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Health & Fitness

The Minnesota Connection to the Civil War

Andersonville 2009


*Monticello Seminary, April 21, 1861… (10 days after the beginning of the Civil War)

My dear George,

Amid such extraordinary scenes as in St. Louis as well as every other city of the Union (or, rather dis-union) you will perhaps welcome a letter from me as something by which to divert your mind for a short time from the present all-absorbing topic of interest – “Civil War.” … All I know of this present disastrous state of the country is what I have learned from the teachers, and through the papers with which you have taken the trouble to provide me. …We schoolgirls know comparatively very little about secession. And yet from the state of excitement which the school is now in, any one might see that we know a great deal too much for our own “peace of mind” at best. Today, being Saturday, the girls have had more license to think about it and there has been some excitement. You should have seen and heard us when the mail was distributed this noon. …Those that did receive papers were immediately surrounded by those who did not; and directed to read aloud so that all might hear the news.  Mr. Godfrey, last night, told one of the girls in my hearing, that it was his opinion the school here should be broken up in less than a month… . I hardly think that it can be so, and hope it will not. … Only one young lady has, as yet, gone home on account of the war, though it is thought others will go soon. All these graduates have written to go home. If they should all go I wonder what Miss Fobes would do next Anniversary. Sadie is very anxious to go home. At the first commencement of the war which the people of the South have thus provoked Sadie was strongly for them. She is gradually changing and she says very little on the subject now. Today when we were speaking of the secession of Virginia, she said it seemed to her “perfectly awful” that the very state who gave us George Washington should now be one to forget his example and precepts. There is one young lady who seemed perfectly delighted when the news came that Virginia had seceded, but she is almost the only one in school who is not on the side of the north and she is looked upon almost with disgust. There were many sad countenances around the dinner table today. Several girls had just received letters from brothers who had enlisted or volunteered. Others had friends who were going to join in the war and some, I know, received similar intelligence from persons who were far dearer to them than merely a friend or a brother. I know that you hear the affairs of the nation talked over every day by far abler politicians than I am, and so I am not going to say anything more on the subject. I only thought I should give you some idea how we of Monticello are feeling about it all.

                        Yours Truly and Affectionately,

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                        Celia

*“When you educate a man, you educate an individual; when you educate a woman, you educate a family." This quotation was the basis for the formation of Monticello College in Godfrey, Illinois. Captain Benjamin Godfrey was convinced that women had a vital role in the growing nation. He decided to open a seminary to properly train young women, one devoted "to the moral, intellectual and domestic improvement of females." Monticello Ladies' Seminary opened in April 1838. In June 1841 the first class graduated. My Great-Grandmother Celia Chase was a student at this school during the Civil War and the above letter was written by her to the man she cared about, George Hilliard, when she was a student at the school before they were married.

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If only my Great-Grandma Celia knew how important this letter would be to her descendants and others more than 150 years later! I should tell you that she attended the school for only two years (1860 and 1861) and in 1864 she married the man she was writing the letter to, my Great-Grandfather George Weld Hilliard. She was later quoted in a 1938 newspaper article talking about her recollections of Lincoln and Grant and when she met President Hayes. She also recalled many incidents of the Civil War, all still very clear in her memory.

A few years ago a Burnsville friend and I took a road trip through the South to learn about the Civil War and black history. We visited Andersonville, a prisoner of war camp in Georgia, and saw the gravestones for those from Minnesota who died there. I swear we both could feel the ghosts of those soldiers as we wandered about the land that held so much pain and so many tears! We walked across the bridge in Selma; we looked into the motel room where Martin Luther King Jr. was staying the night before he was shot; we saw a home that still shows the hiding places slaves used during their trek North on the Underground Railroad; we visited Birmingham; I stood by the cannons at Fort Sumter, where the first shot was fired to start the Civil War. Not only is February Black History Month and a month to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and President Abraham Lincoln, it is also a month that the Burnsville Historical Society is featuring a presentation on the Minnesota Connection to the Civil War.

Doesn’t this make you want to know more about your relatives and what they did during the Civil War?

Everyone is invited to attend the Burnsville Historical Society monthly meeting 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Burnhaven Library on County Road 42 in Burnsville. Bring any stories, artifacts, and questions you might have about the Civil War. The coffee will be hot, so come in out of the cold and relax with your neighbors!  

Our guest speaker will be Eagan resident Ken Flies, a frequent presenter on Minnesota in the Civil War. Flies became interested in the Civil War through his family history and the historical nurturing of his mother and grandmother. Having grown up in Plainview, Minnesota (near Rochester), he tells people that on Dec. 16, 1864 at the Battle of Nashville, nine men from Plainview were killed and two of them are buried in the Plainview Cemetery today.

His great-great-grandfather, a Pennsylvanian who came to Minnesota, fought with his brother in all the 10th Minnesota engagements except Mobile. He died and is buried in Tennessee. Also this man had a brother in the 3rd MN Infantry and brother-in-law in the 2nd MN Cavalry. Union General Sumner married a distant cousin Mary Forster, who had two sons as Union officers and later generals and sons-in-law who were Confederate officers. One was a secretary to Robert E. Lee; one was chief of Stonewall Jackson’s artillery. General Wright, commander of the Pacific during the Civil War, was married to his ancestor, Margret Forster. Several Foresters were in Pennsylvania regiments including in the famous 83rd Pennsylvania from Crawford and Erie County. Flies’ great-great-grandfather fought with the 2nd and 23rd Connecticut in Army of the Potomac, was captured near Smithfield, Virginia, and sent to Andersonville prisoner of war camp, where he died and is buried. Another relative was in the 21st Connecticut, wounded and died at the Battle of Port Hudson.

Flies agrees with the adage, “If you don’t observe history you are bound to repeat it.” The Civil War had more than 750,000 casualties, more than any other war in U.S. history. When asked why we should continue to remember the Civil War, Flies said, because it was such a devastating event that bonded the country and made it into one overlapping experience and into one republic. He also said that one-third of Americans today can tie themselves to an ancestor who fought in the Civil War.

Flies invites anyone who has an interest in current day events to honor those who fought in the Civil War and all those who are interested in its history to attend this meeting. He plans to show a short video and talk about his involvement in celebrating the history of this war.

Flies is a member of the Twin Cities Roundtable, a past member of Rochester and Hiawatha Valley CWRTs, member of The Battle of Nashville Preservation Society, chairman of Soldier Recognition subcommittee of MN Commemorative Civil War Task Force, is a frequent presenter and writer on the Indian Wars, Civil War battles in middle Tennessee and the Battle of Nashville and the XVI Corps-Union Army of Tennessee. He served in the Peace Corps in Brazil in 1962, is a founder of the Great River Ridge State Trail, wrote and produced the Civil War play “Guerillas from the Greenwood,” and wrote the poem “The Ode to a Soldier Long Forgotten” that won the Editors Choice Award of the National and International Libraries of Poetry. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and is an international business consultant with his focus on Latin America.

For more information or if you have questions, call Bonnie Boberg at 952-890-5089. We look forward to seeing you on Feb. 22.

 

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