Colonel Patterson’s Death At The Wilderness Left Shattered Family
SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Va. - Not many people know the exact spot on the battlefield where their Civil War ancestor was killed, but Bill Phillis of Michigan does. Not only that, but he visits that place regularly, and has done so ever since his father and grandfather took him there when he was a young boy. Phillis’ great-great-grandfather was Col. John Williams Patterson, commander of the 102nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He died May 5, 1864, at the Battle of the Wilderness when a Confederate bullet struck him in the face and knocked him off his horse as he led his regiment at the intersection of Brock and Orange Plank Roads in Spotsylvania County. The effect of Patterson’s death on his wife and children is the subject of a new permanent exhibit, “A Family Shattered,” at the Chancellorsville Visitor Center (there is no Battle of the Wilderness visitor center). The genesis of the exhibit, installed in April, was a curious artifact Phillis showed NPS historian Don Pfanz one day about 10 years ago. It was a wooden headboard for Col. Patterson’s grave. Pfanz “was very impressed — not impressed, he was shocked. He almost fainted, I think, when he saw it,” Phillis recalls. “The headboard is kind of unusual,” according to Pfanz. People frequently bring things to visitor centers to show to NPS historians, he said. “Usually they bring in letters, a photograph, a minie ball, or something like that. Very rarely does anyone bring in an object as unusual as a headboard. As far as we know, that may be the only one of that type that still exists.” John Hennessy, chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, said, “It is the only known surviving specimen of the types of mass-produced headboards that were put over the temporary graves here right after the war.” Though he was familiar with a different looking wooden headboard at Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg, Va., Hennessy said the Patterson headboard is the only one the park knows of from the Fredericksburg area. It “matches exactly” photographs of headboards used in burials at the Wilderness battlefield, Pfanz said. Most wooden markers did not survive for understandable reasons, Pfanz explained. “If they’re outside for more than two or three years, the wood just starts to rot. And they’re also the sort of thing the soldiers wouldn’t have kept.” When Union soldiers’ remains were gathered after the war and moved to national cemeteries, the headboards from their battlefield graves would have been discarded, Hennessy said. What was different in Patterson’s case was that after the war his family went to Spotsylvania and took his remains back to Pennsylvania, along with the grave marker. The headboard stayed with the family ever since then. It “was put on my dresser when I was born and resided there for 61 years until I loaned it to the NPS,” Phillis wrote in an article about Patterson posted on the Internet. Patterson’s first brush with death occurred at the Battle of Fair Oaks on May 31, 1862. A bullet wound to his chest collapsed his left lung. he wasn’t expected to live, but he did and returned to his regiment the day before it fought at the Battle of Antietam. After surviving the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Patterson and many of his men were captured at the Battle of Salem Church in the Chancellorsville Campaign on May 4, 1863. Following a stint at Libby Prison in Richmond, he was exchanged and was back behind Union lines before the end of the month. A year and one day after Patterson was captured at Salem Church he was killed at the Wilderness. His last day alive was also his 29th birthday. According to Pfanz, Col. Patterson was buried by the Sixth Corps hospital near Grant’s headquarters – a rear area of hospitals and quartermasters at what is now the intersection of Routes 3 and 20, on the southern side across from where a Wal-mart supercenter is proposed. The loss of Col. Patterson devastated his family, Phillis said, leaving them in near-poverty. His wife, Almira, had a widow’s pension of about $360 per year. Although Patterson had owned his house free and clear, the Allegheny County, Pa., Orphans’ Court compelled Almira to sell it in March 1865 to provide funds to support her and her three young children. Almira never remarried and lived until 1908. Their youngest daughter, Mary, died of disease in 1869. Daughter Agnes, Phillis’ great-grandmother, lived until 1924. Son Frederick lived until 1945 and was a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature. The Chancellorsville Visitor Center exhibit that Hennessy and Pfanz designed has been almost 10 years in the making. “Putting the funding together took a little bit of time, but here it is,” Hennessy said proudly. (See also the January 2003 CWN article by Deborah Fitts, “Chancellorsville Battlefield To Exhibit Rare Family Artifacts.”) Phillis saw the exhibit for the first time on July 2. “I loved it,” he said. The exhibit features many artifacts Phillis has loaned long-term, in addition to the headboard. These include the bullet that wounded Patterson at Fair Oaks, a valentine he received in the field from his children, numerous photos and a copy of the poster announcing the court-ordered sale of his estate. There are also quotations excerpted from letters between Patterson and his wife — some 141 letters, special because both sides of the correspondence survived, said Hennessy. Pfanz said they hope a local NPS historian can edit the letters and publish them as a book. “This was an exhibit of opportunity,” Hennessy said. “We didn’t really have any plans to do this exhibit until Bill Phillis walked in the park one day.”
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