It's time for another Blog Post, and since Memorial Day is coming up very soon, I will consider this to be a "Memorial Day Special", insofar as that may be appropriate, given what Memorial Day is for, which is, to say, remembrance, specifically, of Veterans, and their service. To that end, the following write-up concerns a veteran in the family whom I've heard vaguely about for many years, and having done research on him finally, will try to put the information forward as accurately as I can..
I was contacted a while ago, (okay, several years ago), by a relative living in New York, during my 'break' from the blog, on the specific email I kind of forgot to ever check, so I unfortunately didn't follow up until recently. This cousin who contacted me remembered attending the Baldwin Reunion picnic many years ago. Her father Charles Baldwin was Raymond Baldwin's brother, and they were two of the children of Frank and Amy (Sills) Baldwin.
She remembered seeing Lyman, Bessie, Silas, Fannie, Frank, and Amy at one of the earlier reunion picnics, all sitting together and visiting. Lyman and Bessie were my own great-grandparents. Lyman, with his brother Silas and sister Fannie, were the children of William H Baldwin (born 1866) and Irene (Keeler) Baldwin. These three siblings started the Baldwin Family Reunion picnics in the first place, from what I remember reading in the 'History of the Baldwin Reunion' document.
Brothers William Harmon, born 1866, left, next to Frank Baldwin, born 1879, right.
Two sons of Lyman J. Baldwin and Elizabeth A. Wolcott.
This William's brother was Frank, who married Amy Sills. Amy was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1887 and she died in 1980. Amy Sills Baldwin's mother, Helen B. Garthwaite, was born 1868 and died 1943. She is currently buried in Waterbury, Connecticut (where I expect her to remain for the time being). So, that makes Amy's mother, Helen Bernice "Nellie" (Garthwiate) Sills, the mother-in-law of my 2nd great-grand-uncle, Frank Wolcott Baldwin. Although, for other family branches, this connection will be a more direct ancestry.
Gravestones of Helen and William Sills
Helen Garthwaite's father's name was George Winfield Garthwaite. He, then, is the maternal grandfather of the wife of my great-great-grand-uncle, and to the youngest generation of my cousins, their great-great-great-great grandfather directly. From what I can tell, neither I nor my specific family branch are directly related to George Garthwaite, but members of this youngest generation are still my 4th cousins, since we share a different 3rd great-grandfather on Frank's family branch. This 3rd great-grandfather specifically is Lyman J Baldwin, husband to Elizabeth Wolcott, and the father of Amy's husband Frank.
So! Now having established genealogical context, we may proceed to the main point. Unless you SKIPPED AHEAD, which, if you did, you should feel a little guilty about that.
George Winfield Garthwaite (also spelled Garthwait) was born in 1835, in Peekskill, New York. He died in 1923 in Wolcott, Connecticut. In between, he enlisted in the United States Army at least twice, as I found a record of re-enlistment, shown below. According to this, he re-enlisted during the American Civil War on December 13th, 1863, putting him at about age 28, fighting for the Union Army (thank God, I don't think I could stomach the alternative, I don't care what you say, and I stand by it, so there! Boo to the South!).
According to Civil War records I could find, George was a part of the 11th Regiment, Connecticut Infantry. A Wolcott Historical Society article written by Florence Goodman in 2016 confirms this. In it, she cites a Waterbury Newspaper article from July 16th, 1911 and gives further information that George was indeed a part of this regiment, enlisting October 15th, 1861. At one point George held the rank of Sergeant Major; these records can be corroborated by his grave marker. The details and activities of the 11th regiement are beyond the scope of this blog post, but I will post a link to the wikipedia article here, for further reading:
Link to 11th Regiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Connecticut_Infantry_Regiment
George Garthwaite's Enlistment Form
Here also is a picture of George, credit to Ancestry user alsuegarth for the photo.
George W. Garthwaite
The Civil War lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 26th, 1865. George enlisted, therefore, shortly after the start of the war. Around May 16th, 1864, George was captured and taken prisoner to Andersonville, the worst of the Civil War prision camps. Also called Camp Sumter, this prison camp was located near Andersonville Georgia, naturally. The conditions of this camp were infamous, and inhumane, and I will include the quote from solider Robert H. Kellogg below, in full, to describe it.
"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect; stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that he alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then."
Description from Robert H. Kellogg, who was the Sergeant Major of the 16th Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers, upon his imprisonment on May 2, 1864.
We also have some of George's own writings, which include the following passage:
"The only water we had to drink was what flowed thru a brook thru the stockade and into the grounds. There were no arrangements for sanitation and all the filth of the entire camp drained into this brook. We had to drink the water just the same."
George survived and was released. According to the Wolcott article, upon his release from the prison, he had lost 70 pounds. After his military service and return to Connecticut, he was unable to return to his masonry and carpentry work for a further year and a half. The Wolcott article gives a much better account of this in full, so I will credit them, thank them for their reserach, and link to it here:
Link to Wolcott Historical Society: https://web.tapr.org/~wa1lou/whs/news201612.html
Prior to the war, George had married Eliza J. Dayton on July 3rd 1856. We find him later in the 1880 census, age 42 (actually 45) living in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife Eliza, and children, including Helen (Nelly) who was age 11 at this time. We find George later in the 1900 census at age 64, living in Wolcott, Connecticut, with his wife Eliza. He died at the age of 88, in Wolcott, in 1923. Eliza had died prior in 1914, and both are buried in Woodtick Cemetery, in Wolcott, Connecticut.
So that is the history of George Winfield Garthwait, but it doesn't really end there. From what can be pieced together from census records, George and Eliza had ten children, most of whom survived to adulthood, including of course Helen "Nelly", herself, the mother of Amy, who went on to marry Frank, and Frank and Amy's son Raymond married a woman named Ruth, who were both good people, and we remember them. And they had children, who had children, including a daughter, who has children today, and naturally for purposes of privacy I will not name them here, but they're still around...
And so, it continues on, as we remember this Civil War Veteran this upcoming Memorial Day.
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