Civil War 21ST IOWA INFANTRY REGIMENT Cover CAPTAIN HORACE POOLE BATON ROUGE LA

Description

Civil War 21ST IOWA INFANTRY REGIMENT Cover CAPTAIN HORACE POOLE BATON ROUGE LA. Horace was born on December 18, 1836, in what he said was South Danvers (now Peabody) where he graduated from high school. They were still there on February 29, 1864, when Horace Poole was promoted to Assistant Adjutant General (elsewhere Aide de Camp) with the rank of Captain. Civil War 21ST IOWA INFANTRY REGIMENT / GENERAL BANKS HEADQUARTERS New Orleans LA cover postmarked DUBUQUE IOA, MAY 24, to CAPTAIN HORACE POOLE received JUNE 9,1864 Baton Rouge LA. Historic piece! INTERNET INFO: Horace Poole’s ancestors moved to America and settled in Massachusetts in 1632 and that’s where his parents, Fitch and Mary Poole, were born, both in the town of Danvers, Fitch in 1803 and Mary in 1806. Horace was born on December 18, 1836, in what he said was South Danvers (now Peabody) where he graduated from high school. He then attended the historical Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire. After completing his studies and anxious to learn about navigation, Horace traveled to China, returned in 1857, and moved to Iowa in 1858 with Aaron Bayless who founded Dubuque’s Bayless Commercial College that same year. The two men worked together until 1860 when Horace accepted a job as bookkeeper in the commission house of Smith & Cannon. He joined the Governor’s Grays, a local militia unit, and, on May 6, 1861, enlisted in the ninety-day 1st Iowa Infantry. The regiment performed service in Missouri, where, on August 10th, it participated in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Horace was mustered out at St. Louis on August 20, 1861. As the war escalated into a second year, President Lincoln called for 300,000 more volunteers with Iowa to furnish and equip five regiments. As one of few men in northeastern Iowa with military experience, Horace was given the rank of 1st Lieutenant and appointed Adjutant in the 21st Iowa Infantry on September 2, 1862. On the 9th, the regiment was mustered into service at Dubuque’s Camp Franklin with McGregor banker Sam Merrill as Colonel, Mitchell’s Cornelius Dunlap as Lieutenant Colonel, and Manchester attorney Salue Van Anda as Major. William Hyde was appointed Surgeon, but his was an unpopular appointment. While the regiment was still in training, “many ladies” wrote to Governor Kirkwood and said Hyde was a Southern sympathizer and they objected to “our husbands and brothers being placed in his care.” On September 11th, Horace was one of many officers who signed a similar letter denouncing the appointment. Hyde, they said, was “personally objectionable and unpopular with the entire Regiment.” When Dr. Hyde resigned and was discharged so he could accept an appointment with the 32nd Missouri Infantry, there was disagreement as to his replacement with some favoring Lucius Benham and others, including Horace Poole, preferring Asa Horr, but a diplomatic governor went outside the regiment and appointed William Orr. There was an outbreak of measles while the regiment was at Camp Franklin, but those able for duty marched through town to the foot of Jones Street, boarded the Henry Clay and two barges tied alongside, and left for war on September 16th. From St. Louis they traveled by rail to Rolla where a battalion was formed in the early hours of October 18th. Five days later, from Salem, Horace wrote to the Dubuque Times and described their march: “The morning was cool and all stepped off briskly to the tune of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ but certainly not in Missouri. At daylight we halted for rest, and to wait for our train, some two miles southeast of Rolla, having marched eight miles. In half an hour the white covers of our heavy laden wagons were visible, and we again started, the boys in high spirits, at the idea of having beaten the 33d Missouri two hours.” Horace continued his service as Adjutant to Colonel Merrill while the regiment served many months in Missouri before being transported from Ste. Genevieve to Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, in April 1863. They then participated in a successful campaign to capture the Mississippi River town of Vicksburg. That August, Jim Bethard, a private from Clayton County, told his wife that “Adjutant Pool is here putting on regular Houston style.” The regiment next saw service in southwestern Louisiana before being ordered to the Gulf Coast of Texas in November. They were still there on February 29, 1864, when Horace Poole was promoted to Assistant Adjutant General (elsewhere Aide de Camp) with the rank of Captain. Four days later he was discharged from the 21st Infantry so he could accept his new commission, something that apparently came as a surprise to Colonel Merrill. On April 12, 1864, Merrill wrote to Governor Kirkwood indicating that Horace “my old Adjutant is promoted though I have no official information of it.” He asked that George Crooke (the regiment’s postwar biographer) be commissioned since Poole “has not been with us not over two months since the formation of the regiment & our records are in a bad condition.” On September 27, 1864, Horace was in Dubuque where he married Frances Langworthy, daughter of Solon and Julia Langworthy, but he was still in the military. By the time his career ended, he had served on the staffs of Generals Fitz Henry Warren, Nathaniel Banks and George Thomas. Horace was discharged on June 27, 1865. Returning to Dubuque, he resumed work with Smith & Cannon but, in 1870, organized Poole, Gilliam Co., a company he would head for the next twenty years. Dealing in teas, syrups, groceries, canned goods, fruits, corn starch, cigars and tobacco, the firm was located at 272 Main Street in Dubuque and later enlarged. The regiment’s first postwar reunion was held in Dubuque for two days starting on September 16, 1872 (ten years after they had left for war), and Horace was one of seventy-four who attended. The regiment’s fifteenth reunion was in 1911 in Central City where Horace was elected Vice President of the regimental association. The next two-day reunion started at the Julien House in Dubuque on September 9, 1912, fifty years to the day from when they were mustered in as a regiment and again Horace attended. At the foot of Jones Street, they boarded a steamer and enjoyed a two-hour ride on the Mississippi. The next day they had an automobile tour of the city and a trip to the site of Camp Franklin where they had received military training so many years earlier. Horace was also active in the Hyde Clark Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and also served as a vestryman at St. John’s Episcopal Church. After finishing his career at Poole, Gilliam Co, Horace became the Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Iowa in 1898. The Bureau of Pensions within the Department of the Interior handled claims by Union soldiers for pensions. Laws changed many times to increase the financial benefits, liberalize grounds for pensions, and expand benefits to widows, children under sixteen, and dependent parents. Many returned from the war with severe medical problems and applied almost immediately, but it was April 23, 1904, before Horace requested a pension under the general law of June 27, 1890, and the act of May 9, 1900. At sixty-seven years of age, he said he was totally disabled from performing manual labor “by reason of Rupture and stomach trouble; also by reason of his having passed the age of sixty-five.” On June 4, 1904, a certificate was issued entitling him to an age-based pension of $8.00 monthly payable quarterly through the local Pension Agency. He subsequently applied for and received periodic age-based increases. Horace was receiving a monthly pension of $30.00 when he died on Wednesday, February 16, 1916. An obituary indicated the funeral “was held Saturday morning at 11 o’clock from the family residence, 1554 Locust street, to St. John’s Episcopal church” with Rev. John Dysart officiating. Horace is buried in Linwood Cemetery as is Frances who died on October 10, 1916. Horace and Frances had two sons. Clark Langworthy Poole was born July 12, 1866, and Horace Stephens Poole, was born on February 3, 1979. Clark died on April 20, 1950, and, like his parents, is buried in Linwood Cemetery. Horace died on April 24, 1957, but the place of his burial has not been located. This is a scarce early war tin drum canteen. Often associated with Confederate troops, there were many types and they were widely used by early war U.S. volunteers also. This bears a dead-real period inscription by Horace Poole of the 1st Iowa, who fought at Wilson’s Creek and later served as an officer in the 21st Iowa and served on the staffs of Generals, Warren, Banks and Thomas. He very nicely scratched in one face of the canteen, in shaded block letters, is “H. Poole / Co. I / 1st Regt. I.S.V. / 1861 .” Portions of Poole’s 1861 diary have been published or are cited in several books on the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and his account of the engagement was carried in his old hometown newspaper in Danvers, Mass., in August 1861. The canteen follows the general pattern shown by O’Donnell, Canteens, pages 64 to 78. It is made of tinned iron, with the faces having a convex center panel soldered to a wide tinned iron rim that carries three brackets for a shoulder sling and tinned iron spout. The canteen shows a few dents and wear on the raised edges, but lots of its original tin and shows as mix of light and dark gray with a little thin brown here and there, and shows some of the striations created as the iron sheets were drawn up from the tin before stamping and shaping. The spout is in place and secure. Part of the stopper cord is still on one of the brackets. There is a leather sling on it with the ends overlapped under a bracket. The sling has age and is of the period. Whether the one he used in 1861 or not we can’t tell. Poole was a member of the G.A.R. after the war and proud of his service. Descendants sold his effects in the early 1990s, including a captured Second National Confederate flag with a note that he had loaned it for display at one point. Horace Poole has a very good record. Born in Danvers, Mass., in 1836, he later attended Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire and, apparently anxious to see the world, traveled to China and back in 1857, before heading west to Iowa in 1858. He took a job there as a bookkeeper in a commercial firm, which must have aided his later performance as a staff officer. His first wartime experience, however, was as an enlisted man, when he obviously received this canteen. He enrolled in the “Governor’s Greys,” on April 20, 1861, at age 24, immediately after Fort Sumter. Some records indicate April 23, but in any case, the company became part of the 1st Iowa and Poole mustered in as a private in Company I on May 14. The regiment was organized at Keokuk for three months’ service and shortly before it was due to muster out was involved in the bloody fighting for control of Missouri at Wilson’s Creek, the first great battle of the war west of the Mississippi: “the regiment won the admiration of all by its splendid action in the face of overwhelming numbers, repeatedly repulsing the most determined attacks, performing feats of valor and materially contributing to the rout of the enemy at a vital moment. Though not a victory for the Union forces, it was not a signal defeat, the opposing army, five times as great being in no condition to pursue the retiring Union forces. ‘No troops, regular or volunteer, ever sustained their country's flag with more determined valor or fortitude,’ declared an officer who participated in that affair. The regiment lost 21 killed and mortally wounded, 132 wounded and 2 missing.” (The Union Army.) Poole mustered out with the regiment on 8/21/61 at St. Louis. Poole has substantial wartime experience after this as well. His military service with the 1st Iowa and his business experience both probably played a role in getting a commission as 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 21st Iowa on 9/2/62, a regiment that served the Vicksburg Campaign, southwest Louisiana, and gulf coast Texas. He seems to have been good at it: he was detached for staff duty as an Aide de Camp to Iowa General Fitzhugh Warren and then posted to the staff of Nathaniel Banks, transferring to the Adjutant General’s Department and being commissioned Captain and Assistant Adjutant General as of 2/29/64. He is reported as serving on the staff of General George Thomas as well, resigning only after the end of the war, on 6/9/65. After the war he returned to bookkeeping but soon after formed Poole, Gilliam & Co. in Dubuque, dealing in fancy groceries, teas, syrups, canned goods, fruits, tobacco and cigars. He later became Chief Deputy US Marshal for the Northern District of Iowa. He died in 1916. This is a scarce, nicely identified, very early war volunteer’s canteen carried by a soldier who served in one of the great opening battles of the war. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED We want you to be happy with your purchase. We offer a 14-day return on any item that you find is not as described. Please give us a chance to make it right if you feel that we have made an error. Please ask all questions prior to bidding or buying. We reserve the right to cancel any bids that we think was not made in good faith. By placing a bid or making a purchase from us means that you the buyer agrees to all terms applied on this listing set by eBay Inc. We only sell original authentic material. 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