The Bone Ring

By Gari Carter

When Colonel William Leonard died in 1901, among his effects was found a lovely jewelry box containing a simple ring carved of cow bone and engraved with his birthdate and the year of his imprisonment in Libby Prison. This humble memento, so carefully preserved, was made for him by his men to mark his 46th birthday when they were all prisoners o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donella Press
• Release date: Feb 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955068062

Gari Carter

Gari Carter was given her great-great-grandfather's journals from the Civil War era and spent years deciphering his handwriting and researching his life. These writings of Franklin Archibald Dick awakened Carter's deep respect and appreciation for the adversity he dealt with and the wisdom it offered her in dealing with her own journey. Her first book, Healing Myself, was written after her life-changing auto accident. She is a dynamic public speaker and lives in North Carolina.

Book preview

BoneRing-Front_Cover_Jan9.jpg

Contents

Acknowledgments

Map showing Colonel Leonard’s Travels

Introduction

Journals of Col. William James Leonard

Epilogue

Requiem

Genealogy

Bibliography

About the Author

List of Illustrations and Credits

Introduction

Eastern Maryland, detail from Map of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware... (London: J. Arrowsmith, 1839). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division (LCCN 98688346).

Plug Uglies, 19th-century illustration cartoon of Mobtown. Collection of the Maryland Historical Society, Maryland State Archives.

Colonel Leonard’s Bone Ring. Private collection of James Fulton Leonard Jr., photograph by Tekla.

Purnell’s Legion, from Wilmer, Jarrett, and Vernon, eds., History and Roster of Maryland Volunteers, War of 1861–5, Vol. 2 (Baltimore: Press of Gugenheim, Weil & Co., 1898), pp. 160–63.

Journal

Photograph of William James Leonard, date unknown. Private collection of Peter Hynson.

Civil War Minié Ball. Wikimedia Commons, PumpkinSky.

Old Libby Prison building, Richmond, Va., 1865. Library of Congress, Civil War Photograph Collection (ppmsca 34911).

Epilogue

Isabella Staples White Leonard, after 1873. Private collection of Peter Hynson.

Front page of Eastern Shoreman, June 3, 1874. Clipping in private collection of Peter Hynson.

Leonard’s appointment as Provost Marshal, February 15, 1864. Private collection of Peter Hynson.

The examining committee’s letter to President Lincoln exonerating Colonel Leonard, Sept. 21, 1864. Private collection of Peter Hynson.

Notice from Ordnance Office, Feb. 19, 1865.

Officer’s Claim for Horse and Equipage Lost in Battle, undated.

Medal from Civil war Centennial Roundtable Commission, presented to Gari Carter.

William and Isabella (Belle) Leonard, with William and Mary, ca. 1878. Private collection of Gari Carter.

First page of Colonel Leonard’s will. Original in Office of the Worcester County Clerk.

Entry on Colonel Leonard from the Biographical Cyclopedia of of Representative Men of Maryland and District of Columbia (Baltimore: National Biographical Publishing Company, 1879), pp. 565–66.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful that my great-grandfather kept his insightful journal, the core of this book. Family members kindly shared their memories, documents, and possessions of our ancestor William James Leonard: my mother, Mai Dick West; my uncles Franklin Dick and William and Edward Griffith; and my cousins Dick, Peter, and Rick Hynson, Lisa Sherwood, Anne Bailliere, Linell Smith, Isabel Eberstadt, Patty Jenkins, Pam Leonard, genealogist Diana Wildland, Dickie Anderson, and Betsy Smith. My cousin Jim Leonard showed me the bone ring and Catlett’s Station, and my cousin Dr. Hubert White explained Richmond and Libby Prison. My grandmother and her siblings told me stories of their Papa. Richard W. Cooper, an expert on Colonel Leonard and Salisbury history, was my encouraging mentor. Virginia history expert and author Frank Walker gave valuable perspective and technical advice on the state of Virginia during the Civil War. The Wicomico County Historical Society, the Maryland Historical Society, Maryland historian Dan Toomey, and Jean-Barry Molz, senior librarian at the Baltimore Enoch Pratt Public Library, aided with research questions. Summer McClinton drew a beautiful map of Colonel Leonard’s travels, and Tekla took perfect photographs for this book. Sully, Laura, Caroline, Carol, Sarah, and the Writers of the Last Resort researched, read, and listened. I thank you all for your generous assistance!

Introduction

Our ancestral inheritance speaks to us in surprising ways. As family members shared stories of my great-grandfather Col. William James Leonard and showed me their inherited possessions, I noticed common threads in our physical appearances and behaviors, though each of us was an individual blend from our shared gene pool.

I saw Colonel Leonard’s silver, china, furniture, photographs, and documents, and visited the graves and house in Salisbury, Maryland. Among all the possessions and photographs he left to his heirs, the one that most resonated with me is a simple bone ring (the significance of which will be revealed later) that he kept in a lovely jewelry box. This symbol of his past on the book cover is meant to honor its importance to him.

I spent ten years researching my earlier book Troubled State: The Civil War Journals of Franklin Archibald Dick, which tells the story of my great-great-grandfather, a prominent St. Louis attorney and loyal Unionist in the divided state of Missouri, who became a trusted advisor to Lincoln, Grant, and other key figures of his day. Franklin Archibald Dick became the grandfather-in-law to the seventh child of Colonel Leonard, when Jean Boyd Leonard married Franklin Archibald Dick II. It was through my grandmother Jean Boyd Leonard that the journals were passed down to my mother and me. After working with the documentation left by Franklin Dick, I always knew that one day I would turn my attention to the equally fascinating Civil War journal of Colonel Leonard. As I spent years researching Colonel Leonard’s life, I became aware of the history and importance of Libby Prison and realized the value of his firsthand account of his capture and imprisonment.

Both my great-grandfather and I had life-altering experiences and the opportunity to utilize those lessons later in life. Colonel Leonard’s was his incarceration in Libby Prison; mine was an auto crash.¹ Those experiences stripped our lives to basic survival, and the familiar was swept away in an instant. Leonard had based his life on the values of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:13, KJV). His imprisonment eradicated those values: he felt the Confederates did not behave with honor and people in authority did not listen to him. He was incarcerated with no rights, a traumatic experience for an industrious man. He turned the worst event in his life into the best, as did I, although I was not aware of the parallels or the ancestral influence at the time. Later, William put his energy into helping people via politics and business, again living by the Golden Rule.

I wish I had asked more questions of my grandmother and her brothers and sisters. Direct transmission of stories and connections usually lasts for three generations. Then, unless they are written down, they disappear. We all need to be keepers of our family history—this book contains a small part of mine.

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William James Leonard was born on September 16, 1816, on a family farm in Worcester County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.² His parents were Joseph Leonard III (Jan. 23, 1776–Jan. 29, 1837) and Mary Dashiell Leonard (April 11, 1782–July 2, 1855). The year of William’s birth was known as 1816 and froze to death due to a July frost caused by the massive volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora on the eastern Java island of Sumbawa the previous year;