Drawn to Gettysburg

 

The Railroad Square Theater in Waterville, Maine smelled of popcorn and mildew.  The old converted warehouse on the banks of the Kennebec River, like the deserted paper mill directly across the river, had seen better days. But it was pleasantly warm on that snowy January evening in 1994, compared to the sub zero temperatures outside.  My 15 year old, identical twin sons, Eric and Ryan, flanked me sitting in the worn but comfortable old theater chairs and were sipping on their sodas as I enjoyed a coffee before the show began.  The movie was the epic Civil War film, Gettysburg adapted from the novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  I had read the book and was hyping the story line to my boys who were something less than enthusiastic about accompanying Dad to a history movie. I noticed that the pastor of our church was also in the theater with his two sons, seated just in front of us. Perhaps he had coerced his sons to join him, as I had. 

 Not that my boys were complaining. We enjoyed spending time together whether on the athletic fields, skiing at Sugarloaf USA, in Boy Scouts or just exploring the backwoods roads and fishing holes which were so abundant around our home. We had chosen to live in this rural little college town on the edge of the Great North Woods, as it's now called, so that I might work at a paper mill 20 miles up the Kennebec River. And 10 mile up the river from the mill was the little town of Embden, population 881 in the 2000 Census,  hometown of my great great grandfather, William H. Foss, and his first cousin, Elfin J. Foss,  back in the mid 1800s. But this was information that I was to gathered later, much later, as I was inextricably drawn to Gettysburg.

I did not know that the movie was 254 minutes long... 4 hours and 15 minutes. But I don't remember being bored or wanting it to end. And I don't remember Eric or Ryan complaining that they wanted to leave. We remember the instant the film became intensely personal for us.  About half way through the film, as Col. Joshua Chamberlain, played by Jeff Daniels, was reviewing his regimental battle lines on Little Round Top, he came upon a man on his knees. In the scene, low on ammunition and awaiting the third charge of Confederate General Longstreet's 15^th Alabama Corp, Chamberlain turned to his Sergeant and asked, “What is this man doing?” The Sergeant (also Chamberlain's brother) replied, “Private Foss is praying”... at which point our pastor, always quick to acknowledge his faithful flock, turned in his seat and flashed us a warm and benevolent smile.  I muttered to my son's, “We Fosses have always been a Godly bunch”.  The boys grinned, but the irony of the situation was not lost on us. The seed was planted and our interests piqued for more exploration into our ancestry.

 Since his retirement several years before, my extraordinary father, Frank Waldo Foss, had developed a passion for digging through old genealogical records and books.  He had determined that his great grandfather, William H. Foss, had enlisted in the 2nd Maine out of Orono, Maine, had served his time and returned to Gardner, Maine where he married, raised a family and worked in a paper mill. Dad also determined that William's great grandfather was Isaiah, the first Foss to homestead in the Maine wilderness.  Isaiah had fought in the Revolutionary War and his land grant in Embden, Maine was part of his recompense. Later he brought his father, Ichabod, to Embden to live and to work in the family logging business.

Fascinating... I had no inkling that I was not the first Foss to work in a paper mill or that our family had arrived in Maine in the late 1700's just up the road in Embden. Had something drawn me back to this place to work among these people, many with whom I likely shared some familial strand of DNA?

Over the next twenty years my interest in the Civil War grew and I took any opportunity to read of it and also to visit the battlefields including Gettysburg and Bull Run. I remember standing on Little Round Top in 2004, where Private Foss had prayed in the movie, and wondering if he was real or imagined. It wasn't until July 3^rd 2013 that I got my answer.

My daughter and her husband have lived in Arlington, Virginia for several years. She knows of my interest in our family history and of the Civil War and, wonderful daughter that she is, she arranged for a day trip for just the two of us an hour and a half up the road to Gettysburg on July 3, 2013, a very special day. It was the occasion of the 150^th anniversary of that battle and it was being commemorated in grand style.

We arrived that morning, with thousands of other visitors and enjoyed hours of walking through reenactments of the camps and the battles. We walked along the Devil's Den and the Peach Orchard. We ate our lunch in the shade of the "copse of trees" near the Bloody Angle. It was a remarkable, moving morning. Sacred would not be too strong a word to describe it. 
As the heat of the day began to wear us down, we retreated to the newly constructed Visitor’s Center where, remarkably, one of Katie's good friends from high school worked.  Elise provided us with free tickets for the museum, the movie theater and several other amazing displays which we so enjoyed.  And she handed me a sheath of papers she had obtained from the computerized National Historical Archives. They contained the specific histories of  ten Maine Foss men who had fought in the Civil War, their family information, their records of engagement in battle, their place of origin. As I perused the paperwork I determined that we might have shared a family connection with some of these men, but the genealogical work that Dad had researched provided no clear link... except for Elvin J and John W, two brothers out of Embden.

The hair on my neck stood up as I read the accounts. Their great grandfather was Isaiah and their great great grandfather was Ichabod. These brothers were first cousins to my great, great grandfather William H. They were blood of my blood. I read the materials hungrily.

John W. was 18 when he enlisted into Co. A of the 28^th Maine Infantry as a Private on October 13, 1862.  38 days later, he died of disease in Fort Schuyler, NY on their way to Washington DC.  It is a little known fact that the odds of a soldier surviving the Civil War was about 1 in 4 and that ¾ of those fatalities resulted from death by disease, primarily small pox, but also malaria, infections, pneumonia, trench rot. Sometimes the cure killed them as one uniformed reenactor described. A mercury pill was routinely dispensed to soldiers for treatment of all sorts of maladies from constipation to headaches, and resulted in untold numbers of deaths. Such was the state of medical science only 150 years ago. Over 650,000 soldiers died during the Civil War, more that all the other wars ever fought by the United States combined (up to the Vietnam War).  214,000 died in combat or from wounds sustained in combat. 450,000 died of disease. John W. survived a scant month before disease took him. He died at age 19, just a boy.

His brother Elfin J. enlisted as a Private into Co. F of the 20^th Maine Infantry on August 29, 1862 at the age of 22.  He was 5' 71/2 “ tall, had light colored hair and blue eyes. Almost 10 months later, on the rocky crest of Little Round Top while fighting under the command of Col. Joshua Chamberlain, he was shot through the center of his right lung by a soldier of the 15^th Alabama. He died of this wound on July 7^th at the age of 23. The report stated that Elfin J. was buried with 51,000 other casualties on the Gettysburg Battlefield and was later exhumed and reburied in the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg in the Maine plot, sec. C #15.

We went directly to the Soldier's Cemetery, about a 10 minute walk from the Visitors Center and, after searching through thousands of graves, found Elfin. I can't describe the emotion of finding his final resting place and learning his story after so many years. Had any other family members ever visited this place? Was I the first to stand solemnly over his stone and stare into the past, glimpsing dimly this person whose life was ended, like so many others, in this terrible struggle?  I spoke in my mind into the void... “Thank you, cousin. Sorry for your troubles. Wish I could have known you.... If there is a Foss Reunion in the hereafter, I look forward to meeting you. Until then...”

And the whisper responded across time and space,  “Trouble? What trouble? I drew you here. It took but an instant. Time flows differently in this place beyond and I want to meet you, too, as I have your son, your father, all our family before you. But no hurry, son. We’ll be here when it’s your turn…  Until then; Pay attention.  Enjoy.  Love.  And keep your head up… unless, of course, they’re shooting at ya.”