews Railroad Raid. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. On dark nights near Ste. Scholastique, a ghostly farmer swings a red lantern alongside side the Canada Atlantic Railroad tracks searching for his missing body. Almost every railroad has a ghostly lantern story and the Canada Atlantic Railway is no exception. Its brief 35 year existence from 1879 to 1914, makes its own existence relatively ghostly! Lumber Baron John Rudolphus Booth Creates Companies Lumber baron John Rudolphus Booth created the Canada Atlantic Railroad Company and during its short life it handled about 40 percent of the grain traffic from the Canadian west to the St. Lawrence River valley. In 1889, he established the Canada Atlantic Transit Company of the United States to operate between Depot Harbor and American ports like Chicago and Duluth, Minnesota. In 1898 he set up the Canada Atlantic Transit Company to run steamships on the Great Lakes from Depot Harbor to what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. In 1905, he sold all of these companies and the Canada Atlantic Railway to the Grand Trunk Railway which was later absorbed into the Canadian National Railroad. The American Company dissolved in 1948 and the Canadian Company in 1950. The Canada Atlantic Railroad also had its own ghost story that John Rudolphus Booth couldn’t squelch. At Midnight on the Canada Atlantic Railroad Tracks In the late autumn of 1888, when enough snow had fallen to record footprints, a farmer named Brunet walked along the Canada Atlantic Railway track about a half mile on the other side of the St. Scholastique station in Quebec, Canada. The late hour – about midnight – convinced farmer Brunet to walk the single track instead of walking through the inky, black woods, although he could barely make out the outline of the tracks as he trudged along through the darkness. Imagination sees farmer Brunet trudging through the darkness shading his eyes to track the glow of lamplight from a distant farmhouse, possibly a lamp that his wife put in the window to light his way home. Imagination hears the train whistle and the headlight fastens farmer Brunet in its fierce glare. He jumps off the track and the Ottawa Express whizzes by. The real story goes that the Ottawa Express sped by, ran over farmer Brunet, and threw his body 100 feet into a clump of trees growing alongside the track. His body landed in separate pieces that scattered through the tree branches. An Ottawa Express Engineer Talks Confidentially to the Montreal Correspondent of the St. Louis Globe Democrat Imagination has farmer Brunet's family searching for his body and finally finding it scattered in the clump of trees growing alongside the Canada Atlantic Railroad tracks. They buried the parts of his body that they could recover and tried to go on with their lives. Farmer Brunet didn't give up so easily. He determined to stop the train by waving a red signal lantern before it could hit him. Every night he stands beside the tracks swinging his red lantern as the Ottawa Express thunders toward him. The real story goes that five engineers ran the Ottawa Express since that fateful autumn night in 1888 and everyone of them asked for a transfer from the route. The last of the engineers asked for a transfer from the Ottawa Express in April of 1889, and he decided to tell his story in confidence to the Montreal Correspondent of the St. Louis Globe Democrat.. The engineer said that he couldn’t stand running the Ottawa Express any longer and that he had requested a transfer. When the Canada Atlantic Railroad officials asked why the engineer wanted to transfer, he was too ashamed to reveal his reason, but he had a ghost story to tell. According to the engineer, after he left St. Scholastique station, he opened the locomotive engine’s throttle wide because he had to make up time. He had just built up a good head of steam when he saw what looked like a red star floating in the air about a mile ahead of him. The red star grew larger as the Ottawa Express sped nearer and the engineer saw that the red star really was a red lantern. The red lantern swung so high in the air the engineer thought it had to be a signal. The Red Lantern Hovers Where Farmer Brunet’s Body Landed The engineer also noticed that the red lantern hovered over the clump of trees where farmer Brunet’s body had landed. As the Ottawa Express got within 200 yards of the trees, the red lantern seemed to jump across from the trees right over the track. All of this happened as quickly as it took the engineer to tell the Montreal Correspondent of the St. Louis Globe Democrat the story. The engineer was terrified. The light was unmistakably a signal lantern and it hung directly in the way of the train. He didn’t have time to alert the fireman before he was on top of it. Fearful that there was something wrong with the track, the engineer shut off the steam, put on the air brakes and stopped the train. George Welles, the conductor, ran forward and he and the engineer walked back down the track to investigate. There was nothing wrong with the track. There wasn’t a house within half a mile of the place, and the men couldn't see any foot prints in the snow to show that anybody had been in the neighborhood. Up until this point, the engineer had never heard of the ghost, but he noticed that the conductor looked nervous and the fireman looked scared. The Same Red Lantern Flashes Two Nights Later A walk a half mile ahead of the engine convinced the engineer that nothing was wrong with the track, so he started the train and arrived in Ottawa twenty five minutes late. The engineer had expected that his bosses would ask him to account for his unscheduled stop, but they didn’t. Conductor Welles said no more to him about it. The engineer again made the trip the next morning and scrutinized the spot where he had seen the red signal lantern the night before. All he saw were trees and railroad track. On his next trip which was two nights later, the engineer saw the same red lantern. He had no doubt the lantern was supernatural and despite an inclination to ignore the ghostly warning and keep the train going, his hands mechanically turned off the steam and put on the air brakes. Again, the conductor came forward and again the engineer explained what happened. Again they went on with their trip after failing to discover any reason for a red warning lantern. The Engineer Asks to be Transferred from the Ottawa Express The engineer discovered that four other engineers had seen the red lantern, but railroad officials convinced them to keep quiet about what they saw because they were afraid that a farmer Brunet ghost story would ruin passenger business. The engineer decided to ask for a transfer and to speak out about what he saw because he believed it might be an omen of a railroad catastrophe to come. Two of the engineers who had given up the Ottawa run because of the ghost, Alexander Swindon and James Roberts, corroborated the engineer’s story. Lumber Baron John Rudolphus Booth Couldn’t Stop the Ghost Story The inhabitants in and around St. Scholastique soon heard the story of the red lantern and crowds of brave people went to the clump of trees where the lantern appeared. The Canada Atlantic Railroad couldn’t keep the story quiet. The Canada Atlantic Railroad Hires Detectives At first, John Rudolphus Booth and his employees believed that the story of Brunet’s red ghost lantern was a hoax. The Canada Atlantic Railroad hired detectives who crouched by the side of the track all night and hid in the clump of trees. Despite their efforts, the red lantern shone and the trains stopped, but the detectives couldn’t find any human hand holding the red lantern. Next, the Canada Atlantic bought the trees and put men to work cutting them down to see if that had any effect on the ghostly signal man and his lantern. The lack of trees didn't stop the ghost. The clump of trees where farmer Brunet landed, John Rudolphus Booth, and his Canada Atlantic Railroad have all passed into history, but local tradition says that the red lantern still signals a phantom Ottawa Express to a stop and the perplexed engineer and conductor can still be seen searching the track for danger. References
Engineer James Root pushed his locomotive engine full throttle. The lives of 200 people and his own life depended on outrunning the Hinckley forest fire! Conditions in the Pine, Mille Lacs, and Chisago counties in the Minnesota of the 1890s combined to make a combustible brew waiting for a match. This part of the state consisted of flat terrain swept by strong winds. Occasional drought years provided tinder dry forests for kindling. Lumbermen contributed to these flash point conditions by carelessly leaving piles of wood waste and stumps to provide ready fuel for the fires. So did the pioneers themselves, who had a casual attitude toward forest fires. After all, the forests would last forever. What did it matter if a few trees burned? The forests were necessary evils to be cleared so they could farm the land. Forest fires helped get rid of the labor-intensive trees. Locomotive Engineer James Root Stops at Hinckley, Minnesota These fire breeding conditions ignited in the late summer of 1894. Several small fires started in different locations and soon a flood of flame engulfed the countryside, advancing as rapidly as a tidal wave. A cloud of smoke blanketed the area. Some of the citizens became alarmed, but by now the fire crackled and couldn’t be easily extinguished. On September 1, 1894, a train on the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad chugged its way toward Hinckley, one of the largest towns in the area. It was early afternoon, but engineer James Root had ordered his locomotive headlight lighted because a heavy haze hung in the air. He couldn’t tell whether the burning smell came from his engine or the blazing woods around the train. Engineer Root pulled into Hinckley at four o’clock in the afternoon. A terrified crowd stampeded the station. Two Hundred People Board the Train as it Catches Fire As soon as the train pulled in, the people rushed the train. They pushed, pulled, and clawed their way aboard, stuffing themselves into the cars. Soon the seats filled up and people stood in the aisles and even in the spaces between cars. Engineer Root estimated that at least 200 people had jammed themselves aboard and he knew that their lives depended on him. As the train lurched forward, a flame burst out of the cloud of smoke in front of it and ignited the engine cab and baggage car. James Root thought quickly. He remembered passing a mud hole called Skunk Lake about six miles back. The lake-mud hole stood right beside the railroad track and formed a clearing where perhaps the people would be safe. He reversed the engine and began his race with the flames. Engineer Root Wins the Race to Skunk Lake James feared the fire might win the race. The fierce wind blew sparks that ignited the forest on each side of the track, and the trees created a roaring fire. The train rushed through an aisle of flame. At times, fiery tongues shot out from the cloud of smoke that rolled behind the train and it seemed as though they would engulf the train from the railroad bed. Car windows cracked and the woodwork of the train burned. Frantic with terror, passengers leaped from the train. A few people got up and ran down the track, but soon dropped, overcome with smoke and flames. Engineer Root stood in the cab, flinching from the heat. His foreman stood in the water tank, ducking his head whenever the heat became too intense. Between times he threw water over his brave engineer. The train rushed on toward Skunk Lake, racing with a fiery death. The Passengers Escape the Forest Fire Finally, Engineer Root spotted the mud hole through the haze and stopped the train. Within two minutes after he stopped the train, the fire engulfed it. But the passengers who had trusted Engineer Root were safe. Some of them rushed into the lake. Others pulled friends and relatives unconscious from heat into the mud and water. The people in the water had to keep ducking under and those in the mud had to lie flat in order to save themselves as the flames leaped over the lake. No one could stand on the ground until four hours after the fire had swept past. The St. Paul & Duluth Train and Engineer Root Are Burned Engineer Root had pulled the lever and sank to the floor of the engine cab, exhausted. His clothing was on fire and his face and hands scorched and bleeding from broken glass. His foreman carried him to the mud and covered him it. The foreman and his helpers had supposed that James Root was dead or dying, but when people finally started leaving the lake, the engineer stood up. He staggered back to what remained of the locomotive, clambered into it, and sank down upon the cab seat. The train had been burned to the tracks. It was a long time before James Root fully recovered from his wounds and his burns. Engineer James Root Makes a Difference in the Hinckley Fire Another 130 people from Hinckley were not as fortunate as the ones on the train. They, too, had sought refuge in a swamp. Later, 130 charred and in many cases, unrecognizable bodies were removed from the swamp. One fiery tongue must have overtaken them all, for entire families lay in groups as if they had not had time to move. A few days later, grieving men dug a trench to bury the 130 people. They discovered that the ground was so thoroughly baked that they had to loosen it with picks. Over 400 people died in the Hinckley fire. The death toll could have been 200 more if it had not been for brave engineer James Root. The Hinckley forest fire had devastated an area 26 miles long and from one to 15 miles wide. It consumed towns and settlements. In the entire fire scourged land, only the section house at a place called Miller remained standing. Sources
Union detective John Murray followed hot on the trail of conspirator Charles Cole who plotted to free the Confederate prisoners on Johnson’s Island. Conspirator Charles Cole had someone on his trail. John Wilson Murray, a Union Detective who supposedly uncovered the plot to capture the gunboat Michigan and free the prisoners on Johnson's Island, published his version of the story in a memoir after the War ended. Murray wrote that Commander J.C. Carter of the United States Navy sent for him and detailed him to special duty. He had heard talk of a plot to blow up Johnson’s Island, liberate all Confederate prisoners and take them across Lake Erie to safety in Canada. Commander Carter gave Murray an unlimited commission to get to the bottom of the plot. Union Detective John Wilson Murray Shadows Clement Vallandigham Arriving in Detroit, Murray first conferred with Colonel Hill who gave him what meager information he had. The information included the fact that Clement Vallandigham, a member of Congress from Ohio who sympathized with the South, lived in exile across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario. Dressed like a civilian, Detective Murray crossed the River to Windsor and found a place to live near Vallandigham’s headquarters. He settled down to learn all he could about Vallandigham and the plot, closely observing everyone who called on Vallandigham. A little man who frequently visited Vallandigham’s headquarters soon captured his attention. Detective Murray Discovers Confederate Agent L.C. Cole Murray learned that the little man’s name was L.C. Cole and that he was supposedly a Confederate agent. Murray described Cole as about 38 years old, five feet seven inches tall, and weighing about 135 pounds. He had red hair, long mustachios and grey eyes so small and sharp and bright that the first thing Murray noticed about Cole was his eyes. Murray managed to overhear part of a conversation between Cole and Vallandigham that firmly convinced him that Cole stood in the center of the plot. Murray advised Commander Carter and prepared to follow Cole wherever he led. Cole left Windsor, with Murray close behind. First Cole went to Toronto, stopping at the Queen’s Hotel where a number of other Confederate sympathizers joined him. After long conferences Cole continued on to Montreal and Murray followed him on the same train. Detective Murray and Cole Play a Cat and Mouse Game Then the cat and mouse game began. Murray wrote that he felt somewhat like the underdog or the mouse, being only 24 years old, inexperienced as a detective, and untrained in shadowing, running down clues or solving mysteries. On the other hand, Cole made a good cat, being and experienced and trained agent who knew all of the spy tricks. Murray followed him, learning and accommodating as he went along. The chase took place in Canadian and American cities. When Cole alighted from the train in Montreal, Murray hovered a car length behind him. Murray followed Cole to the St. Lawrence Hall Hotel and watched a woman join him. Murray described the woman as “a magnificent blonde.” From Montreal, Cole and Irish Lize, as Murray heard him call her, traveled together to Albany. Murray wrote that he fiercely debated with himself whether or not he had enough evidence to seize them as Confederate sympathizers, but he knew that he did not yet have any evidence of a plot. He decided to follow them, expecting to be led South. Detective Murray, Irish Lize, and L.C. Cole Arrive in Sandusky on the Same Train Instead, after stopping overnight in Albany, they traveled on to New York City, and Washington D.C., Murray trailing them from city to city, hotel to hotel. Cole and Irish Lize met several strangers in each city, evidently by previous appointment because the strangers were always there waiting for the couple. In Cleveland, Charles Robinson, son of a former judge, joined them and they stayed there for two days before traveling to Sandusky. They arrived at Sandusky about June 20, 1864 and Murray arrived with them on the same train. At Sandusky Cole posed as an oil prince and Irish Lize as his wife. They registered at the West House and appeared to plan on staying for a time. Soon after their arrival, they began to receive callers. A young man known as G.C. Bear and another called John U. Wilson of New Orleans joined Cole. The young men and Cole drank together and seemed to be well acquainted with each other. Cole bought fast horses and chartered a yacht. He cultivated the acquaintance of the officers of the U.S.S. Michigan which lay off Sandusky and cultivated the United States Army officers in charge of Johnson’s Island. Murray reported that Cole appeared to be a free spending fellow who loved to have a good time. He became a favorite with both the naval officers aboard the Michigan and the army officers on the island. He sent baskets of wine and boxes of cigars aboard the Michigan and over to Johnson’s Island. Detective Murray Continues His Surveillance Murray reported the events of the past weeks to Commander Carter and Carter advised him to continue his surveillance. In late summer 1864 Cole arranged for a party at the Seven Mile House, seven miles out of Sandusky and invited all the officers of Johnson’s Island and all of the officers of the Michigan. John U. Wilson of New Orleans helped Cole prepare for the party. Early on the morning of the party, Cole received a telegram from Detroit that said, “I send you sixteen shares per two messengers.” The Johnson's Island Plot - The Confederates Enjoy Early Success The first part of the Confederate conspirator’s plot to capture the U.S.S. Michigan and raid Great Lakes cities like Milwaukee and Cleveland ran smoothly. On September 19 1864, Beall and Burleigh boarded as regular passengers on the Philo Parsons, a ferry making its regular run from Detroit to Sandusky, making stops of Windsor, Ontario. This particular morning, sixteen men got aboard at Amherstburg, in Canada at the mouth of the Detroit River, carrying their luggage with them. They were the “sixteen shares” that the two messengers were to deliver to Cole at Sandusky. The Confederates Take Over the Philo Parsons and the Island Queen About ten miles north of Sandusky off Ohio’s Marblehead Point, the 18 Confederates- 16 shares and 2 messengers – opened their luggage boxes and took out braces of revolvers. They took over the Philo Parsons and captured the captain and crew. Immediately the hijackers discovered that the Philo Parsons needed wood, so they headed back to Middle Bass Island. While they were there wooding, a second ferry, the Island Queen, appeared. Since the Parsons occupied its dock space, the Island Queen tied up to the Parsons. The Confederates sent some of their men aboard the Island Queen, and caught the few of her crew aboard unaware. They ordered Engineer Richardson to get the Queen underway and when he refused to obey, they shot him dead. As soon as Captain George W. Orr, master of the Island Queen realized that he was being hijacked, he resisted forcefully, but finally yielded at revolver point. The Island Queen captives also included 25 Union soldiers on leave. At gunpoint, their Confederate captors forced the soldiers and the Middle Bass Island locals to load wood onto the Philo Parsons. Then, since they had captured one more ship than they needed, the Confederates made the soldiers and their other prisoners promise not to fight against the South and put them ashore. They towed the Island Queen out into Lake Erie, ran her aground on Gull Island and abandoned her. Then they steamed off in the Philo Parsons to capture the U.S.S. Michigan. Beall, Burleigh and the other conspirators pulled the Philo Parsons within sight of the Michigan and waited for Charles Cole to signal. Captain Cole is Unsuccessful on the Michigan Captain Cole hadn’t been as successful as Yates and Burleigh. Cole watched and waited in Sandusky with his party that would take practically all of the officers on the Michigan and on Johnson's Island to the Seven Mile house, well away from the center of the action. Cole and his deputy Wilson waited for the officers who were supposed to start from Sandusky early in the afternoon, to appear. They waited and waited. Finally, growing impatient, Cole told his deputy Wilson to see what was keeping the officers. The two men discussed how to proceed and then walked down to the dock together. The spotted the Philo Parsons and Cole handed a ten-dollar bill to the coxswain of the boat’s crew and told him to take the boys up for a drink. All went except the boat keeper who waited with Cole and Wilson and James Hunter, an officer of the Michigan who was ashore. When the crew returned they willingly pulled off to the U.S.S. Michigan which lay three miles off Sandusky. About half way out, Cole, who seemed to have a premonition of trouble, decided to turn back. Wilson remarked to the coxswain that the pennant of the Michigan was flying. The coxswain said that he would have to continue the trip but that he would bring them back as soon as he had reported to the Michigan They went on to the Michigan and the officers aboard greeted Cole cordially and invited him to have a glass of wine, apologizing for disarranging his plans or delaying his party. The Confrontation Between Cole and Captain Carter of the Michigan According to Murray’s account, his friend Wilson turned to the orderly. “Tell Mr. Cole Captain Carter wishes to see him,” he said. Cole, accompanied by his former friend Wilson of New Orleans, now Murray of the U.S.S. Michigan, went to a cabin and a sentry was placed at the door. Murray searched him and found $600 in currency, some letters and papers, and ten certified checks for $5,000 each on the Bank of Montreal, Canada, payable to the bearer. Murray laid them all out in front of Cole. Cole laughed. “You served me well Murray Wilson or Wilson Murray or whatever the deuce your name may be,” Cole said. “I served you the best I could,” said Murray. “Sit down,” said Cole. Murray and Cole sat down. Cole told Murray that he was a pretty smart young fellow and concluded his remarks by asking, “You wouldn’t like to see me hung, would you?” Murray said that he wouldn’t and that he hoped he would not be responsible in bringing about Cole’s hanging. The Yankees Check the Confederate Johnson's Island Conspiracy Confederate Captain L.C Cole keeps his nerve in his confrontation with Union Captain Carter of the U.S. S. Michigan, but the Yankees expose the conspiracy. In his account of the confrontation between Confederate agent L.C. Cole and Captain Carter of the U.S.S. Michigan, Detective Murray wrote that Cole had the best nerve of any man he ever saw, not making a fuss or even changing his tone of voice. According to Murray, Cole offered him $50,000 if he would not reveal enough information to put a rope around his neck. All Murray had to do was give him $500 or enough money to get to the South. Murray left Cole a prisoner on the U.S.S. Michigan, “smiling in the little cabin with the sentry at the door.” The Confederates Scuttle the Philo Parsons and the Passenger and Crew Meanwhile aboard the Philo Parsons, the Confederates anxiously awaited Cole’s signal. As the minutes on the ships clock tickled by, they grew more and more nervous. Finally, the crew voted on whether or not to attack the Michigan without a signal. Beall and Burleigh voted yes, but the other 17 conspirators voted no. The Parsons turned around and steamed for Detroit. The Confederates dropped most of the crew and passengers on Fighting Island across from Ecorse, Michigan, and docked at Sandwich, Ontario. They scuttled the Parsons and began walking toward Windsor. Colonel Charles Hill Evaluates the Conspirators In a letter to Captain C.D. Horton, Colonel Charles W. Hill, Commandant of Johnson’s Island Prison, reported the aftermath of the conspiracy. Along with a United States attorney, marshal and commissioner and Captain Horton of the Michigan, Colonel Hill evaluated the conspirators. They agreed that evidence was pretty strong against Merrick, Rosenthal, Cole and Robinson, and issued a warrant for their arrest. Cole and Robinson were arrested and Captain Horton of the Michigan held them while Colonel Hill arrested and held Merrick and Rosenthal. Beall traveled as far as Niagara Falls where he was arrested, brought back to Port Clinton, Ohio and jailed. Eventually he escaped and returned to Scotland. The Philo Parsons was refloated, but burned to the waterline in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Island Queen was raised, put back into service and finished her career as a cargo carrier. Cole went to prison once again on Johnson’s Island, and his “wife,” Annie, returned to her profession on the Buffalo water front. Charles Cole Has the Last Word Charles Cole managed to have the last word- at least an etched one. More than a century later, as Sid Jordan, a songwriter and volunteer guide at the abandoned North Quarry, clambered around a rocky ledge on the north shore of Kelley’s Island, Ohio he found an inscription scratched into the stone. The inscription read: “CC 1864.” History Professor Gil Stelter Researches the Conspiracy A Canadian history professor emeritus Gil Stelter of the University of Guelp in Ontario feels that there are deeper dimensions and ramifications to the conspiracy then have been realized. Through three years of extensive research, Stelter discovered that a Scottish immigrant, Adam Robertson, established two iron foundries and a factory in Guelph. Bennett Burley, a cousin of Robertson’s and a Confederate officer and several of his friends, including John Yeats Beall, persuaded Robertson to make several cannon, cannonballs and grenades in his foundry. Robertson’s son, speaking in 1917, said that the conspirators planned to ship the weapons to Lake Erie to help free the prisoners at Johnson’s Island and capture the USS Michigan. Dr. Stelter found copies of the conspirator’s correspondence in the Robertson home and he contends that everyone knew that the foundry was making more than plows. The Union Army discovered the Johnson’s Island plot and a parallel scheme to burn New York. It failed, but after an intensive reading of the correspondence and other documents, Dr. Stelter theorizes that the plot had a second dimension. He believes that the conspirators purchased a boat in Toronto and hoped to outfit it with cannon cast in Robertson’s foundry. Robertson’s clandestine activities did not seem to affect his fortunes. His foundry continued to prosper and eventually he became mayor of Guelp. The only surviving cannon from his factory now overlooks Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay. General Hitchcock Writes a Letter to Secretary of War Stanton The unfolding of the Confederate conspiracy threw the United States War Department into a frenzy. Shortly after Beal and Cole and their fellow conspirators were arrested, Major General E.A. Hitchcock, Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners, wrote Secretary of War Stanton a letter from Sandusky dated September 23, 1864. In his letter he strongly advised Stanton that the U.S. Government should have several armed vessels fully manned on the Great Lakes. He reminded Secretary Stanton that Ex-Secretary Thompson was employed in Canada creating dangerous expeditions. He cited as his proof the recent seizure of two steamers in this vicinity has indeed terminated disastrously for the projectors of the horrible scheme, but the plot was a sufficient warning to prod the government into action. Major General Hitchcock earnestly recommended that no time be lost in putting afloat armed vessels upon Lake Ontario and speedily upon the upper lakes also. He said, “We are engaged in war, rendering this step justifiable under the treaty of 1815, but it is my duty to speak only the justifying necessity of this case.” Seven months later in April 1865, the Civil War ended, sparing Secretary of War Stanton the necessity of putting armed vessels on the Great Lakes. References Frohman, Charles E., Rebels on Lake Erie, Ohio Historical Society, 1965 Headley, John William. Confederate Operations in Canada and New York. New York: Neale, 1906. [Reprinted] Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Horan, James D., Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History, Crown Publishers, 1954 Kinchen, Oscar A. Confederate Operations in Canada and the North: A Little-Known Phase of the American Civil War. North Quincy, MA: Christopher, 1970. Shepard, Frederick Job, The Johnson’s Island Plot: An Historical Narrative of the Conspiracy of the Confederates, in 1864, to Capture the U.S. Steamship Michigan on Lake Erie, and Release the Prisoners of War in Sandusky Bay, Cornell University Library, 1906 Starr, Stephen Z. Colonel Grenfell's Wars. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Thorndale, Theresa, Sketches and Stories of the Lake Erie Islands, Ohio State Historical Society, 1898 |
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