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Two Deaths in the Family
Part Two
By Dr. John M. Coski
This article quotes from letters and diaries using the original spelling, grammar, and punctuation, providing words or punctuation in brackets only when necessary for clarification.
FROM PART 1:
James Agee’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family, chronicles a father’s death in an automobile accident and his family’s emotionally wrenching reactions, as revealed through his six-year-old son. The posthumously-published novel comes to mind in reading through a collection of letters and diaries donated to the Museum last year.
Even before the outbreak of a civil war that took more than 750,000 lives, death was a way of life in mid-19 th century America, as historian Drew Gilpin Faust detailed in her 2007 study, This Republic of Suffering. The scale of death in the Civil War can inure us to the countless human tragedies those numbers represent. The news of two deaths that the Paden family of Trumbull County, Ohio, received from a Washington, D.C., military hospital humanizes the numbers and offers a poignant story worthy of Agee’s novel.
In Part 1 (2022 Spring issue) we learned that the Paden family had just been informed of the death of their son and brother, William, as the result of a wound sustained in battle on May 23 rd , 1864. While he was recuperating in Finley Hospital in Washington, D.C., his sister, Millie, wrote to him saying: “I have always had a desire to go to the Hospital & do something for the soldiers & I think that now is the time to go while you are there. Oh if I could just go & take care of you.” Our story picks up with Millie Paden’s arrival at Finley Hospital.
Millie, the emissary from the family in Orangeville, arrived too late to see her brother alive.
“I have just arrived to hear the sad & awful news,” she wrote her family on Thursday, June 30 th . “Oh my God have mercy on us. My brain reels I cant write The nurse has just been giving me the particulars about his death and I supose the chaplain has written. The nurse said he had and you have got it before this reaches you” She related the details about William’s last hours and about the disposition of his body. He is to be “buried in a beautiful place with thousands of soldiers” on Arlington Heights – “they are going to make a soldiers cemetery of it…”
She described Chaplain Winchester and Nurse Clark, who had been so sympathetic and attentive toward William. Miss Clark “has been sick ever since his death. How she cried when we met. She is now crying and she is constantly talking about him”
Unlike brother James, Millie wrote often to her family, recounting her visits with James and describing the places where William had camped when his unit was stationed in the nation’s capital. On July 5th , the day after the family finally received the letters bearing the news of William’s death, Millie wrote with more distressing news. “I had intended starting home but alas how soon our calculation can be upset by the hand of God,” she began. “[Y]esterday James was taken with a severe headache & bones aching”
Perhaps compensating for her inability to help brother William, Millie threw herself into caring for brother James, and kept her family informed of his condition. “James may be better in a few days but we dont know,” she wrote. “Mother I dont want you to be alarmed about him the Docs coming” He was suffering from a fever, “but I think he will be better soon he shall not go to the Hospital so long as his Brother Soldiers & your humble servant keeps their heels & stomach….”
Two days later, she was in her element, busy taking charge of “a young Hospital” – James and several of his comrades who were ill. “[T]his morning James is some better I feel quite encouraged as he was a very sick boy yesterday & last night….” James had pleaded with her not to return home until he was better and she was finding fulfillment in caring for him and others and interacting with Nurse Clarke in an official capacity. On Sunday, July 21 st , she told her family that she expected to be home by the end of that week. continued on next page
Meanwhile, she had mentioned in passing that “I have not been very well myself but yesterday I took some medicine & I feel much better this morning….”
Back in Ohio, sister Mollie wrote in her diary on July 19: “letter from Mr Deland James better Millie not verry well at the Finly Hospital” The letter, dated July 15, from R. C. Deland, a soldier serving as steward at the same hospital where William had died, informed Mollie that her sister had been suffering from fever and diarrhea, contracted when she was at James’ camp. “You need not feal conserned about her,” Deland assured her. “She has a good Dr & the best of care Miss Clark is tending her I was in Her room [T]his morning She Said She was feeling much better I think She will be able to return to her home about the last of the month You had beter write her & advise Her to stay until She has regained her strength wich hope & trust will not be long”
A few days later, Deland wrote again to “Friend Mollie.” He described Millie as “on the gain,” but advised that she should not
leave for home too soon. James, too, was “gaining fast.” Deland commiserated with Mollie and her family: “this War is causing you a greatdeal [sic] of trouble it seams hard but what else can we expect while our Country is involved in such a bloody War oh when & where will it end”
Arlington Cemetery in 1865
The Library of Congress
Mollie received the welcome news of her sibling’s improvement on July 27 th , and wrote a letter to Millie on the 28 th . That same day, R. C. Deland sent his condolences to Mollie and her family, assuming that they were aware of what had occurred three days before. “Once more I take my pen in hand to write you a few words of comfort I suppose ere this reaches its destination you will here of your Sister death,” he began. “[O]h what will be the fealings of that poor Mother & the rest of You when the sad news are born to you She was so Young & kind She had won the essteam of most evry one here by Her kind & patient manner She bore Her sufferings without one word of complaint & even the Dr was spprised when called in the knight she died”
Deland was shocked to receive Mollie’s letter of July 28 th . “[C]an it be that you are still ignorent of your Sisters death?” he wrote on July 31 st . “I should of writen you amediately after Her death but Mrs Harris said She had writen them I thought it best for me to wait until I could learn all the particulars”
Their letters had, of course, crossed in the mail. Mollie and her family received notification of Millie’s death on July 29 th .
First came a letter addressed to Sarah Paden from Sarah Harris, a nurse at Finley Hospital. “It is with deep regret, that I am compelled, to announce to you, the sad tidings of the death of your daughter Millie, she died this morning, about 5 oclock easily, She was prostrated from an attack of dysentery….” Miss Clark had attended to her “with the affection of a sister.”
Four days later, another nurse, Phebe Evans, wrote Mrs. Paden with “particulars,” with the hope that “our sympathy will serve to lighten your sad heart.” Millie had received the best care from excellent doctors. “After her death we raised a contribution among the soldiers in the different wards of the Hospital all gave very cheere fully and mourned her sad fate.” She would enclose the money, “along with some rings and other treasures,” with Millie’s body. Evans had also arranged for a furlough for brother James to return home.
“Sarah gon to junction received a dispatch that Millie was dead also a letter from a lady nurse stating that which is true she is gon to rest,” Mollie wrote in her diary on July 29 th . “Oh my god why hast thou taken her from us Oh! my heart will break” As she had after William died, Mollie added a note in her diary – outlined with a black mourning border – on July 25 th : “this morning at five oclock the dear Millie breathed her last away in Washington & we knew it not can it be so oh how can I endure it” On August 7 th , she “[a]ttended the solemn Sermon of Wm & Millie J. Brother & sister Preached by Elder Pratt Text – “He changeth their commence & sendeth them away”
Considering the number of deaths that occurred in the spring and summer of 1864, the solicitousness shown to the Paden family after the deaths of William and Millie was remarkable – and touching. The two young Padens seem to have touched the hearts of hospital personnel who could be excused for calloused emotions. Nurse Clark and the steward, R. C. Deland, were among those who asked sister Mollie Paden for photographs of her deceased siblings.
The circumstances of Millie’s death – and her youthful beauty – made a particular impression on Deland and several other young men who crossed her path during her brief and fatal mission of mercy. Her sister Mollie was the recipient of ardent expressions of grief and a kind of transference of affection from the deceased sister to the surviving one.
Mollie’s diaries in the ACWM Collection.
ACWM
Deland, a soldier in the 9 th New York Cavalry, had been detailed to the hospital as he recovered from a wound. He was the first person there to attend to William Paden when he arrived there. In nearly a dozen surviving letters, Deland sought to comfort and console Mollie about her brother and sister, and offer her the hand of friendship that she accepted with gratitude. In her diary on September 5, 1864, she noted the receipt of two letters: “Oh! such letters full of love & sympathy from Mr Deland & Miss Clark speaking with love of the dear departed ones they had learned to love”
On the 1 st of October, she received an unexpected letter “from a Mr Moats addressed to the departed one Oh, that she was here to read it but alas she is no more on the earth.” William Ellsworth Moats of Washington County, Maryland, had met Millie on the train in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as she traveled to Washington, D.C., and he traveled home. Distraught over William’s condition, she asked Moats to accompany her, but he declined – much to his subsequent regret. Moats then fell seriously ill with typhoid, and wrote to Millie two months later hoping to learn of her brother’s fate and to kindle their passing acquaintance into a deeper friendship.
Over the next 20 months, Mollie received at least ten “kindly good letters” (as she described them) from “my friend Ellsworth Moats.” Although he, too, consoled the grieving sister, Moats seemed more intent on exorcising his own strangely obsessive affection for a girl he knew only briefly.
In reply to Mollie’s query about how far Moats and Millie traveled together, he confessed that they had met in Harrisburg waiting for their respective connections; “we maid each others acquaintance our discourse were about four hours long But alas the shortness of the time was well improved I could of conversed with her for hours hers were pleasure to me…. I confess i never took such an active part in any persons welfare as i did in hers She was so much taken up with me and me with her I could hardly leave her; she appeared to be very much [hert?] about her deare Brother she wept I done all i could to console her afflictions. My heart was touched very much by Millie.”
“I am happy to know that you[r] simpethy Is so kindly tendered to me for I am a greate lover of kind friends,” he told Mollie in a subsequent letter. “Oh could you be here I could a great deal Better extend my simpethy as regards you triles and tribulations in Behalf of your Dear and lovely sister Millie for so she was her loveliness would of attracted any person. I do confess I was much taken by her lovely appearence. It was no wonder her loss was so deeply felt by you for her very countenance appeared kindness Oh you may rest asshured I was not a little hurt when I received the sad news of her death not onely did I feel sad But wept”
He closed by thanking her for the photograph she sent him; “it will be agreate comfort to me keep in rememerence of deare Millie; and also in behalf of you the Breaved sister of Millie” “Oh! I often gase on the face of Deare Millie & wish I could see the oridgeonel & converce with her for I do think she was a lovely Girl,” Moats waxed in a subsequent letter. He reciprocated with a photograph of himself, then, for more than a year, Moats (like Deland) pleaded with Mollie to send a photo of herself. She dissembled and apparently never complied with their requests.
Despite hints of friction and evasiveness about her photograph, corresponding with Deland, Moats, and Clark proved therapeutic for Mollie Paden. The deaths of her brother and sister left her feeling exceedingly “lonesome.” Upon arriving home from a short trip, she observed to her diary: “Oh! how changed no Millie no Wimmie no Mail verry lonely”
Although Mollie lived in Orangeville and saw her mother often (usually to do large loads of washing), she evidently lived with another family as a domestic servant. She was seldom completely alone and she “went to singing” and attended church regularly, volunteered with the Soldier’s Aid Society, and enjoyed sleigh riding with friends, but she was obviously emotionally fragile. She complained often in her diary of being “tierd” and suffering from frequent “severe headaches.”
Her spirits rose and fell with the daily mail: “Oh! dear me no Mail no one to write to me what a lonely winter I anticipate,” she wrote on September 13th. After a short visit from her mother and younger sister, she was “alone all day with my own sad thoughts Oh! how they revert to the past & what might have been how dark my future looks”
By the end of 1865, the dark clouds lifted a little – even if the severe headaches continued. Brothers James and Frank returned home safely from war and the social life of Trumbull County, Ohio, became more carefree. The correspondence with her “friends,” R. C. Deland and Ellsworth Moats, dwindled, then ceased.
Mary Ellen “Mollie” Paden never married. In her later years she lived with the family of her youngest sibling, Robert West “Westy” Paden (1859-1937) in Rock Creek, Ohio. She died there in October 1911, a month shy of her 68 th birthday.
The Paden family papers came to the American Civil War Museum through Westy’s descendants. The letters and diaries highlight an extended family and their friends living on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border in the mid-19 th century. But the central drama involves the deaths of two siblings and how their sister came to terms with those deaths. END
Dr. Coski served as the Museum’s staff historian and the Director of the Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library and Archives for more than 30 years.
