Joseph Gallaudet, Civil War Soldier

Charles Nordquist, a New York doctor who had been chief surgeon of a Corps in the Union Army, was the physician who certified the condition of Corporal Gallaudet in a letter to the Army in July 1864

Joseph Gallaudet: Civil War soldier buried at St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site

Joseph Gallaudet, who is buried in the historic cemetery at St. Paul’s Church N.H.S., was a soldier in a New York volunteer regiment in the Civil War whose early death at age 33 in 1871 may have been related to a severe leg wound he received in a battle in Virginia in 1864.

Born in 1838 in Westchester County, Gallaudet was part of a family with a long and interesting history in New York, dating back to the French Huguenot migrations to New Rochelle, in what would become Westchester County, in the late 17^th century. The Huguenots were Protestant refugees from Rochelle, France, escaping from the religious wars and Catholic persecution in the late 1600s. Notably, Thomas Gallaudet, a relative of Joseph, introduced sign language to America in the 19^th century, and eventually helped found Gallaudet University, the leading institution of higher education for the deaf, still in existence in Washington, D.C.

Joseph was raised in the village of Tuckahoe, part of the Town of Eastchester, about 20 miles north of New York City. His father was a tradesman, or carriage maker. By 1862, Joseph had moved to the nearby, growing village of Mt. Vernon. That summer, Westchester County was energized by a stirring call to join a newly formed Union army regiment, the 135^th New York Volunteer Infantry. It was the second year of the Civil War, and the stiff Confederate resistance at the Battles of the Seven Days outside of Richmond in late June and early July 1862 had caused President Lincoln to issue a call for 300,000 additional volunteers to subdue the rebellion. Much more than in 1861, when Westchester County men seeking to join the Union Army traveled to New York City to enroll, the recruitment drive of 1862 reached right into their backyards, leading to considerable enlistment activity. This included Joseph Gallaudet, who enrolled in Company I as a private on August 22, 1862. He was not married.

The regiment, which drew from across the southern Hudson Valley counties of Dutchess and Putnam, as well as Westchester, was enrolled at Yonkers, on the Hudson River. Because of a fear of a Southern threat to Washington, the unit was re-classified as the 6^th New York Heavy Artillery. These troops were trained in the use of the large canon situated around the nation’s capital to resist a potential Confederate raid. Through 1864, they were largely defensive troops, and saw relatively little combat. In May 1863, while stationed in those positions, Gallaudet was promoted to the rank of corporal, indicating a level of military competence.

The renewed Union offensive in the Virginia theater in the spring of 1864, under the overall command of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, altered the course of service for the 6^th heavies. A goal was to engage a massive army in continuous warfare against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, with a plan to destroy the South’s most vaunted fighting force and reclaim the Confederate capital of Richmond. In that light, General Grant transferred the heavy artillery to infantry commands, creating an entire brigade. Since the heavy artillery regiments were numerically larger units, having suffered relatively few casualties, they were placed at the fore of some of the fighting in what is usually called the Overland Campaign -- some of the war’s costliest battles, from early May through July.

Amid those engagements in Virginia, on May 30, Corporal Gallaudet was severely injured, suffering a gunshot wound to the upper left thigh. What followed was an exercise in recovery and bureaucratic confusion over the next several months that revealed a good deal about the Civil War and the nature of the Union in the early 1860s. Records indicate the New Yorker was admitted into a Union army hospital, Mt. Pleasant, in northwest Washington, D.C., on June 12, with the diagnosis of the leg wound inflicted by an enemy Minnie ball. The severity of the injury required convalescence, and Gallaudet was furloughed two weeks later, and transported by train back to New York. In the Civil War, fought entirely on American soil, the home front was often not far from the battle grounds, in comparison with 20^th century wars that Americans fought across the world. A journey home for recovery in 1864 was plausible. The corporal was recovering at his father’s home in Tuckahoe, with permission from attending Army physicians at Mt. Pleasant.

In the pre-electronic age, combined with the traditional difficulties of communication in war, this arrangement was not shared with field officers of the 6^th Heavies, which remained engaged in demanding combat in Virginia. Gallaudet was listed as deserted, a very serious charge, on several muster roles (attendance charts) in the summer of 1864. Probably in response, the corporal arranged for an examination at the Tuckahoe home by a former Army surgeon, Dr. Charles J. Nordquist. Based on that diagnosis, Gallaudet requested in a July 24 letter to the Army’s chief surgeon “that you will be kind enough to extend my leave twenty days, as my wound is still very painful, having had two pieces of iron extracted a few days ago, which still keeps me on crutches.” Dr. Nordquist, who had served as chief surgeon for a corps of the Union Army, supported the corporal’s request. In the same July 24 communication, he penned a note certifying Corporal Gallaudet’s tenuous condition, noting that one of the iron pieces he extracted was three inches long and “will not be able to do any kind of Military duty, in a less period than twenty days.”

That report satisfied military and Army medical authorities, and for the remainder of the war, Gallaudet was listed as “absent, wounded” on muster rolls. He never returned to active duty, and perhaps the gunshot wound was severe enough to warrant continued medical leave; he mustered out along with the rest of the 6^th in late June 1865. There is little surviving record to document Gallaudet’s post war activities. He probably stayed at the family home in Tuckahoe, never married, and passed away at the relatively young age of 33, on July 8, 1871, followed by burial in the St. Paul’s cemetery, near other Gallaudet family members.