Derby Day

 

The Casualties of War: a marriage, happiness and demise

 

This is my ancestor Henry Elias Munger. He was from Illinois, and fought with the 18th New York Infantry in the Civil War. He married Anne Snyder, also from Illinois, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln.

He became an alcoholic after the war. I imagine it was PTSD. He and Anne had three children: two boys and a girl.

After a few years, Anne could take his drinking and abuse no longer, and the last time she saw him, she was putting him on a train in Alton, Illinois, heading for Texas, where he was going to look for work on the railroad.

She was so worried that day. He was extremely drunk and she was scared to death he might pass out on the tracks and be run over by a train. But she managed to get him on his train. She never saw or heard from him again.

She sent her sons to live with her brother in Illinois and brought her daughter to Natchez to live with her relative, William Howard Pritchartt, who had built a house overlooking the river.

She was destitute and brought with her three items that had monetary value: a handwritten personal invitation written by Lincoln inviting her to his inauguration; a large portfolio of American Indian portraits, which she later sold; and her brother's naval commission signed by Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy and President Abraham Lincoln.

It's said she was a terrible housekeeper, and she lost the invitation, but we still have the naval commission.

His fate was a mystery in our family until a few years ago when a young man named Ryan A. Conklin contacted me. He was writing a book about the regiment Munger was in and what became of its members.

He was able to fill in the blanks for us, including a rather amusing description of an unexpected encounter with a group of Confederate soldiers when, far from both their picket lines while touring Mount Vernon, they engaged in a brief skirmish, which ended with a few shots being fired from both sides, after which they gave up and each fled back to their own picket lines, "...hopefully having gained some refined wisdom for their audacious minds." Conklin, Ryan A. The 18th New York Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc. 2016. 

 According to Conklin's findings, Munger never regained sobriety and spent the rest of his days wandering from one railroad job to another, often fired for his drunkenness, which caused him to be cantankerous and violent. He earned a pension when an accident caused him to lose most of the use of both hands. It's not known how he died, but was discovered when he failed to collect his last pension check. He's buried in an unmarked grave in a pauper's cemetery in Lufkin, TX, called Stranger's Rest Cemetery, the only indication of his presence, his name engraved on a stone plaque placed in 1997, which lists the known names of those there interred. It took many years for Anne to go to Congress to prove his death and receive her "widder's mite," as being a devout Catholic, she never divorced him.

Restoring Hope Farm 2026

Hope Farm, the house my great aunt Katherine and her husband Balfour Miller bought and restored in 1926 was built around 1740 with later additions and reorienting the house to another direction.  I grew up going over there as a child and giving tours to visitors -- sometimes as many as a thousand a day.  It was due to Aunt Katherine (Auntee as we called her) and her friends that cultural tourism got its start in the South in 1932 when the people who owned the antebellum houses here decided to open them up for visitors.

Katherine died in 1983 and Balfour shortly thereafter, when it was sold to Ethel Banta, a Natchez native who wanted to move back home after her husband died.  It's been almost two....three? years since it burned. Unfortunately, Ethel was lost in the fire.  It was a tragedy all the way around.  Everyone thought the house was a total loss, but historic preservationists Kevin and Laine Berry happened to be in town that day and decided to take it on.  Like any major project its progress has been in fits and starts, but steady, and she's starting to look like her old self again.  They've got drywall installed, windows installed and finished, and are starting on the final stages in the main house while the ell in back still has a ways to go.

Thank you, Kevin and Laine, for taking on this massive undertaking and restoring hope that was almost lost when the house burned.  You have been and are a positive addition to our little town and are bringing new ideas and ways of thinking about how to tell the stories of the past.

This Saturday was the third Restoring Hope celebration, an open-air dinner held under the boughs of a huge live oak tree with the scent of azaleas and sweet olive permeating the air.  I know that next year's dinner will be held inside, and I, for one, can hardly wait.  Laine has done extensive research on Hope Farm and talked about things I'd known nothing about until this weekend.  Laine, if you'd like to write a guest column about the history of Hope Farm, here's my invitation.

Laine Berry and me at Hope Farm

The front porch has been painted to look like marble stones by the talented Matthew McGinley.  The doors are faux bois, painted by the equally talented Austin Billhime.

The view from the back porch

Annual Gala for the Natchez Historical Society

Well, the annual Gala for Natchez Historical Society was one for the books. In spite of having to reschedule due to inclement weather, we had a huge crowd. The food was superb, as was the program about Virginia-born artist John Gadsby Chapman (1808-89), who painted the massive "Baptism of Pocahontas," installed in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in 1840.

Speakers Adam Erby and Lydia Mattice Brandt gave a fascinating program detailing Chapman's life and influences, and talked about Chapman's painting, Hagar and Ishmael Fainting in the Wilderness, which has hung in the Rectory at St. Mary's Basilica since the Civil War where it was taken to protect it from the invading Union army.

After the program, awards were distributed to several outstanding members of our community, some posthumously.

Receving awards were:

James F. Barnett Jr., historian and author for his work as site administrator of the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, as well as many other contributions to Natchez and its history.

Ser SeshshAb Heter-Clifford M. Boxley, for his tireless efforts to research and advocate for The Forks of the Road Slave Market.

Dr. Thomas H. Gandy (posthumously) and the Reverend Doctor Joan W. Gandy, both Natchez history preservationists who helped found and lead the Historic Natchez Foundation, and are recognized for the preservation of Henry C. Norman photographs and of historic images by Henry’s son Earl and other early Natchez photographers.

The MacNeil Family: Grace M. S. McKittrick MacNeil (posthumously) and daughters Elizabeth “Beth” C. MacNeil Boggess, Ph.D.; and Anne W.S. MacNeil, (collectively, the MacNeil Family) are recognized for their promotion of historic preservation through public service and civic leadership, community involvement, and philanthropy.

If you've never attended one of our programs, you're really missing out.

https://www.natchezhistoricalsociety.org

The Tornado of 1840 in Natchez, Mississippi

We had quite the crowd for tonight's program on the 1840 Tornado and climatology presented by by Pam Knox, Director of the University of Georgia Weather Network and an agricultural climatologist in UGA Extension.

Pam Knox

Not only did we learn about the second deadliest tornado in US History, which occurred in 1840 here in Natchez, but we also learned the mechanics of what makes tornados form. We learned about how climate warming is affecting tornadic activity, and how they measure the wind speed of tornados, mostly by the type and amount of damage.

For more information on Dr. Knox, please refer to her linkedin page

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pam-knox-90818411/