‘With youthful neglect’
Imagine your brother went off to war and never returned. You would assume he had died, right? But what if … he just never returned? That’s what happened to sisters Johanna and Mary Egan during the Civil War.
This story came up while I was doing pro-bono research. Patrick Egan was born in 1844 in County Tipperary. He immigrated to the United States with his parents a few years later, and the family lived in New York, where Johanna was born, and then Illinois, where Mary was born, before finally settling in Bremer County, Iowa. Mix in three more sons and you’ve got a large Irish Catholic family—and one that farmed not too far from these folks.
Seventeen-year-old Patrick answered Lincoln’s call for volunteers in 1861. He joined the 16th Iowa Infantry in Davenport, presumably doing his part at Shiloh and helping Sherman chase the Confederates all the way to the sea. He mustered out on July 19, 1865, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Now fast forward more than forty-nine years. On October 16, 1914, Patrick filed for his army pension, which set in motion a process by which the federal government sought to corroborate his service. Agents traveled to Iowa to take affidavits from family members—whose reactions must have been, “Wait, what?!”
A record of Patrick’s pension appication
Johanna and Mary’s brother had marched off to war in 1861 and they hadn’t laid eyes on him since. Or heard a single word. Not even a letter in the mail. The Waterloo Evening Courier put it this way:
“With youthful neglect Patrick failed to return home or communicate with his family when the war closed and his relatives lost trace of him …”
After the war he worked as an engineer on a riverboat, and at eighty-four “he enjoys splendid health,” according to the Courier.
But why did he disappear? “Youthful neglect” doesn’t seem to cut it. A clue, perhaps, can be found in his obituary from 1931. Patrick “was captured by the Confederates and held in Andersonville prison from some time just before the end of the conflict.”
About forty-five thousand Union prisoners were held in the Georgia camp from February 1864 until April 1865, and about thirteen thousand of those, or 29 percent, died. This drawing of a prisoner does well enough to show what conditions were like:
Andersonville Prison Stockade / Prisoner of Confederated Oliver B. Fairbanks, 9th Reg N.Y. Cav Vols / Testified at Trial of Capt. Wirz
Patrick was lucky to have survived. Others from the 16th Iowa did not:
Bernard Kennedy, 25, of Co. I, died at Andersonville on August 11, 1864;
Marx Hensen, 23, of Co. B, died on August 14, 1864;
Rienza R. Reid, 17, of Co. I, died on August 16, 1864;
John Shadle, 19, of Co. C, died on August 16, 1864;
John Quincy Adams Frederick, of Co. C, died on September 5, 1864;
Zachariah L. McClure, 18, of Co. C, died on September 8, 1864;
Neil Toikelson, 35, of Co. G, died on September 30, 1864;
Frederick L. Osborn, 19, of Co. A, died on October 1, 1864;
John W. Pitts, 20, of Co. I, died on October 3, 1864;
Jacob Mann, 40, of Co. A, died on October 17, 1864; and
Wesley Smice, 18, of Co. E, died on March 4, 1865.
One can only imagine the sort of trauma that would have been associated with such an experience—and that’s just the prison camp. Shiloh was no picnic, either.
Was it too much for Patrick to go home, to be forced to acknowledge and even explain what he’d been through? Perhaps, although that’s just speculation. Plenty of men did go home.
Whatever it was, his sisters must have forgiven him because they posed with their long-lost brother for the Courier’s photographer. It’s a poignant reunion.
If you’re interested in learning more about your family—the present and the long lost—check out Black Sheep Genealogy’s services and then send us an email. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Image at top: Family reunion, Waterloo Evening Courier, April 2, 1927