They Went They Fought They Won: Civil War Veterans of Mendon and Honeoye Falls, New York

By Diane Ham and Lynne Menz

Many books have been written about the Civil War.  These books document battles, strategies, heroes, traitors, generals, spies, government leaders and, of course, presidents of both sides.  This book does not.  Instead, we have tried to present a picture of the ordinary men—the residents of the Village of Honeoye Fal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing
• Release date: Jan 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643614533

Diane Ham

Diane Ham was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, grew up in Michigan where she received a BS degree in Business Administration from Central Michigan University, spent a few years in Kentucky and has lived in the Rochester, New York area for about fifty years. She has been Mendon Town Historian, where she currently lives, for forty years. She has written several books and booklets on Mendon subjects. She became a registered historian of New York State in 2005 and is also past president of the Monroe County Municipal Historians and a member of the Association of Public Historians of New York State. In her spare time, she and her husband of fifty-five years enjoy renovating their old farmhouse, camping and traveling. They have two married sons and two granddaughters.

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Copyright © 2019 by Diane Ham and Lynne Menz.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Acknowledgements 

Introduction 

1 The Civil War Home Front 

2 The Amsden Brothers: Joel M., Rufus Brooks & Frank 

3 The Burton Brothers: Leonard and Parley 

4 William Downey 

5 Charles Arthur Goheen 

6 Eugene A. Green 

7 Hiram Johnson 

8 Father and Son: Benjamin and Louis L. Lewis 

9 A. D. John McDonald 

10 The Murphys: James and Barney C. 

11 Dr. Clark Otis 

12 Francis M. (Frank), Martin, and Seymour Pierce 

13 Omar J. Richardson 

14 Peter and Charles Semmel 

15 Truman and Hinman Smith 

16 Isaiah D. Stilwell 

17 Dr. Morris W. & Albert E. Townsend 

18 William H. Tring 

19 Henry and Edward Waid 

20 The Grand Army of the Republic Lewis Gates Post #369 

21 After the Civil War 

22 Mendon/Honeoye Falls Civil War Veterans 

Sources 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was a long time in the writing and would never have been completed without help from a number of individuals. Our thanks go to Sherlee Ruth, whose dedication to her family history provided us with valuable pictures and knowledge of her children’s ancestor, Dr. Clark Otis. Also, we thank the Mendon/Honeoye Falls Historical Society and its Chairman, Bill Lane, for his help and access to the Museum’s collection of pictures and memorabilia, and Dr. Ralph McLean for his additional information on Dr. Morris Townsend. Special thanks go to David Sanderson. His editorial comments improved our writing and also helped clarify our thinking. Last but not least, our thanks to our significant others, our husbands, Rodney Ham, and Wayne Menz. Rodney’s work on the photos was invaluable and Wayne kept the computer on task. Both men were patient listeners, offered helpful suggestions and provided shoulders to lean on.

INTRODUCTION

Many books have been written about the Civil War. These books document battles, strategies, heroes, traitors, generals, spies, government leaders and, of course, presidents of both sides. This book does not. Instead, we have tried to present a picture of the ordinary men--the residents of the Village of Honeoye Falls and the Town of Mendon, New York--who went to war leaving families, businesses and jobs to defend what they believed in. They went, and although some did not return, those who did resumed their lives and moved on. This is their story.

Honeoye Falls is a Village of about ten square miles within the Town of Mendon in upstate New York. The Town is predominantly an agricultural area. The Village, on the other hand, with Honeoye Creek, its falls and two railroad lines bisecting it, is the commercial area of the Town. Though the Village and Town reside in the same county as the larger City of Rochester, in 1860 a trip to the City was a major undertaking. The villagers and townspeople were well informed on the issues of the day--slavery, abolition and secession--and they were almost certainly major topics of conversation in the local businesses and churches. No doubt if asked, the residents would express their support for the abolition of slavery, but there is no evidence that anyone in the area had any direct contact with it or with the Underground Railroad. Preserving the Union, was probably the main reason why the residents of the Town and Village enlisted in the Union Army, but there may have been other less noble reasons, such as: excitement, travel, or maybe as Col. Joseph Stockton of the 72nd IL Infantry is known to have said, Men want to be tried to see what they are made of. Others, no doubt, enlisted for the same reason as Cpl. William A. Clark of the 72nd IN Infantry, I enlisted for what I couldn’t tell. In fact, I done it just to be doing. There were also those who, like Pvt. Samuel J. Alexander of the 62nd PA Infantry, by explaining his enlistment in a letter to his wife, wrote, It ought to be a consolation to know that you have a husband what is man enough to fight for his country.

In all, approximately 480,000 men from the State of New York enlisted in the Union Army. This included the 238 men from the Town of Mendon, including the Village of Honeoye Falls. That was approximately eight percent of the population of the Town at the start of the Civil War. Of those 238 men, 35 of them were killed in battle, 12 died of sickness, six died in prisons and one was listed as deserted. The rest returned home--some with wounds received in battle. Although some of the returning men moved on, 121 of them stayed. The veterans who resumed their lives in our Town and Village were proud of their military service for they had saved the Union. They formed a local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR as it was more commonly known), the Lewis Gates Post #369.

1

The Civil War Home Front

In the 1850s, the eastern part of the United States had become almost two separate countries--the North and the South. The growing North attracted immigrants to its busy cities and manufacturing jobs. The South was mostly agricultural, and its proud and aristocratic people wanted it to remain that way. Friction between the regions grew; war had become inevitable.

On April 12, 1861, the Great War began. Some of the causes that led to the Civil War were: economic and social differences between the North and the South; states’ versus federal rights; and the slavery issue. Regarding slavery, not all Southerners were slave owners, but the South’s economy depended on the large cotton plantations worked by slaves. Without slavery, Southerners feared their whole way of life would be destroyed. Slavery was the South’s answer to its need for a large, cheap labor force to raise its main crop--cotton. Many slaves led lives of back- breaking labor, poor rations, and beatings. Their lives were not their own. They were property, like a horse or a wagon. They could be sold at any time and could be separated from their spouses and children.

During the War, three million Americans fought each other in over 10,000 battles and skirmishes across the country. More than 620,000 soldiers died. Those who fought suffered greatly in this War that seemed to have no end. In some cases, brothers fought against brothers or fathers and sons were sometimes on opposing sides, and old friends often faced each other in battle.

Within 15 months of the onset of the War, Monroe County, New York, organized over 40 companies, with a total of nearly 5,000 men. The list from Mendon numbered about 238 soldiers who served in the War. District School #7 at Mendon Center was used as a recruiting station for these soldiers. Soldiers leaving for the Civil War traveled by train and then marched to their destination in parade fashion after they had assembled.

Handwritten letters, often written with a quill pen, were the lifeline between Honeoye Falls and Mendon families on the home- front and their sons, husbands, and brothers on the battlefront. Sometimes the letters took weeks to arrive; sometimes they never arrived. A mother would sit, writing tirelessly to her son who enlisted when he was 18 or 20 years old. Most soldiers waited eagerly for letters with news from home. Also, most soldiers had to throw the letters away after reading them because there was too much equipment and supplies to carry from battle to battle. Thus, relatively few letters received by soldiers in the War survived.

Filling Cartridges at the United States Arsenal at Watertown, MA, 1861 (wood engraving by Winslow Homer). Brooklyn Museum

The wives of Mendon soldiers in the Civil War greatly felt the effects of the War at home. Those who lived on farms were now responsible for the farm in addition to their regular, full-time duties of household work and child rearing. Before the War, the daily lives of women included sewing garments for the family, tending gardens, canning food, cleaning and maintaining the house and preparing three meals a day. Doing laundry for a family usually took an entire day. With their husbands off to war, rural women were also left with the tasks of tending the farm animals such as hogs and cows, plowing and harvesting crops and managing the finances of the home. The overseeing of such business was new to most of the women. Soldiers would try to do what they could in advising their wives in the matters of managing the farm by letter. High