Connecticut’s Black military history

FALLS VILLAGE — Historian and teacher Peter Vermilyea told a standing room only audience at the David M. Hunt Library about the Black soldiers from the Northwest Corner and Connecticut who fought in the Civil War Saturday, Feb. 8.

He started by noting that in the American Revolution, Black soldiers were not uncommon.

“Almost every Connecticut unit had at least one Black solider.”

But the Federal Military Act of 1797 prohibited Black men from serving in the U.S. Army — although not in the Navy.

Fast forward to Jan. 1, 1863, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Presidential Proclamation 95 — ie. executive order — better known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Vermilyea noted that the proclamation did not end slavery per se.

It did free “certain persons.”

Lincoln took this step in his role as commander in chief during a rebellion.

Vermilyea said there were Black soliders in state militias prior to the proclamation, but now Black men could serve in the Union army.

Within a month of the proclamation, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was formed. This is the unit depicted in the 1989 film “Glory.”

“The 54th attracted volunteers from all over the country,” Vermilyea said, including 154 men from Adams County, Pennsylvania. Over half the troops were from somewhere other than Massachusetts, “but it was Massachusetts taking the lead.”

Vermilyea touched on Milo Freeland of Sheffield and later East Canaan. Freeland is buried in Hillside Cemetery in East Canaan, and the original gravestone is at the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society. A replica stands in the cemetery.

The gravestone states Freeland was the first Black man “enlisted from the North” in the Civil War.

Vermilyea said very little is known about Freeland, and it is impossible to make that claim definitively.

“However, he was certainly one of the first.”

Moving on to the 29th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Vermilyea said he found out about it when a colleague gave him a “treasure chest” filled mostly with junk.

But at the bottom were half a dozen pension records of Black soldiers from Litchfield County.

Vermilyea explained that pension records are a gold mine for historians as they contain personal information that is unavailable elsewhere.

With these records in hand, Vermilyea and his students at Housatonic Valley Regional High School began the research project that eventually turned into a massive effort and is documented at www.project29.org.

Vermilyea said some 1600 men volunteered for the 29th and the 30th Volunteer Infantry. The 30th never quite got off the ground and was later incorporated into a federal unit of Black troops.

Initially the 29th was on garrison duty in Beaufort, South Carolina, but in the summer of 1864 they were deployed to fight in heavy action around Richmond, Virginia.

The 29th played significant roles in battles at Chaffin’s Farm and Kell House.

They were also the first Union infantry unit to enter Richmond, the capital city of the Confederacy, on April 2, 1865, where they met Lincoln.

It would have been nice and tidy if this highly symbolic event was the end of the story, but it isn’t.

After the war, the South needed occupation troops, and there was some tension along the border with Mexico.

Vermilyea said during occupation duty in Texas and Louisiana the 29th had dozens of members fall not to bullets from hostile Southerners but to disease.

It wasn’t until October 1865 that the 29th returned to Connecticut. Vermilyea related two stories of individuals who served with the 29th.

Joseph Parks, a Chilean, was a sailor on a commercial ship that arrived in New York City. He was recruited for the 29th, probably because the pay was substantially better than that of a sailor.

He was shot in the jaw at Kell House. Vermilyea said the wound and the subsequent treatment was so unusual it was recorded for the benefit of Army doctors.

“This is why we know something about him.”

Unfortunately, the doctors couldn’t save him, and he died on Nov. 6, 1864, of what was listed as “exhaustion.”

Almon Wheeler of Sharon has a lurid story. He was also wounded at Kell House, but recovered and rejoined the regiment for occupation duty.

He then returned to Connecticut, in Salisbury, where he married and started a family.

Around 1889 the Wheelers moved to Chicago, and Wheeler became embroiled in a messy case of divorce, bigamy and a murder/suicide attempt in 1891.

Vermilyea said the students were able to piece the story together, again from the pension records and from contemporary newspaper accounts.

He also said it seems reasonable to believe that Wheeler’s erratic behavior might have been due to what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Vermilyea also said that when students begin researching a particular name, they never know what they’re going to find.

“A student will say ‘my guy died of diarrhea after three months!’”