kelly boyer sagert

SPEAKING THE NAMES: A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS

Two brothers, each born in the first half of the 19th century in New York, traveled with their parents to their new Ohio home in 1852. They were the only surviving children of Amos and Emily Miller, and the four of them then lived on their farm in rural Erie County until the Civil War broke out in 1861. Both brothers enlisted in the Union Army, as many young men of their time and place did. The ultimate fates of the two Miller brothers, though, unfolded in stark contrast. 

One played a heroic linchpin role in the bloody Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July 1863, barely surviving what today might be called a suicide mission. He then went on to other accomplishments of significance: co-writing a book, Antietam: Report of the Ohio Antietam Battlefield Commission, at the request of William McKinley, and serving as a long-time secretary for Ohio’s Department of Agriculture. His tombstone is magnificent. 

The other? Described as “erratic” in the employment column in the 1860 census, his life was cut short without even having the glory of fighting in his unit’s most notable battle. Instead, he died of typhoid in March 1862, the week before the Battle of Shiloh, and was buried with a tombstone that only listed initials—and the wrong ones, at that, making his burial place lost to history until an unexpected quirk happened on the last day before I began to shelter in place because of COVID.

Intrigued? I hope so.

I have long been interested in, even obsessing about, Underground Railroad and Civil War history, at least as far back as my later elementary school years. This obsession mostly played out in intensive reading and occasionally in conversations with history teachers.

Fast-forwarding to the late 1990s, I was assigned to write a piece for Ohio Writer about Mark Nesbitt, an Ohio native and Gettysburg resident—and the author of multiple books about the battle, including the Ghosts of Gettysburg series where he shares tales of battlefield hauntings. During our conversation, he told me that I should bring our young sons to Gettysburg.

Why not, I figured? Both boys had an interest in history, so they might enjoy it.

In 1999, my husband Don and I took Ryan (aged nine) and Adam (almost seven) to Gettysburg and they both absolutely loved learning about the historical events that took place. All told, we’ve now been there a dozen times and have also visited plenty of other Civil War battlefields. 

Now, let’s pan the camera onto Gettysburg visit #11. By this time, Adam’s long-time girlfriend, Anna, was joining us on our battlefield treks. I recognized, by this time, that I wanted to write a book about a specific Gettysburg niche. The problem? I didn’t yet know what it was. 

During this visit, I kept telling my family that I wanted to take a picture of the Ohio monument that wasn’t around other monuments. When my family asked me what I meant, I didn’t know. I didn’t even know where that thought was coming from. I just wanted that picture!

My husband eventually pulled out a battlefield map and said, “Oh. You mean the 8th Ohio?” 

“Not sure,” I said. “Is it by any other monuments?”

He showed me the map and the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry monument was clearly isolated from the clusters that covered the entire area. So, I said, “Sure!”

We took a picture of “my” monument and I then looked for information about this unit during the rest of this Gettysburg trip. After we got back home, I read even more about this unit. What fascinated me, early on, was how the 8th OVI began to march as an official unit on 7/8/61. Why was this notable? My date of birth was also 7/8/61—only a century later.

An important resource for me was The 8th Ohio at Gettysburg by Franklin Sawyer, the Lt. Colonel who had led the unit at Gettysburg. As I read this book, I focused on who might especially grab my attention from its text, figuring there was a reason I was drawn to this monument—and, when I read the name of Wells Waite Miller, I immediately had my eureka moment. 

As I researched further, pieces about his life came together—slowly. I read the sparse but enlightening information about him in books, ordered his Civil War military and disability records from the National Archives, and so forth. All was so piecemeal that I needed to rely upon Mormon ancestry records to find his actual date of birth. It ended up being February 20, 1842—so he was born on the same day as my mother, but nearly 100 years earlier. 

I found the synchronicity of dates fascinating, but then I stalled out, wondering what on earth I was doing.

A year after I’d started on this journey, we made our most recent Gettysburg visit, where we attended ranger tours. At the end of one, our two sons urged me to ask the ranger about the 8th OVI. I declined, but then they did it, anyhow. As kismet would have it, this ranger, Dan Welch, was well versed in this particular unit. He told me that the 8th OVI’s performance at Pickett’s Charge, in his opinion—and in that of many other historians—was pivotal yet received relatively little attention. He also told me how to contact him and invited me to do so after the summer ended.

A few months later, I was giving a presentation about Lorain County history at the Brownhelm Township Historical Society and someone asked me what my dream writing topic would be. “That’s easy!” I said. “Wells Waite Miller from the 8th OVI in the Civil War.”

Enter kismet again. Brownhelm was looking for speakers at their Civil War Days and they asked me if I would do two presentations on him. I then began teaching a non-credit history writing class for older adults at Cuyahoga Community College and I used the material I’d gathered to demonstrate research techniques. I also got invites from two different Civil War groups to give a presentation. Because they’d already have in-depth knowledge about the war, as well as this unit, I now needed to dig even deeper. 

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So, I contacted the Gettysburg ranger, who was very generous with his time. He knew plenty about the 8th OVI, sharing newer interpretations about their role in the battle, including at Pickett’s Charge, and this gave me the momentum I needed to put together a presentation. 

Game on!

Wells Waite and Lodowick G. Miller, I discovered, came from hardy English stock, with ancestors sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to immigrate to the American colonies in the 1600s. Their names were Thomas Miller and Isabel (née Bird) Miller and, although they initially seemed to settle in well in their new homeland with their daughter Ann, they also created more than a whiff of scandal to add to the positive contributions they made.

They settled in Rowley, Massachusetts, likely as part of the Puritan Great Migration, when as many as 21,000 Puritans left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1630 and 1642, typically leaving to escape religious persecution and to pursue economic opportunities. 

Life seemed to be going well for the Millers—at least until 1666. That year, on May 6, their 22-year-old maid, Sarah Nettleton, gave birth to a son named Thomas—and the father was in fact Thomas Miller. He was 56 years old, with Sarah more than a decade younger than the Millers' daughter, Ann. 

To make matters worse, Isabel—who may have been living with Ann and her family—died right around that time. It’s possible to speculate that she committed suicide, although that isn’t known. By May 9, though, she was deceased. Thomas quickly tried to minimize the damage of his obvious adultery and the resulting scandal, marrying Sarah on June 6, 1666. 

Thomas was nevertheless placed on trial. Not surprisingly, given the public nature of this relationship, the church determined that Thomas was guilty of adultery. On October 6, 1667, a statement publicly excommunicating him was read. To get a sense of how seriously Puritans took this punishment, the Rowley church records notes that, “Afterward prayer was made that God would ratify the sentence & let loose Satan on him.”

This meant Thomas could no longer participate in civic matters of the town and his children—which he and Sarah continued to plentifully produce—could not be baptized. Some time around 1674, though, Thomas repented of his adultery and was accepted back into the church. 

Thomas died shortly after their last child was conceived, and Sarah was left with eight children, some quite young. Two years later, she remarried, and lived about 47 years longer. 

The ancestors of Wells and Lodowick sure made themselves well known after immigrating to the colonies, didn’t they? Their line can be directly traced from Thomas, the baby whose birth wreaked such havoc. He appeared to live a quieter life than his parents, and he also had a son named Thomas, among other children. This Thomas had a son named Aaron, who had his own son named Aaron. To give context, this newest baby was born on February 17, 1752. 

When the younger Aaron was a child, protests by colonists began to ramp up and, as an adult, the paternal grandfather of Wells and Lodowick fought in numerous key battles in the Revolutionary War, including those at Bunker Hill, Stillwater, and German Flats, and he was also at the siege of Yorktown. Surviving all of his military ventures, Aaron and his wife Bethiah had 12 children. One of them, Dewey, lived to be 100 years old, and he recalled how his father moved to New York in about 1792. Dewey wasn’t the direct ancestor of Wells and Lodowick, though. That honor goes to a man named Amos. 

As for Amos, he married Emily Graves, a Christmas baby born in 1801. They settled in Enfield, New York, a small rural community where agriculture was the primary way of making a living. Amos was working as a wagon maker, though, a job considered indispensable in 19-century America. While living in Enfield, Amos and Emily were to experience many tragedies, ones that too many people of their time and place also experienced. In fact, Emily was born into a household where a pall of grief may have shadowed daily life. 

Her father, Lucius, had married a woman named Emily Smith. They had a child not quite eight months later, with Emily dying shortly after that. A couple of years later, Lucius married his first wife’s sister, Submit Smith. Although Submit’s name sounds old-fashioned today, Puritans often named their children after Biblical virtues they wanted them to embody, with Submit being a name used for both males and females. 

A year later, Submit gave birth to Emily, a baby girl she almost certainly named after her deceased sister. The couple went on to have several more children, including one named Lodowick (his month and day of birth matches that of my husband). One of the girls was named Theda and she eventually married a man named Wells Waite (who died on the same day that our older son was born). 

As for Emily’s brother Lodowick, he died just after his 20th birthday. At that time, Emily was likely pregnant, and she gave birth to her first child in 1830 or 1831—a son she named Lodowick. This is “our” Lodowick, one of the two subjects of this essay. Around 1835, Emily gave birth to a daughter, naming her Delia, mostly likely after her youngest sister. In 1836, a second daughter, Helen, was born. And in 1838, another son, Amos, was born. 

Then, in 1841, tragedy struck, with Delia, Helen, and Amos all dying within a span of one week, likely the result of an outbreak of illness, possibly cholera. They were buried in the Enfield Village Cemetery and a review of records show a cluster of deaths around that time, mostly of young children or older adults, both of whom might be especially vulnerable to an epidemic. 

Emily got pregnant again soon after the loss of her three young children, giving birth to her last child, Wells Waite. Even this bit of happiness was likely tainted when, just four days later, Emily’s father died. In 1851, her stepmother also died.  

With both of Emily’s parents and three of their children gone, the family may have wanted a fresh start. This may explain why, in 1852, they moved to Castalia, Ohio, in Margaretta Township, where Amos purchased property and began to farm in this rural, scarcely populated village. Lodowick, a young adult by this time, came with them, but census reports indicate that his employment was now “erratic.” Why, I don’t yet know. 

Castalia was located 40-some miles from Oberlin, a town known nationally in the 1850s as a radical hotbed of abolitionism. What I desperately want to know: what the Miller family thought about slavery. Although I haven’t found an answer, I think we can at least suspect, from what happened six years after their Ohio move, that they had abolitionist sympathies.

Millers sent Wells to the Preparatory Department connected to Oberlin College in 1858. Would Amos and Emily have done that, knowing about the progressive anti-slavery sentiments there? Would they have sent their child to be educated where approximately 20 percent of the town’s population were black men, women, and children? Where students themselves could be black?

In the years leading up to the Civil War, fewer than five percent of Oberlin College students were black—and yet, Oberlin educated more black students than all other United States colleges combined—and, in 1860, census figures show that New York City’s population was less than two percent black. Compare that to Oberlin’s 20 percent and you can see how unusual this town really was. Plus, in Oberlin, black individuals sometimes played key roles in anti-slavery movements—and enslaved people who escaped to the town were often invited to stay. 

Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Amos and Emily Miller didn’t know this information about Oberlin before sending Wells to its preparatory school. In that case, two events that occurred—one in Oberlin and adjacent Wellington in 1858 and another that involved Oberlin residents in 1859—became national controversies, making it virtually impossible for the Millers not to be aware of them. 

In 1858, the Oberlin-Wellington Slave Rescue took place, where residents of Oberlin and Wellington, plus college students, stopped two “slave catchers” from taking a man named John Price back to Kentucky, where he had been enslaved before escaping. Yet, after this story became national news, the Millers did not withdraw their son from attending school in Oberlin. In 1859, John Brown recruited men from Oberlin to participate in the Harper’s Ferry Raid where a small band of fiery abolitionists, black and white, took over a federal armory. This also made national news. Yet, the Millers did not withdraw their son from school in Oberlin. 

Wells spent two years at the Preparatory Department, according to Oberlin College records, and then he enlisted in the 8th OVI of the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. One newspaper said he was the first man from Margaretta Township to enlist, as he joined Company E with other men from Erie County. On March 11, 1862, he was promoted to Captain, Company H.

Before Lodowick enlisted, he married Mrs. Sarah Fleming on May 18, 1861. He then became a private in the 72nd OVI, Company A, which meant that—like in many families around the country, North and South—both of the Miller sons were now fighting in a brutal war. Just 19 days after Wells was promoted to Captain, Lodowick died of typhoid in Camp Shiloh. His death occurred just seven days before Lodowick’s unit would play their biggest role in the entire war. Perhaps he would have been wounded or even killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Perhaps, though, he would have been a hero. We’ll never know.

With little to no time to grieve, Wells fought at Antietam on September 17, 1862, the single bloodiest day on American soil. The 8th OVI were involved in fierce fighting along Bloody Lane and, when the Union soldiers finally overcame the Confederates there, the prisoners were placed in Wells’ care. Wells himself was captured as a prisoner of war on November 12, 1862 while his unit was on a march. Kept at Camp Parole in Maryland, he was paroled around May 1. 

With the loss of his brother, the gruesome fighting at Antietam, and his time in a prisoner of war camp, Wells surely had to be exhausted. Yet, the greatest fighting was still ahead of him. 

In June 1863, General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army crossed into Union ground for a second time—this time into Pennsylvania, rather than Maryland—and the Union Army needed to keep them from reaching Washington D.C. Soldiers directed to head to Pennsylvania included Wells and the other men of the 8th OVI. By June 26, these men were crossing the Potomac River at Edwards Ferry in Maryland, feeling a sense of urgency. When told that the Union Army was now in “hot pursuit” of Lee, they began moving at double quick speed. They reached Monocacy Junction in Maryland on June 30th, with this journey called the “most fatiguing march ever made by the regiment.” Yet, they were still far from their desired location. 

This exhausting troop movement was followed up with another 24 hours of marching, with barely a moment to rest, as the men covered another 35 to 40 miles of ground. “The day was intensely hot,” Franklin Sawyer recalled, “and numerous little creeks and streams, swollen by recent rains, had to be forded, sometimes deep.”

Fierce marching had exhausted the men so much that, if they rested on their muskets for a moment, they would fall asleep. Dressed in wool in the summer heat, they lugged heavy weapons, machinery, supplies, and more. They did, however, achieve their goal, catching up with the main portion of the Union Army, now positioned close to Lee’s fighting forces. 

When the morning of July 1 dawned, the men of the 8th OVI—still little rested—continued to move towards the crossroads of Gettysburg in a three-column formation. By noon, they were close enough, according to Sawyer, to hear and see the “roar of artillery and the grim clouds of dust and smoke that gathered gloomily along the otherwise clear sky away to our front.”

Their pace quickened, as information about the ferocious fighting was shared with them by couriers, including the devastating news that the venerable Union General John Reynolds had already been killed by the rebel forces. By the time that the men of the 8th OVI reached Gettysburg proper, the first day’s fighting on July 1 had ceased. So, they were sent to sleep on top of their weapons on high ground located about a mile behind Cemetery Ridge.

Awakened by Reveille at 4 a.m. on July 2nd, the men hastily ate hardtack (hard biscuits) and flitch (cured meat) as they got in line, but guns were still silent. The men were positioned along the ridge and, for “several hours everything seemed unusually quiet, for a battle-field” and most of the men could “lay down for rest.”

Not so for Wells, who was sent with a small group of men across Emmitsburg Road. Ultimately, there were about 180 men from the 8th OVI positioned ahead of the Union lines—meaning closer to the enemy. Because they were technically an outpost, not skirmishers, they were not permitted to retreat unless they were given specific orders. 

When directed to “clean out a nest of rebels,” they “dashed at the double quick” as other men waved their hats and swords, cheering them on. Fourteen of the men in the 8th OVI were wounded, with two killed, but they succeeded in their mission. In a follow-up skirmish, three more men of the 8th were killed, 15 more wounded. An old house they were near was now “pretty well filled up with our dead and wounded.” 

Their geographical position? Even more precarious. They were truly an isolated band of men. When they asked for more help, they were told that none would be forthcoming and the 8th needed to maintain their position “to the last.” 

On July 3, 1863, the last day of the Gettysburg battle, large groups of Union and Confederate forces faced one another, about a mile apart on open ground—in what is now called Pickett’s Charge. The Confederates then began marching towards the Union, across open fields, up and down dips and swells, to make a frontal attack amidst the roar of cannons and firing of countless weapons. The 8th Ohio was off to the side, still in their isolated position, positioned to offer support to Union forces. 

Franklin Sawyer led his men into daring maneuvers and “poured into the rebels a most rattling volley.” Sawyer’s moves during this battle were in fact so risky that men observing them from Cemetery Ridge thought that Sawyer surely must be drunk. He then positioned his men, including Wells, towards the rebels, until the enemy was passing about 100 yards in front of them. The 8th OVI then opened fire on a Confederate brigade that outnumbered them, five to one.

What happened was later described as astonishing. The Confederates broke rank and fled. Wells was later quoted as saying, “Come on, boys!” and the Ohioans surged forward, capturing 200 prisoners. The Confederate troops, caught between an unexpected crossfire, crumbled. 

When the smoke had cleared, Wells laid helplessly on blood-soaked ground, dangerously wounded and fearing that enemy soldiers were so close that he’d be trampled to death.

Fortunately, he was brought home to recover and, although his wounds ended his military career, he did survive. He married his sweetheart, Mary Helen Caswell, on July 3rd or 4th, 1864, a year after Gettysburg. Her father was a prominent farmer and local politician, Calvin Caswell, and Mary had also attended the Preparatory Academy at Oberlin. They had two children, Amos Calvin and Corrine, and they continued to live in Castalia, Ohio. 

Wells’ parents moved in with them as well. His mother, Emily, died on December 19, 1870 (the day my husband and I got married, 117 years later). Amos lived for nearly another 15 years. 

Both of Wells’ and Mary’s children attended Oberlin College. Amos became a well-known lawyer and vice president of Firestone Tire. He married a woman named Jeanne, a talented musician who preferred to be called “Nettie.” They had three sons. Corrine married Dr. Oscar Kriebel, a prominent Schwenkfelder preacher in Pennsylvania, and they had three daughters. 

From 1894 until 1906, Wells served on the state’s agriculture board, a position that seemed to take him to Washington D.C. often. He had been quite involved in local and county politics and was exploring a run as Ohio’s governor when, in April 1906, he suffered from a sharp ear pain. He thought he would need to miss planned festivities for the weekend in Castalia. Instead, he died on April 8th, with his wife and son at his side. Mary lived for seven more years. 

This is the story I shared with the Quincy Gillmore Civil War Roundtable at Lorain County Community College. It was, as I’d mentioned, the last thing I did before beginning to shelter in place. Yet, there was another twist to the story. 

Just four days later, I got an email from a man named Bill Stark. He introduced himself, said he enjoyed my talk, and shared that he was a Graves Registration Officer for James A. Garfield Camp #142, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. He told me that, at Shiloh National Cemetery, there is someone named “S.G. Miller” of the 72nd OVI buried there. In other military records, there was a Ludwig Miller listed. In another source, the headstone at Shiloh was listed as an unknown burial. 

Bill then asked me a series of questions, including whether I’d seen a headstone for Lodowick where the rest of the family was buried in Castalia. (I hadn’t and I had looked reasonably well.) He asked me if I’d ever seen Lodowick’s name written in cursive to the degree that it looked like it began with an “S” (thanks to research help from Civil War buff, Billy Molina, I knew that it had), and whether I’d seen his name spelled as Ludwig (I had). Through a series of conversations, Lodowick’s burial information was cleared up and he was finally entered into the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War Graves Registration Database. When this happened, the last of the 72nd OVI soldiers buried at Shiloh was now officially listed there. 

The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Bill told me, have never given up on identifying unknown soldiers, even from as far back as the Civil War—and now Lodowick, 158 years later, can be counted as one who was found and can finally receive the honor he deserves. 

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KELLY BOYER SAGERT IS A FULL-TIME FREELANCE WRITER FROM LORAIN, OHIO WHO HAS TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED 17 BOOKS, MANY OF THEM HISTORY-RELATED, ALONG WITH THOUSANDS OF SHORTER PIECES. FIVE OF HER HISTORY-BASED PLAYS HAVE BEEN PERFORMED, AND SHE IS ALSO THE SCRIPTWRITER FOR THE MULTI-AWARD-WINNING, EMMY AWARD-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY, TRAIL MAGIC: THE GRANDMA GATEWOOD STORY. SHE CAN BE REACHED THROUGH HER WEBSITE: KBSAGERT.COM.