Family History Day

Belle Island and the Richmond National Cemetery

Oh how I loved today! But I love genealogy! I knew my dad's grandmother...Mary Hattie Gaylor Richardson. She lived to be 104...she died when I was 29 and Kristin was a few months old. Growing up, my dad would take us every summer to Campbell County, Tennessee, to visit with her. Lee Richardson, my great-grandfather was alive until I was 11. He died at 92. They are both now buried at Macadonia Baptist Church, just down a gravel road from the home they shared together. Buried there is their son, my grandfather, Judson Richardson, my great grandparents Lee and Hattie (Gaylor) Richardson, whom I just wrote of, and Grandma Hattie's parents and her great grandparents. Yes!! I know Als buried there are Thomas (born in 1856) and Sarah Isabella (Slover) Gaylor and Thomas's parents...Thomas (born in 1803) and Susanna (Harmon) Gaylor. The two oldest sons of this last Thomas, born in 1803, were John and James. They both enlisted to fight in the Civil War. Though they lived deep in Tennessee, they joined the Union army.

John somehow made it through this terrible war, for he lived to the age of 74 and died in Kentucky. James would not be so lucky. He is the one I thought about a lot today. I was there were part of his story happened...where he spent the last days of his life. This relative of mine, who was born around 1832 in Campbell County (where I had spent some time) died not to far from where I live now. And I didn't realize that until recently.

James was married at around age 22 to a woman of the same age named Mary Harmon. The Harmon name shows up many times in this side of the family tree. The Harmons must have lived close to the Gaylors and they obviously were friends and sometimes more. James and Mary had 11 years together and we know of two sons, Jacob and William. They were young when their father, James Gaylor traveled to Williamsburg, Kentucky to sign up to fight for the North. From this, we can only assume that the Gaylor family, even with their deep roots in the South, disagreed that man can own another man and fought for what he must have thought was Right. This makes me very proud. I also assume John went with James as they both enlisted in the same place.

I wonder what that twenty-nine year old James thought as he joined in that list of men? Did they train for combat? Did they just hand him his weapons? I do know that he had Detailed Service Duty at Camp Dick Robinson and at Loudon, Kentucky. I do know that after he enlisted and until his capture by the enemy, that he was engaged in around 83 skirmishes, seiges and battles all over the Eastern part of the US. In February 26, 1964, he was captured by the Confederates and taken to their prison on Belle Island, in Richmond, Virginia.

Though today, as I looked upon it, Belle Island was beautiful, it is not a pretty picture when you read about it as a prisoner camp. In 1864, Peter DeWitt, an Assistant Surgeon at Jarvis Hospital treated Belle Island prisoners. He described the "great majority of them as being in a semi-state of nudity, with chronic diarrhoea, phthisis pulmonalis, scurvy, frost bite, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many had partly lost their reason...they were filthy in the extreme, covered with vermin and nearly all extremely emanciated so much that they had to be cared for even like infants."

James was one of the sick ones. Later, his family only knew that he died of "fever". His family apparently, tried to locate his body after the war. They contacted a Robert E. L. Krick, who was the Historian for the Department of the Interior. I won't quote the whole letter here but will give an idea of what it says. Basically, the Confederates only knew the identity of a few of the Union dead and even those identities were lost when the graves were moved from the island to another resting place. The Confederates, after the War, took every single dead Union soldier or grave that they could find and opened the Richmond National Cemetery and placed the bodies in graves there. Most of the tombstones there say "Unknown US Soldier" or "Two Unknown US Soldiers".

I went there today. There were rows and rows and rows and rows of Unknown Union soldiers. It hit me how many, many men died in that terrible war...and this was just a small part of those that died. But somewhere out there, in this very cemetery in downtown Richmond, where people drive by going to work every day and where cars gas up across the street and where people lay their heads to rest at night, is my relative James Gaylor. I doubt any of his family came all the way to Virginia to see unmarked graves. The distance was too great and the cost beyond what they could pay.

Instead, Mary Harmon went to prove she was the wife of one James Gaylor, who died in the war, so that she and her two sons could receive a pension and benefits to live on. She, and many other wives, never saw their husbands again and raised their families alone. So many...it is sad to think about.

As I stood there, on that terribly hot and sunny day, with the rows and rows of unknown graves, I thought of the thousands of wives, parents, siblings and friends never knew what happened to the one that they loved...never knew that they are now buried in Richmond Virignia, in a quiet National Cemetery tucked away behind a brick fence. But James, I know you are here. I don't know where you are...but I know you are here.

Earlier in the day, as I looked across the James River at Belle Isle, I tried to picture in my mind, what James looked like there, how he must have suffered and how he died alone. I wondered if when you first arrived there, if you came to the river and looked across wondering if you would ever leave? And you didn't. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am a dreamer. (If so, I get that from my Aunt Carol..also related to James!). But I felt kind of close to him today...and to my great-grandma Richardson. She was born in 1886, just 25 years after James died. She must have known his family...they must have spoken of him. I wish I could ask her. I wish that when she sat and told stories over and over to a bored 12 year old girl, that I had listened more.

I hope I meet him one Day. I know that my great-grandmother was a believer so I hope the generations before her were, too. I know that one fourth of James' regiment were from West Point and they were candidates for the ministry. If James didn't know God before he left, maybe he found Him afterwards...between the fighting, between the duties. If so, he must have met my dad by now. Maybe they watched me together as I searched today. You never know. James had a difficult life. But he is not forgotten. Even if he is in an unmarked grave.