If there had been a prophetic headline announcing the return of Civil War Veteran David L. Wells to his home in Kerhonkson, N.Y., it might have read as such in the summer of 1865. But, there was no headline. His return to Ulster County in the boom years of the cement industry was quietly marked only by medical examinations that naggingly continued for decades that chronicled his inability to find lasting, profitable work.

How is it that a Civil War Veteran could suffer such an unlikely fate in a valley considered an employment mecca throughout the 1800’s. The answer lies in the experience David Wells underwent in the War Between the States, the scourge of that same decade.  

David Wells was born in 1845, the son of Charles Wells, a carpenter, and his wife Catherine. They lived in Napanoch, Town of Rochester, Ulster County. In July of 1862 David Wells’ life was punctuated by his recruitment at High Falls by Captain Jacob L. Snyder and Lieutenant John B. Krom into Company C, the color guard of the 120th New York Infantry. The 120th was mustered into service in Kingston, N.Y., on August 22, 1862.

The following day Colonel George H. Sharpe accepted two flags presented by the ladies of Ellenville and Kingston in front of throngs of friends and relatives of the soldiers there gathered. The National standard and the regimental colors were presented by Reuben Bernard as a token of “appreciation and remembrance, some symbol, which, by its constant presence will ever remind these men that they are remembered in their prayers and watched   by loved ones at home.” Bernard’s final words no doubt stirred the patriotic hearts of all present when he declared:

 . . . and now, Colonel Sharpe, allow me the pleasure of presenting to you these flags, knowing that you and the noble men with you, will do your whole duty, and knowing that, with the blessing of God crowning your efforts, this flag shall be preserved to the latest generation without one strip obliterated or one stare dimmed.

That same day orders were given for the departure of the regiment.  On a clear late summer Sunday the streets of Kingston were lined with spectators, friends and family as the regiment broke camp and began its march to the steamer MANHATTAN docked on the Rondout.

The volunteers of the 120th must have been torn between the pride of patriotism and the fear of the unknown as they contemplated the adventure of a lifetime and the horror of stories returning from the battlefront. But, no soldier could have been more unknowing of his fortune that of David Wells.

The efforts of the 120th Regiment are well documented in the battle of Gettysburg. David Wells knew well the Union line of Cemetery Ridge where the 120th bore its full share of the resistance. When the battle commenced the 120th had present for duty 440 men. One of these was David Wells. At the close of conflict there had been 203 killed and wounded. David Wells had escaped the fate of nearly half his Regiment.

However, in October of 1863 Davis Wells was taken prisoner by the Confederates near James City, Virginia, a few miles north of Williamsburg. Thus began a nightmare of incarceration that was to last eighteen months. From Pimberton Prison he was transferred to Libby Prison in Richmond. Housed in tobacco warehouses and fed bread and water, it was not uncommon for prisoners to resort to rat-catching to supplement their starvation diets.

David Wells survived these two camps only to be transferred to a backwoods hamlet of swamps and marshes known as Andersonville, Georgia. He was one of 37,000 Union prisoners incarcerated there where the death rate soared from 300 per month to 3,000 per month by the end of the war. Of the nearly 13,000 graves at Andersonville, one of them was not that of David Wells.

The treatment of prisoners in these Confederate camps is well documented in the pension file of David Wells housed at the National Archives. In one affidavit he describes his treatment and the medical debilitations that resulted.

I was first taken sick with looseness of the bowels while a prisoner at Richmond, Va. I was then sent to Belle Isle and had to sleep on the ground. It was very cold, so cold that some of the boys froze dead over night. I took cold from the exposure and it settled in my bowels. I was then transferred to Andersonville. There I had chronic diarrhea. They kept me in prison in Andersonville over a year. In June and July 1864 I had chronic diarrhea in its worse form. I could not get much medicine from the Rebels. My comrades gathered roots and got greens off the trees for me and cared for me as best they could. My lungs also hurt me from the severe cold I had taken. I coughed a great deal and raised much mucus. My eyes got very weak as I had to lay out in the bright sun and hot sun for I was too weak to crawl to any shelter. And my eyes got so bad that I could scarcely distinguish objects. They got so bad that my comrades took me under shelter and kept a wet cloth over my eyes and excluded the light.    

A fellow prisoner attests to the medical condition of David Wells while at Andersonville.  

I knew that he had severe sickness with the chronic diarrhea and inflamed or very sore lungs. He  was very low at the time and I had to handle and care for him as best I could. I could not get any medical attendance for him and the Rebels would not give me any medicine for him. This was during the rainy season of Andersonville in the spring of 1864. He did not fully recover while I was there but would sometimes get a little better and then get worse and then get so he could crawl around again.

Another tent mate attests that:

David Wells was sick and very much reduced and emaciated and had the disease of dysentery. He was sometimes very sick and I remember some of the comrades gathering roots and bark for him to eat. He was sometimes a little better and sometimes sick again until we got him the onions living about.

On a diet of bread, water, roots, bark and wild onions, David Wells survived his imprisonment nightmare until he became a paroled prisoner at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in April of 1865, awaiting prisoner exchange. From there he was sent to Annapolis, Md., where he underwent hospitalization until mustered out in June of 1865.

Unlike his departure, David’s return to the Rondout Valley was not heralded by speeches and patriotic crowds. Just as the Nation had to under go a healing process, so too did David Wells. The day after he returned to Kerhonkson, he visited a local physician, Dr. Secor. On the basis of that diagnosis and those that preceded it in Annapolis, David qualified for a Federal Pension of two dollars per month. However, his healing process never occurred and David’s health deteriorated substantially over the years.

Upon returning to his home, his first priority was to find work. He contacted his former employer, Nathaniel Carman, an undertaker in Kerhonkson. Carman clearly attested to the affects of health on David Wells’ ability to work.

I am personally acquainted with David Wells. I have know him intimately since 1862 and seen him frequently each year excepting the time he was in the army. His eye-sight was good before he went to war. He worked for me. After he came back from the army, the said Wells used to make “boxes” for me. I noticed in March of 1866 that he could no longer see good enough to file his saw. I filed it for him and continued to file his saw as long as he worked for me. He applied three pairs of glasses at different times to his eyes. His vision has been failing ever since. And for the last 10 or 11 years his eyesight has been so much impaired that he has not been able to work any amount at his said trade as a carpenter.

Obviously the atrophy of the optic nerves diagnosed by local physicians was taking its toll.

By 1874 David Wells had married and had three sons. His pension had been discontinued since the symptoms of dysentery on which it had been granted had abated. He was now boating on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, no doubt with the help of his children. But his health problems continued. His digestion was impaired, his lungs were weak, and he was subject to attacks similar to cholera. Rheumatism and paralysis on the right side were attested to by local physicians in numerous affidavits.

How David Wells survived the last decades of the nineteenth century one can only surmise. Besides his immediate family, he had a number of siblings living in the Rondout Valley who no doubt were supportive. On nearly a yearly basis he applied to the Department of the Interior for reinstatement as a Civil War pensioner. But these applications were consistently rejected since David could not prove total disability. Doctors from Ellenville to Kingston would attest to David’s deteriorating health and surmised that all his problems were the result of malnutrition experienced as a prisoner of war. But none would declare him more than one-half or two-thirds disabled. One doctor declared simply that “he can still dress himself and button his shirt.”  This skill hardly qualified him to continue boating on the D & H Canal, hauling cement with a boat and horse team. But somehow he managed to do so, according to census and pension records up through 1885.
In one document dated 1898 David Wells attests to his health and its affects. He writes in his own, now jerky, barely legible handwriting, “The product of this section is cement and I cannot engage in it at all” At another point in time he describes himself as “one-third of a whole man.”

As a result of legislation passed in 1912, David Wells again qualified for a Civil War pension of  $18 per month which was subsequently increased to $24 per month in 1915 and $30 per month in 1920. The years of legal correspondence and medical testimony finally brought him financial relief, although his health never improved.

In 1914 David Wells was living in Waterbury, Connecticut, with one of his sons. In a letter to the Commissioner of Pensions he made a startling and ironic admission.

When I enlisted Aug. 13, 1862, I enlisted for 1 year older than I was and have carried the same age all through my claims. It stands as a sin and destroys my peace with my God and I ask for pardon for the same.

David Wells had lied about his age in order to be accepted as a volunteer in the service of the Union in the War Between the States.

By the time of his death in 1922 the flag had once again survived threats of war “without one stripe obliterated or one star dimmed.” as would be repeated throughout the twentieth century. But, David Wells was now at rest, buried in the Pine Bush Cemetery in Kerhonkson, N.Y. Although his return from the Civil War was unmarked by waving flags and cheering crowds in 1865, he was duly honored in 1979 by the Kerhonkson VFW Post 8959 with a monument in his honor and a traditional three-volley salute over his grave witnessed by many throughout the Rondout Valley. Thus, David Wells, along with his story of brutal treatment as a prisoner of war, his struggle to earn a living, for himself and his family and that monument in his honor, survive

[Society member Roger Wells is a retired English teacher who lives in Dutchess County, NY]