Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Civil War

An Inspiration for “Brookhaven”: The Family Bible

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In the early 1980s, the Young family Bible was passed down to me from my father. We had looked at it together much earlier, especially the family records it contained. All of the entries for births and deaths, beginning in 1802 and ending in 1890, were in the same hand, presumably my great-grandfather’s. 

For years after I received it, I did the time-honored family thing: kept it wrapped in brown paper and twine and on a closet shelf. I did eventually buy an acid-free box to store it in, but it was fragile. The binding was coming apart, the ink on the family records was fading, and some of the pages were loose.

My wife read a story in St. Louis Magazine about a local book conservator who had trained at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. In early 2022, I contacted him, we made an appointment, and he offered an initial assessment of what it would cost. He also found something that had been missed for decades – tucked in among one of the Prophets was an envelope containing a lock of auburn hair, presumably that of my great-grandmother, Octavia Montgomery Young. 

I had copies of the family records, and it was these that I poured over and compared to listings in Family Search. Surprisingly, the Biblical records and the online listings were surprisingly identical. But the online list omitted a name contained in the Bible, that of Jarvis Seale, with the date of death recorded as April 6, 1862. Whoever he was, and no one in the family seemed to know (my father guessed a cousin), he was considered important enough for my great-grandfather to record his death. 

I stayed mystified, until I investigated the date. It was the Battle of Shiloh. 

More digging found he was the husband of one of my great-grandfather’s sisters. Mystery solved.

That discovery led me to consider two other dates – the ones for my great-grandfather’s two brothers. They, too, died in the Civil War, leaving my great-grandfather, still a teenager, as the only surviving son.

He was the one who bought the Bible and started the records. My book conservator said that the Bible was sold door-to-door by the tens of thousands in the late 1860s and 1870s. Many bought the book to record family records; so many people had died in the war that surviving families on both sides of the conflict were determined to keep a record. And too many, like Jarvis Seale, had been buried in unmarked mass graves.

I looked at the dates for those deaths, and I told myself there was a story here, a story of how a family survived the Civil War. 

Those deaths, and the lock of my great-grandmother’s hair, eventually became one of the inspirations for my historical novel (and historical romance) Brookhaven.

Related:

Restoring the Family Bible – and More.

The Mystery Man in the Family Bible.

Top photograph: a page from the Bible’s family records, before restoration.

The Paperback Arrived!

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The paperback edition of Brookhaven just arrived. I downloaded the Kindle version last Thursday, but it is something else to hold the physical book in my hands. Behind it are a few of the books (but only a few) I used for research.

“Brookhaven” is Published!

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It’s always a milestone in a life when a new book is published. Brookhaven, a historical novel about the Civil War and what happened after, has made its appearance in the world.

It’s not a novel about battles and military strategy. Instead, it’s about the people who were involved, some directly and some indirectly (and virtually every American alive at the time was affected). 

This is the summary:

“In 1915, young reporter Elizabeth Putnam of the New York World is assigned a story on the Gray Wisp. New information has come to light about this Confederate spy in the Civil War, a figure of legend, myth, and wildly competing claims. What no knows is the man’s identity. The reporter follows leads which eventually bring her to the small Mississippi town of Brookhaven. He agrees to tell his story, a tale of North and South, loss in wartime, narrow escapes from death in battles, family survival, the poetry of Longfellow, and love. And Elizabeth soon finds her own story has forever become part of the Gray Wisp’s.”

Brookhaven is essentially two stories – that of Sam McClure, who enlisted young and finds himself enrolled as a spy, and that of Elizabeth Putnam, a young reporter trying to make her way and her name in what was a very male world of journalism.

The book includes a character list (my wife insisted I include one) and a bibliography (I read more books and did more research than I can remember). 

I’ll write more about the inspiration for the book (a movie I saw in 1959 and a family story that turned out to be more legend than fact. For now, it’s feelings of relief, satisfaction, and no-small amount of joy I’m experiencing. And if you want more information, just ask.

Brookhaven is available here on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. 

Related:

A note from T.S. Poetry Press on the release of Brookhaven (including the author’s note).

“Christmas Oranges,” a short story – Cultivating Oaks Press.

“The Last Days of the War” by Dr. Henry T. Bahnson

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The half-century after the end of the Civil War saw an outpouring of memoirs by veterans on both sides. Some were written by war heroes, like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman (and were bestsellers as well). For time, it must have seemed like every general and officer in the war was writing an account. A joke made the rounds that so many people had witnessed Robert E. Lee’s signing of the surrender to Grant at Appomattox that both armies had crowded into the room.

For a time, those who had been privates – enlisted and drafted – penned their remembrances as well. These accounts, and I’ve read a considerable number number for my soon-to-be-published historical novel Brookhaven, are not so much concerned with strategy and battle outcomes as they are with day-to-day survival, getting enough food, mud (lots of mud, especially when you have to walk through it), in short, what everyman experienced. You find none of the romance of war in these accounts; what you do find is gritty commentary about the war and the hope to make it home one day.

Henry Bahnson was a private in a North Carolina company. He was a much older man, and a physician, when he wrote his account of the last days of the war. He narrowed his story to the period from April 2 to April 9, 1865 – the final week for Robert E. Lee’s army. He was there, and he very nearly died several times that week.

His story, “The Last Days of the War,” was published as an article in The North Caorlina Booklet, a periodical of “great events in North Carolina history” akin to what we know as historical or academic history journals today. It’s been digitized and made available through North Carolina Digital Collections. The article was originally published in 1903.

His account begins with the final siege of Petersburg, some 20 miles south of Richmond and a critical rail junction for keeping the Confederate capital and Lee’s army supplied. He describes the fighting – how it began (interrupting a planned holiday), the intensity of the battle, the deaths of friends, one literally shot between the eyes right next to him. He evaded death several times, gradually making his way to the body of Lee’s army, which was in full flight westward. 

The situation was more complex than “Lee’s army fleeing westward from Grant” might imply. Skirmishes and small battles erupted along the way. At one point, Bahnson and the bare handful of men with him captured 102 Union troops and their officers. Not long after, he himself was taken prisoner. He spent his final days in the way in a prisoner camp, with no food; Grant’s supply trains had been destroyed or left behind as the army raced after Lee. The Union soldiers got what food was left; Confederate prisoners were reduced to chewing roots, tree bark, and buds, sucking the inside of their haversacks, and drinking water “by the gallon to lessen the aching void of hunger.”

Dr. Henry Bahnson in old age

He was eventually paroled and freed, making his way home to North Carolina. He’d lost 38 pounds in three weeks, and his father didn’t recognize him. The comforts of home and family, including a warm bath, forever dispelled “the glamour and illusions of the pomp and pride, and circumstances of glorious war.” 

Bahnson’s experiences run counter to the myths of romance and “the Lost Cause” that came to be so connected to the South for generations. This was war at ground level, focused on what soldiers constantly contended with – hunger, mud, cold, and the regular threat of injury or death.

Related:

A Gory Account without Glory: Futility and Humility in the Last Days of the Lee’s Army.

“Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign” by Larry Peterson

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I’ve completed for reading and research for my Civil War novel, tentatively entitled Brookhaven. It’s been something of a relief to see the conclusion of this phase of the project, and I’ll have more to say about the next phase soon.

The Civil War is something of a publishing mini-industry; new books are coming out all the time. I think we keep examining the war, what left up to it, and what came afterward to try to understand our own times. I can say that much of what I thought I knew has undergone some serious revision.

I’m still following news of new articles and books on the conflict, and one was recently published that I couldn’t resist. Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign: The Eighteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation was written by Larry Peterson and published recently by the University of Tennessee Press. And I couldn’t resist it because it was precisely the operation that framed the Civil War experience of my ancestors. 

They didn’t live in Vicksburg; they lived south of Jackson near the city of Brookhaven. If you travel on Interstate 55 between New Orleans and St. Louis, which I have many, many times, you travel through Brookhaven. 

Vicksburg was the last impediment to Union control of the Mississippi River. New Orleans had fallen in 1862, and Baton Rouge and Memphis not long after. Vicksburg was the blockade point, and it had to be taken. The siege lasted a considerable period, and it involved a number of related operations, including the capture of the state capital at Jackson and what it known as Grierson’s Raid, a cavalry maneuver that started in Tennessee, swept down the state of Mississippi, and end in Baton Rouge. It was designed to confuse and distract the Confederate Army and allow Ulysses Grant to move his troops across the river south of Vicksburg. And it worked rather spectacularly. 

Grierson’s Raid is one of the 18 critical decisions of the Vicksburg campaign. 

With each decision, Peterson explains what the situation was, what the options were, what was decided, and what were the results or impact. The decisions range from the appointment of the military commanders on both sides, failures of command, Grant’s attempted advance through central Mississippi, Union Admiral David Porter’s decision to run the Vicksburg blockade, Grant’s attack on Jackson, the Confederate mismanagement of Vicksburg’s defense, and more. The discussion for each is short and succinct; the main part of the book is only 100 pages.

Admiral Porter’s ships run the blockade.

The appendices are also well worth reading and constitute another 84 pages, including directions for a driving tour you can take of the entire campaign; he Union and Confederate Orders of Battle; and a short discussion about reinforcing Vicksburg. The book also includes notes, a bibliography, and an index.

What I found especially interesting was that Grierson’s Raid almost didn’t happen. The Union officer takseed with the decision initially postponed it because of Confederate activity and because he thought its success was questionable at best. He was eventually overridden, and the raid was authorized, taking place between April 17 and May 2. One stop made by the Union cavalry was Brookhaven, where the rail station was burned and track torn up. 

In my novel, that becomes the event that frames all of what follows.

Peterson retired from United Airlines as a Boeing 757/767 Standards Captain. He’s previously published Confederate Commander: The Remarkable Life of Brigadier General Alfred Jefferson Vaughn Jr and several volumed in the Command Decisions of the American Civil War series. 

Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign covers an extensive amount of information, and it does so in a highly readable, compact way. You get a full sense of the major decisions, good and bad, that figured in the Union’s ultimate capture of the city. 

Top photograph: Vicksburg during the Union siege, showing the caves where many citizens lived during the bombardment.

Remembering the Journey

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A Brookhaven Short Story

When he looked back on that time, he could see the first days were the easiest, if also the most frightening. And more dangerous days were to follow.

Like hundreds and thousands of others, he walked home from the war, home from defeat and surrender. Glory was long gone, erased in places with names like The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, and Appomattox.

The road he took began in Virginia. It ended more than 900 miles later in Mississippi, and home. The camaraderie he’d experienced with others walking home disappeared three days into the journey, when he discovered he’d been left behind. Alone, he walked the often-deserted roads, asking the occasional fellow traveler the direction and the next town.

The woods he passed through were often thick, untouched since forever, he thought, dense forests of pine, oak, and elm. When he could, he traveled through trails in the woods that followed the roads. He liked the silence of the trees and undergrowth; he also liked the safety they afforded, unlike the open road.

He also liked the shift from woods to farmers’ fields, most of which were untouched because the men were gone to war. Or gone from the war.

He’d gone about a hundred miles, he reckoned, based on what other travelers told him, when the walk changed to a ride. He’d gotten a feisty stallion and a wagon drawn by two draught horses. But there had been a tradeoff. With the wagon and the horses came a freed slave woman and her two children and a dead planter’s teenaged daughter and her young cousin. He’d probably never understand why he agreed to see them southward, but he had no regrets.

By necessity, homeward progress simultaneously quickened and slowed. The horses made for faster travel; the women and children did not. He’d quickly learned that their needs were always more complicated than his own and required frequent stops. Progress had been further slowed by rain, bandits, and measles.

He’d just turned 15, a war veteran with two years’ experience. His traveling companions made for conversation, but the responsibility for the five lives terrified him. When he felt most afraid, he’d focus on the road. The woman and the girl had no inkling of his fear; they thought him moody and melancholic.

He led them through rain and flood. He protected them from the evil roaming the roads, evil that was all too common, sometimes predators preying on people just like themselves and sometimes desperate people doing desperate things. They had all seen death and destruction, often so bad that even the children stopped talking. 

But he’d seen them all safely home.

He thought he knew the reasons for their success, the reasons they’d survived. He’d trusted the good Lord to watch over them all. And he trusted his determination to do this thing, to see the journey through.

Related:

“Christmas Oranges,” a short story at Cultivating Oaks Press.

“Encounter in the Woods,” a short story.

Top photograph by Lukasz Szmigiel via Unsplash. Used with permission.