Civil War letters tell stories of local families, tribulations
Genealogist bases book on dispatches by ancestors.
Genealogist MASSILLON —
Kathryn Hardgrove Popio used actual letters of her ancestors as the centerpiece of the book “Cross Keys, Carpet Bag and Pen.”
Surrounded by death, disease and hunger, young men who fought in the American Civil War savored every letter they received from home. With the welcome arrival of each new missive, they knew they hadn’t been forgotten, and that loved ones were praying for their speedy and safe return.
In between battles, soldiers had many idle hours to fill, writing to family and friends about inept military leadership, rampant desertions, not getting paid for months, and hearing the “roar of the canon all day.”
The book contains the unvarnished accounts of how members of Stark County’s pioneering Hardgrove family lived through the heartaches and hardships of the Civil War that resulted in the deaths of 625,000 soldiers and tore America apart.
The pages are filled with events taking place in Massillon, businesses that were thriving, inventions in progress and relating family social interactions from all over Stark County.
They also contain accounts of misery and death, both on and off the battlefield.
Disease was indiscriminate, cutting large swaths of sickness from Pennsylvania to Virginia and from Canton and Massillon to Canal Fulton.
In September of 1862, Stark County soldier John Henry Hardgrove, camped near Helena, Ark., wrote that “more die from inaction than in action. We have been here over two months and not less than 300 have been buried...”
The book’s backbone is based on correspondence from Margaret Jackson Hardgrove and two of her sons, William, a teacher and farmer near Mt. Vernon, and Lt. John Henry, who enlisted in the Union Army. Although Margaret lived with William, she spent much of the Civil War in Massillon visiting her daughters.
A widow, she can be regarded as the matriarch of the Hardgrove clan, a busy woman with a zest to travel. She kept her carpet bag ready to leave on a moment’s notice, whether it was by stagecoach, canal boat or “carrs” as she called trains.
When she wasn’t traveling, she was with pen in hand, writing to family and friends, indulging in almost every topic she had gleaned from “clothesline gossip” to her personal opinion that Gen. George B. McClennan was a coward.
She blamed McClennan, considered the great organizer of the Union Army of the Potomac, for the deaths of thousands of men and wished the rebels would take him prisoner and do away with him.
Although she was quick to voice her opinion on paper to loved ones, she seldom spoke of politics in public because she considered it to be a private matter.
But politics was in her bloodline — she was a cousin of Andrew Jackson, a national hero during the War of 1812, and the seventh president of the United States.