An Upper Alton Mother’s Search for Her Civil War MIA Son
by
John J. Dunphy
This is the photo that Abigail Hurlbut sent to Clara Barton.
Although not related by blood or marriage, I nevertheless share a special link with the Hurlbut family of long-ago Upper Alton, Illinois. Benjamin and Helen Messenger, the grandparents of Dorothy Horton Dromgoole, my beloved great-aunt, purchased the Hurlbut home from Thaddeus Hurlbut in 1884. Aunt Dot was born in that house in 1899 and knew Francese Abi Hurlbut Evans, the only surviving child of Thaddeus and Abigail Hurlbut, who frequently journeyed from Texas to visit her childhood home.
Evans shared many fascinating stories of early Upper Alton with Aunt Dot and the other residents of that beautiful old home. She especially enjoyed sharing her memories of her long-dead brother: Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut, who never returned from the Civil War.
The youngest child and only son of Thaddeus and Abigail Hurlbut, this remarkable young man was named in honor of two famous abolitionists. William Wilberforce played an instrumental role in abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire. To the best of my knowledge, the Hurlbuts never met him. However, they were well acquainted with the other abolitionist for whom they named their son: the newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy, who was murdered in Alton in 1837. In fact, Thaddeus Hurlbut had been Lovejoy’s staunchest ally.
Natives of Vermont, the Hurlbuts moved in 1834 to St. Louis, where they met Lovejoy. Two years later, the Hurlbuts moved to Upper Alton, which at the time was a separate community from “lower” Alton, and took up residence at the dwelling now known as the Old Rock House. When a St. Louis mob ransacked the office of the St. Louis Observer, Lovejoy’s newspaper, Thaddeus Hurlbut suggested that Lovejoy move his newspaper to Alton in the slavery-free state of Illinois. Hurlbut served as assistant editor of Lovejoy’s newspaper, now renamed the Alton Observer.
Lovejoy and Hurlbut co-founded the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society. Loyal to his friend to the bitter end, Thaddeus Hurlbut was one of the defenders of Lovejoy’s final printing press. He remained with his friend’s bullet-riddled corpse on November 7, 1837, when the mob entered the Godfrey-Gilman warehouse to carry off the printing press and throw it in the river.
Hurlbut considered ordering yet another printing press to continue publishing the Alton Observer with himself as editor, but anti-abolitionist sentiment in Alton ran too high. A mob stoned his home and even threatened his wife. After a brief sojourn in Jacksonville, Illinois, the Hurbuts returned to Upper Alton and built a home. This home became known as the Hurlbut-Messenger house and was located at 1406 Washington Avenue. Demolished in 1957, it is one of the lost historic and architectural treasures of downstate Illinois. Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut was born in this house in 1841.
Thaddeus Hurlbut preached at various churches and taught school until 1847, when he became pastor of the Upper Alton Presbyterian Church. This was the same church that had once been pastored by Elijah Lovejoy. Hurlbut preached from the pulpit once occupied by his slain friend until 1852. His true occupation, however, was aiding escaped slaves on their flight to freedom.
The Hurlbut-Messenger house became a stop on the Underground Railroad. An old account mentions “the dark, damp, cavernous basement” where slaves were hidden. The late George Berry, who grew up in the house in the early twentieth century, stated that as a child he had explored a long tunnel that ran from this basement. During my research on the Underground Railroad in southwestern Illinois, I found references to a tunnel that allegedly ran from the corner of East Fourth and Henry streets in lower Alton and ended at the Old Rock House — a distance of about a mile and a half. Could this have been the tunnel that Berry explored?
Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut enrolled in Upper Alton’s Shurtleff College, which was located just a short distance from his home. A brilliant student, he excelled in Greek and mathematics. Against his parents’ wishes, he left college in the middle of his senior year in 1862 to enlist in the Union army.
His decision was hardly surprising. This young man had grown up in a family permeated with abolitionism. For Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut, the Civil War wasn’t about merely saving the Union. It was a noble crusade to rid the United States of slavery and he wanted to be part of it.
Hurlbut fought at at Antietam, led the Fifth Michigan Regiment at Chancellorsville and was wounded at Gettysburg. He went missing in action on May 6, 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness. Hurlbut was reported last seen leading a charge against the Confederates.
The memorial to Hurlbut in the Alton Cemetery.
Union general Isaac Richardson contacted Confederate general James Longstreet to inquire about Hurlbut’s fate. Longstreet determined that Hurlbut was not incarcerated in any of the South’s prisoner of war camps. Finally, an eyewitness was located who stated that he had seen young Hurlbut shot in the head. Union general Thomas F. Meagher praised the fallen warrior by saying, “With Hurlbut fell the fittest historian of the Army of the Potomac.”
The preceding four paragraphs conclude that segment of my 2011 book, Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois that deal with Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut. It was pretty much all I knew about that long-ago young man at the time. Such is no longer the case.
A truly heartrending letter came to my attention last year. It was written by Abigail Hurlbut and sent to Clara Barton. Hurlbut was desperate to learn more information regarding her late son. Barton, who had tended wounded soldiers in hospitals and even on battlefields during the war, had been appointed by Lincoln in March of 1865 to the position of General Correspondent for the Friends of Paroled Prisoners. According to her biography on the American Battlefield trust web site:
“Her job was to respond to anxious inquiries from the friends and relatives of missing soldiers by locating them among the prison rolls, parole rolls, or casualty lists at the camps in Annapolis, Maryland. To assist in this enormous task, Barton established the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States and published Rolls of Missing Men to be posted across the country. It was at her insistence that the anonymous graves at Andersonville prison were identified and marked.”
Abigail Hurlbut’s letter to Barton is contained in the archives of the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum. It reads:
“Upper Alton, Illinois Sept. 26th 1865
“Miss Barton Dear Madam,
“I approach you with my great sorrow, but hardly indulge the hope that you can do anything for me. My darling boy, my only son, was reported killed in the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6th, 1864. His body was not found, and the hope was entertained by his Regiment and clutched at by myself, that wounded he had fallen into the hands of the Enemy, a prisoner and not dead.
“After various fruitless efforts to obtain information, General Longstreet courteously ordered an examination in the southern prisons, and we obtained a certificate from each that no such name had ever been received. After all our investigations we are led to the conclusion that he died on the battle field, or mortally wounded, was conveyed to some farm house and may have there been buried. He was Captain of company D, Fifth Michigan Infantry. His sword, a cavalry sabre, had his name engraved upon it. Wilber Hurlbut, Fifth Michigan Infantry.
He was in Hancock’s Corps, Birney’s Division, Hay’s Brigade. He had command of the Regiment at the time he fell. Had charged the enemy through a wood and was in the vicinity of Spottsylvania. Our men were heavily pressed and fell back. Captain Hurlbut was missing. A man, by the name of Luke Stanton, told an officer that he saw him fall. We have been unable to find Luke Stanton & have never ascertained to what Regiment he belonged, but learned he was soon after mustered out of the service. Captain Miller, Aid to General Hancock, made such efforts as he could, and other of his comrades did all in their power to learn his fate but we elicit nothing. If he died on the battlefield, I would that I knew it and if he died at a farm house, how much I wish to know it.
For his sword I would give a handsome reward. Anything that was his would be most precious to me and nothing to strangers. Some articles of toilet he had with him have his name. Whatever of money found on his person was of course the spoil of war. My son was twenty-two years old. Wore no moustache (sic)or beard. Was about six feet in height. When in College he was rather spare, but the outdoor life of the army had given him a robust appearance. He entered the army as Aid to General Richardson. After that officer’s lamented death, he served in the Michigan Fifth. He had participated in more than twenty battles. Was severely wounded at Gettysburg, but from which he wholly recovered.
The enemy held the battle ground of the Wilderness and should anything ever be revealed in regard to my dear boy, it would probably come from some Rebel source, unless indeed some of our men captured at the time should know something. General Ewell held the field there for sometime. It may be well to add my son’s name to the many missing ones, and could you by any means give to me any knowledge of the last resting place of my darling one you would confer such a favor as none less desolate than myself can appreciate.
May God bless you in your humane efforts and abundantly reward you.
Mrs. T. B. Hurlbut, Upper Alton, Illinois.
P. S. I neglected to mention that my son had dark hazel eyes. Hair almost black.
Jake Wynn, Director of Interpretation at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum, added this comment following Hurlbut’s letter on the museum’s web site. “Wilbur (sic) T. (sic) Hurlbut’s body was never identified. It was likely moved to Fredericksburg National Cemetery with thousands of other unknown Union dead in the years after the Civil War.”
There is also the possibility that his corpse could have been incinerated by one of the fires that raged in the Wilderness during the battle. In any event, Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut’s name is inscribed on the Hurlbut family monument in the Alton Cemetery, which is also the final resting place of Elijah Lovejoy. The inscription notes his 1841 birth and the fact that he went missing on May 6, 1864 after the Battle of the Wilderness.
Hurlbut’s sword was never returned to his family. It was probably taken by a Confederate soldier as he lay dead on the battlefield. Well-made swords were especially prized by the Rebels. The body of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who led the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Infantry in its futile charge on South Carolina’s Fort Wagner in 1863,was stripped of its valuables. His sword, a custom-made weapon imported from England and gifted to him by an uncle, would have been regarded as quite a war trophy. Luis F. Emilio served as a captain in the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth. According to his 1891 work History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1863–1865, Shaw’s sword “was found during the war in a house in Virginia, and restored to his family.”
However, the 2017 Associated Press article that announced the rediscovery of Shaw’s sword reported the sword “was probably sold to a Southern officer and made its way to North Carolina.” The article stated the Shaw’s sword was recovered by Brig. Gen. Charles Jackson Paine, who then returned it to Shaw’s sister, Susanna Shaw Minturn.
Several Minturn descendants found the sword in their parents’ attic as they were preparing the house for sale. “We looked at it a little more closely and discovered that it was a nicely engraved with the American flag, and on the other side it had the initials ‘R.G.S.,’ “ Mary Wood Minturn stated. “That’s when we knew this is a special sword.”
Perhaps in some Southern attic a cavalry saber that bears the inscription “Wilber Hurlbut, Fifth Michigan Infantry” lies forgotten. If this saber is someday found and a Hurlbut descendant can’t be located, then it belongs in the Alton Museum of History and Art so that we render our city’s fallen warrior the honor he deserves.
*****
John J. Dunphy is the author of Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois and From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois.