Book editor captures voices of CompanyH

Compiles letters into ‘social history’

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In June 1864, while his company was stationed in the port town of Bermuda Hundred, Va., Edward L. Cook wrote a letter to his parents back in Buffalo.

The Union sergeant told them of the cherries he plucked from roadside trees, speculated about a planned assault on nearby Petersburg — and asked them to pray for him.

“Pray that I may never act the part of the coward, that I may always be where duty calls me, and that I may always do my duty to the honor of myself & my friends & to the Glory of God,” he wrote in neat cursive.

Cook was a member of Company H of the 100th Regiment, a group of volunteers from Buffalo who enlisted in early 1862 and saw action throughout the Civil War.

His letters and the dispatches of his comrades are collected in a new book, “Echoes from the Boys of Company H,” edited by Neal E. Wixson, whose great-grandfather served in the unit.

“It’s a different perspective on the war. Most Civil War books focus on the generals and the statesmen. Very few tell what is increasingly known as the social history of the war,” he said.

The Buffalo-bred soldiers wrote of the monotony of waiting for the next campaign, an interlude when a filling meal, a dry place to sleep and a scrap of news from home were cherished.

They also wrote of combat wounds, death and the horrors of the Confederate Army’s Andersonville, Ga., prison camp.

“It was such a traumatic event that I don’t think you can grasp it without checking multiple perspectives,” said Cynthia Van Ness, director of library and archives for the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, which assisted Wixson.

Wixson, an amateur writer who self-published “Echoes,” grew up in Niagara Falls and later graduated from Syracuse University Law School, where his classmates included Vice President Biden.

The longtime Town of Tonawanda resident was senior vice president and counsel with the Buffalo General Health System. He moved to Virginia in 2001 to take a job as assistant dean for law school admission at the College of William and Mary.

Wixson remembers he was about 10 or 11 when he was shown a cabinet in his grandparents’ house that held souvenirs his great-grandfather, Thomas Maharg, had brought back from the war.

The items included the sash from his Grand Army of the Republic uniform and a piece of shrapnel that fell out of his lip as he ate a bowl of soup at a restaurant in 1922.

His family also kept some of the minute books from the meetings of the 100th Regiment Veterans Association.

Years later, after moving to Williamsburg, Wixson decided to collect the letters and correspondence from Maharg and his comrades in book form. He worked with the historical society to dig up letters, diaries and other documents from the soldiers of Company H.

“We certainly want to promote good scholarship in Buffalo history,” Van Ness said.

The society had letters from Wixon’s great-grandfather and fellow soldier Alfred Lyth. The University of California-Santa Barbara held Cook’s letters and other personal effects.

Wixson’s daughter, Lindsey, spent two years carefully transcribing 300 letters, along with journals and other documents. Most of the materials had never been published, and at times they were difficult to decipher.

“They were obviously short of paper, and they were writing with quill pens and the nub of the pen would wear down,” Wixson said.

“Echoes,” organized chronologically, follows five members of Company H.

The young soldiers primarily were laborers of modest means and most had attended the Normal School in Buffalo together.

The letters were a lifeline of news and contact with loved ones back on the homefront. Mail service was efficient enough to get a letter to a soldier within three days, Wixson noted, and the mail sometimes included care packages.

“[Maharg] received a box that had minced pies, jam and a feather pillow, because he’d complained about having trouble sleeping,” Wixson said.

The first letters displayed the enthusiasm of the soldiers who had enlisted expecting an adventure of short duration.

Even as the fighting dragged on, the soldiers continued to support the war, Wixson found, either to unify the country or to free the slaves.

Their unit was involved in the seizure of Fort Wagner, Va., a battle that featured the heroic efforts of a regiment of black Union soldiers later captured in the movie “Glory.”

Much of their time was spent waiting for combat, but death — by drowning, cannon fire or bullet — was a too-frequent theme. Sometimes, the dead didn’t rest in peace.

“Every wind that blows is constantly shifting the sand, making hills of the hollows & hollows of the hills, and a little rain completes the work & reveals the partly decayed bodies of our poor boys. Such is war,” Cook wrote to his sister in April 1864.

Future historians may not have the same opportunity to get inside the minds of the soldiers of this generation.

The e-mails, instant messaging and Web phone conversations preferred by today’s soldier can’t readily be preserved.

“There’s always interest in the correspondence, and we’re going to be losing that,” Wixson said.

“Echoes” is available through the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, at the Buffalo Historical Society and at Colonial Williamsburg.

swatson@buffnews.com

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