The last couple of days I have gotten the itch to look at relatives that were involved in the Civil War. I had two 2nd great Grandfathers and one 3rd great grandfather that was in that war. James H. Stewart who was in the 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantry - Company H, Robert Bland who was in the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers Company A, and Ishmael Goss who was in the 28th Regiment United States Colored Infantry. The 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers was renamed to the 79th U.S Infantry after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
Most of us have heard about the 54th Mass as one of the great colored regiments in the Civil War and Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick, Andre Braugher, Morgan Freeman and others made the 54th a common name when they represented the troop in the movie Glory.
What most do not know is that the 1st Kansas was in fact the first colored regiment to enter the Civil War with their first engagement at The Battle of Island Mound. Records and accounts indicate that only 250 from the 1st were sent. I do not know if Robert was a part of this but still researching to see. I know on one of the muster documents for Robert they indicated that he was wounded.
Reading the stories about the 1st is remarkably interesting. How they got started, who helped organize them and where they trained before getting sent to Island Mound and all the follow-on battles after that. Records indicated that they started recruiting for the 1st in Aug of 1862. Robert’s papers show that he enlisted on 7 August 1862. One of the first to sign-up to serve.
I also have a great grandfather, Robert’s son, Elkanah. I always thought this was an interesting name and it almost sounded like a Native American name. I Googled it and it says that the name has biblical roots and there is a Elkanah in the Old Testament who was the father of Samuel.
How would you come to use that name? You would have to be an avid reader of the bible and choose that name over a ton of others or, you would you would have had to heard it somewhere and thought it was a cool name or, someone with the name made a big impression on you with that name and you wanted to honor them by naming one of your children after them.
I think the later happened.
As I was searching the Civil War documents, I found the name Capt. Elkanah Huddleston. It turns out that Capt. Huddleston was part of the 1st and in Company A with Robert. Records also indicate that Capt. Huddleston was the organizer of the 1st Kansas. Records also indicated that they both were mustered-out of the Army around the same time of October 1865. It is a good guess that the two of them knew each other and that Robert was so influenced by Capt. Huddleston that he named one of his son’s Elkanah. I am only hazarding a guess here but if you served so closely with someone that obviously was a great man and leader that it could somehow influence you to name a son after that person.
How well these two knew each other, I cannot tell. Maybe there are more records to be found that may shed a little more light on any close relationship or interactions that may have occurred. I just find it a bit more of a coincidence rather than by chance.
Capt. Huddleston went on to live a great life, dying at the age of 85. Died on 01 Feb 1922 in Larned, Kansas.
Robert went on to be a successful farmer near Oskaloosa, Kansas and passed away at the age of 55, 26 January 1890.
Robert, as well as being a successful farmer created a little notoriety as documented in his obituary from the newspaper Oskaloosa Independent, 01 Feb 1890. “Bland was a well-to-do colored man and achieved notoriety years ago by marrying a white woman. The woman was a widow, with a daughter nearly grown at the time, and neither had a particle of negro blood in them and yet they took up their abode in perfect content with the blacks, and seemed to enjoy the situation.”
Yorumlar