A Photo Found at the Franklin Civil War Show Led Back to the Battle of Franklin

Carte de visite by Edward L. Allen of Boston, Mass. At the recent Civil War Show in Franklin, Tennessee, I saw this image on the table of dealer Kolt Massie, who is a collector, friend, and Military Images advertiser.

 

I was immediately struck by the pristine quality of the photograph and impressed by the unique content: a man, probably in his 30s, I judged, wearing glasses, of medium build, shoulders squared, dressed in civilian clothes, looking like a model citizen. In contrast, he grips the bottom of his frock coat in an almost Napoleonic pose, standing in front of a large Stars and Stripes with an eagle and ribbons in the blue canton.

 

Intriguing! Who was this man, and why is he posed with our national colors? What story is he trying to tell us? I had to find out.

 

My eye moved away from the print area to the card-stock mount upon which the image is affixed. Just below the bottom of the image is the photographer’s name, Allen, and location, 13 Winter Street. I’d seen this imprint before and recognized Allen as a Boston photographer.

 

I then turned the image over and found what I had hoped for—a pencil inscription, which appeared to date from the Civil War period.

 

A name—Agustus Heath. I made a rough estimation that this was very likely the name of the man, that his actual first name was spelled Augustus, and therefore, because it was misspelled, the person who wrote the name was probably not Augustus himself, assuming he would have spelled his own name correctly. Later, I would check and find no Augustus Heath on record spelled without the first “u.”

 

At the table, I made the deal with Kolt, and we chatted a bit longer before I left him and went on my merry way.

 

Back at home, I jumped into the research rabbit hole, exploring all my favorite databases in search of Augustus Heath.

 

Here’s the story behind the photograph, which, as you’ll see, has a unique and, for me, altogether unexpected tie to Franklin.

 

Augustus Henry Heath, born in 1823 in Charlestown, Mass.—a bustling city across the Charles River from Boston—traced his ancestry to colonial times and to a grandfather who served as an officer in Gen. George Washington’s army during the Revolution.

 

Growing up, he witnessed firsthand the explosion of Irish immigrants in his hometown. After completing his education, he entered the business world as a dry-goods merchant on Main Street and later opened a store on Federal Street in Boston.

 

Heath prospered financially during the years before the war. He accepted an invitation to the Boston Board of Trade, became a member of the Charlestown City Guard militia company, joined the Masons, and married Caroline Maria Brewster, who descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster. They began a family that grew to include two boys and a girl who lived to maturity.

 

At some point, Heath also joined the Young Men’s Christian Association. The Boston chapter, established in 1851, is distinguished as the first formal organization of the Swiss-based YMCA in the United States.

 

The association grew rapidly. By 1861, the YMCA had formed active chapters across the country. In mid-November, representatives from associations in the loyal states met in convention at the Bible House in New York City and resolved to “promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of the soldiers in the army, and the sailors and marines in the navy, in cooperation with Chaplains and others.”

 

The convention delegates formed a commission of 12 and established the United States Christian Commission (USCC), which evolved into a massive and influential nongovernmental partner working hand in hand with the military in fulfillment of its mission.

 

If, and how, Heath participated in the USCC during the war years is currently lost to time. Though no records have yet surfaced to document any activities he may have had with the organization, newspaper articles and other reports reveal connections to supporting the troops and their families.

 

One account mentions Heath: “At the outbreak of the Civil War he went to the front, with a hospital corps, which he was instrumental in forming, and spent considerable of his own money in caring for the injured.” This statement suggests Heath struck out on his own as a caregiver prior to the formation of the USCC. If this is the case, Heath numbered among a small group of spirited men and women who acted independently and in coordination with local groups to support their citizen-soldiers on the front lines.

 

Another account reports that Heath wrote a letter to the postmaster of Montpelier, Vt., sharing sad news: A Vermont boy who had enlisted in the 29th Massachusetts Infantry, a regiment raised in Charlestown, had died during the engagement at White Oak Swamp, one of the Seven Days Battles that culminated in the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. The soldier, Pvt. George W. Smith, died after being struck by a single cannonball that also killed his company sergeant, Ansel B. Kellam.

 

This same account quoted Heath’s expression of condolence: “I have no doubt our departed friend and soldier did his full part in establishing the excellent reputation of the company for good behavior and gallantry. He went as a soldier from the sacred soil of Bunker Hill. He has honored Massachusetts: she will honor him. His name will be enrolled among the patriots of 1775, who fought to obtain that for us which he has sacrificed his life to secure to us and our children and children’s children for all ages to come. Many thousands have done the same, many thousands will do the same. Precious, precious lives! And yet success will be cheap at that fearful cost.”

 

How Heath learned of the soldier’s death is unknown. He and his independent hospital corps may have been present with the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign, or he may have received a letter, read a newspaper report, or been told of the Vermonter’s death and taken the time to write the postmaster in Montpelier.

 

Another account connecting Heath to the war dates to late 1864 and the Battle of Franklin.

 

It begins with one of Heath’s neighbors in Charlestown, a man named John Harties Brown, a Canadian-born printer who, like Heath, had served in the ranks of the Charlestown City Guards.

After the war began, the Guards mustered into federal service as Company K of the 5th Massachusetts Infantry for a three-month enlistment.

 

Heath, for reasons unknown, did not follow the Guards into the army in 1861 or at any other point during the conflict. Health issues—or perhaps his age—at 38, Heath was 10 years older than Brown and old enough to be the father of the youngest volunteers—may have kept him out of uniform.

 

Brown, however, made a very different decision. He fought at First Bull Run with his fellow Guards and went on to join the 36th Massachusetts Infantry as a sergeant in Company B, advancing to color sergeant. The regiment served briefly in the East before deployment to the Western Theater in 1863, where Sgt. Brown was detached to serve on the staff of Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox.

 

Brown likely served as an orderly, considering his rank.

 

Brown’s duty on Cox’s staff paved the way for promotion when he applied for and received a captain’s commission in the 12th Kentucky Infantry in September 1863.

 

A year later, on December 30, 1864, the regiment fought at the Battle of Franklin. The commander of the 12th, Lt. Col. Lovell H. Rousseau, recounted the actions of his men and officers that day in his official report. Rousseau described how the 12th occupied a reserve position about 50 paces behind the main line of works on the extreme left of his brigade. In the context of the entire front, the 12th stood roughly in the center, at an angle in the line marked by the cotton gin on the Carter House property.

 

As the Confederate assault unfolded, Rousseau observed hard-pressed Union troops abandoning their position near the cotton gin and acted on his own initiative to reinforce the spot before a critical gap opened in this vital part of the line.

 

Rousseau recounted what happened next in his report:

 

“Upon our arrival at that point I found a sufficient extent of the line abandoned into which to throw my whole regiment. The enemy had possession of the outside of the works, their officers calling on them to hold the works, ‘that they had them if they knew it.’ Their colors were planted on our works, and a number of their men had gained the top and fired down into our ranks; even bayonets and clubbed muskets were used. After a severe struggle we gave the enemy a check, and our line was becoming stronger and stronger every moment by the return of those who had at first abandoned it.”

 

Rousseau continued, “To hold the works after this crisis against the assaults which were again and again made was a task comparatively easy. When the repulse was finally completed, and a skirmish line was ordered out in front, a portion of my men were sent out, and the regiment was ordered back to the position it occupied at the beginning of the assault.”

 

The attacking Confederates included the 33rd Alabama Infantry. The brigadier general who commanded the brigade to which the 33rd belonged, Mark P. Lowrey, described the action: “I threw my brigade into the outside ditch of his massive works, and my men fought the enemy across the parapet. Up to this time about half my men had fallen, and the balance could not scale the works. It would have been certain death or capture to every one of them.”

 

When the fighting ended and survivors counted casualties, the 33rd lost about two-thirds of the 285 men and officers engaged and never again fought as an independent unit. It also suffered the loss of its distinctive colors—blue, edged in white, with a white pill-shaped rectangle in the center. Above and below the rectangle were the names of the regiment’s biggest engagements: Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Ringgold Gap.

 

The Union man who carried the flag off the field was Capt. Brown. Two months later, on February 2, 1865, Brown and others from his 23rd Corps who had captured flags at Franklin appeared at a ceremony at the War Department in Washington, D.C. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton greeted them, according to a newspaper report, “thanking, in the name of the Government, the gallant men by whom the flag had been captured. To each of you (he said) a Medal of Honor will be given in token of your gallantry. The history of each flag will be recorded by the Adjutant General, who will make an acknowledgment to the persons by whom they were taken. To them and their gallant comrades in the battle of Franklin, the thanks of this Department are returned.”

 

The same news report noted that “Captain John H. Brown, Company D, 12th Kentucky Volunteers, submitted, as evidence of his valor, a rebel battle-flag, and stated that his residence was Charlestown, Mass.” Less than two weeks later, Brown received his Medal of Honor.

 

The newspaper’s use of the term “submitted, as evidence” implies that Brown handed over the flag to government officials. In reality, Brown showed the flag as evidence, as required, and left the War Department with it, in keeping with the standards of the time.

 

After Brown left Washington, he returned to his regiment and served out the remainder of his enlistment. In July 1865, he returned to Massachusetts and reunited with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter Sarah, known as Sadie. Brown went on to practice law and live a productive life until dementia marked a decline that ended in his death in 1905 and burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Elizabeth passed in 1911. Sadie died in 1936, outliving her husband, Abraham Lincoln Bowles. The couple had no children.

 

Four years later, in the spring of 1940, a man named Harris E. Dame browsed curios at an antique shop in Melrose, Mass. As he made his way through the shop, Dame glimpsed an unusual item—a flag—which, according to the dealer, had been acquired from an estate sale. The banner, blue with a white pill shape in the middle and the names of Civil War battles sewn into the field, came with a notation establishing its provenance as the banner of the 33rd Alabama Infantry captured at the Battle of Franklin and presented to A.H. Heath by Capt. Brown.

 

When Capt. Brown presented the flag to Heath is a mystery. The last documented appearance of the flag was in February 1865 in Washington. At the close of the war, Heath moved with his family to Melrose, where, according to a report, “he built one of the finest residences in that place.” Heath lived there until his death in 1902 after a sudden illness attributed to heart disease. He was 78. Heath outlived his wife, and his three children survived him. The last living child, daughter Alice, died in 1924. She and her husband, Jesse Atwood Dill, left no children.

 

At the Melrose antique shop, the dealer put a price of $100 on the artifact—about $2,300 in today’s dollars. Realizing the historical importance of the flag, Dame wrote a letter to the Alabama archives. The information made its way to Director Marie Bankhead Owen, who, Alabama newspapers reported, said “the flag must be brought home.” Owen expressed optimism about its recovery: “I am confident there is some way we may raise the money,” adding, “Unfortunately, the appropriation of the Department of Archives and History is not adequate for the purchase of anything beyond the actual needs of the department. I am now making efforts to raise the money.”

 

One Alabamian, John G. Scherf, 56, a German immigrant living in the southern Alabama town of Andalusia, responded with a check for $110 to cover costs. Other citizens also contributed.

 

Meanwhile, public-spirited citizens of Melrose determined the flag should be returned to Alabama without delay. They raised the money, made the purchase, and exhibited the battle-torn banner at local club meetings before tucking it away in a strongbox in city hall to await its return to the South.

 

Months passed. In September 1940, at the national convention of the American Legion held in Boston, Melrose Mayor Robert A. Perkins presented the flag to Alabama Gov. Frank M. Dixon. The banner—once a symbol of regimental pride and a rallying marker in battle—had transformed into one of national unity, or, as one Alabama newspaper put it, “a symbol of solidified relations of the former warring sections.”

 

I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.

Done