My Ancestor Survived the Civil War and Wrote It All Down in His Diaries

As a family historian, you dream of uncovering a primary source so vivid it brings the past directly into the room with you. For my family, that dream is a reality.

My name is Mark Farrell, and I am the great-grandson of Sergeant Henry W. Tisdale.

Mark Farrell

From 1862 to 1865, Henry lived every possible scenario of a Union soldier’s life: he left his home in Massachusetts, trained in the open air, suffered a battlefield wound, survived a bullet destined for his chest, and endured the horrific landscape of Southern prison pens — including the notorious Andersonville stockade.

Henry W. Tisdale

Through it all, he kept a meticulous handwritten diary.

For generations, his words remained a fiercely guarded family secret. When Henry passed away at age 85 on May 31, 1922, he left the original three-volume pen diaries to his son, Roscoe H. Tisdale, with a strict request: do not open them until after I have passed on. True to his word, Henry had never spoken of his wartime exploits.

On Christmas Day in 1926, the family finally shared his story. My maternal grandmother, Margaret H. Tisdale, painstakingly typed the pen transcripts into seven hardbound copies to gift to Henry’s children so his memory would stay “nearer and dearer to us all.”

Decades later, I made a dozen loose photocopies of those transcripts and registered the compilation for a copyright with the Library of Congress in 2001. But the true turning point came when my former high school U.S. History teacher, Mr. Robert Cormier, and his AP students at Shrewsbury High School took on a massive class project. Without the family even knowing it at the time, they beautifully transferred the text onto a digitized computer disc.

In 2003, a computer-wiz coworker of mine helped me upload that file to the web. For over twenty years, the complete diary has lived at www.civilwardiary.net, where it has been utilized countless times by authors and historians as a primary reference text. Today, the original three handwritten volumes are safely preserved in the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library.

Henry’s diaries, now kept at the Boston Public Library

The soldier’s journey: July 1862–April 1863

Henry was born on March 9, 1837, in Walpole, Massachusetts, the eldest of seven children. He was raised between Walpole and West Dedham (now the town of Westwood).

At age 25, while working as a clerk for Benjamin Boyden’s trading business, the call for 300,000 volunteers went out. Henry put his name down first on the roster for Company I, Thirty-fifth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

“Soon after the President’s call for the 300,000 volunteers felt it my duty to be one of them, feel it as much a Christian as a political duty, and feel that every citizen ought to feel it so… All towns are offering liberal bounties, varying from one to three hundred dollars,” he wrote on July 30, 1862. “I fear that some of our volunteers go more from motives founded in dollars and cents than from those drawn from true patriotism.”

Only a month after deploying, on September 14, 1862, Henry was shot through the left thigh at Fox’s Gap during the Battle of South Mountain. While dragging his bleeding body to the rear, he encountered a terrified, wounded Confederate soldier:

“As I was limping off a wounded rebel who was sitting against a tree called me and asked me if I did not have something to eat. Exhibiting a loaf and going to him I opened my knife to cut off a slice when he placed his hands before his face exclaiming ‘Don’t kill me’ and begging me to put up the knife and not to hurt him. Assuring him I had no intention of hurting him I spoke with him a little. Found he had a family in Georgia…”

Henry recovered and rejoined his regiment on February 4, 1863, traveling into Kentucky and East Tennessee. The landscapes of the South opened his eyes to realities he had never imagined in New England. “Started for Mt. Sterling,” he wrote in April 1863. “Most of us were tired as we could be, many of us with feet badly blistered and legs chafed… [Later] Many visitors at our dress parade tonight, the music being quite an attraction. Many were slaves from the farms round about, three quarters of whom were mulattos, some almost white, indeed was astounded to find that some of the young ladies present were slaves, so little did they show of any of the African peculiarities in their dress or looks. This made me more than ever opposed to the system of slavery…”

Celebrating the Siege of Vicksburg… and then, a brush with death

That summer, Henry participated in the monumental Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi campaigns. When Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on Independence Day, 1863, the camp erupted: “Our country still in the midst of a sad Civil War and which for two years has been almost seemingly fruitless… The news had come to us at noon that Vicksburg had surrendered with General Pemberton, 27,000 prisoners, 280 guns with small arms and it is difficult to describe the joy with which the news was received in the camp… Another cheering surprise also greeted us, viz. a mail… men danced and capered like children… Marched at 6 o’clock. Left our campground literally covered with newspapers the product of the day’s mail, which we were obliged to leave behind unread.”

Siege of Vicksburg by Thure de Thulstrup, 1888 (public domain)

Days later, on July 10, near Jackson, Mississippi, Henry survived an unbelievable brush with death when a bullet tore through an adjacent soldier and struck his own weapon. “I was standing behind an orderly Sergeant John K. Hull [7th Rhode Island]… both of us behind a tree, I giving him some instructions. I had my gun in front of me lengthwise of my body — flat a click upon my gun and at the same moment Sergeant Hull uttered a faint cry and fell upon his face at my feet… a bullet had passed through his body. He uttered a groan and expired. Looking at my gun I saw that the middle band was partially broken and the woodwork close to it dented upon the barrel, thus showing that the bullet after passing through his body had struck the gun and by it was glanced aside.”

Thanksgiving in Knoxville

By late autumn, the regiment was back in Tennessee, executing a bitter, exhausting retreat toward Knoxville to outrun General Longstreet’s forces. “Most of us are poorly equipped for clothing, few have good shoes, some almost barefoot,” Henry wrote on November 15, 1863. “One of my feet goes partly on the ground at each step… Fifty wagons or more fully loaded with clothing and supplies were burned. It was a sad sight to us of the rank and file some were ragged and barefoot, to see shoes and clothing turned to ashes almost within our reach.”

The siege of Knoxville pinned them in trenches on half-rations, redefining his perspective on gratitude. “Little did I dream that in the year 1863 I should have a Thanksgiving dinner down in ‘Old Tennessee’ of fried pork, bread and coffee. Yet how much do I have to be thankful for. My life spared while so many of my comrades on my right and left are laid soldiers in a grave.”

Captured by the Rebels

In 1864, Henry’s regiment returned east to participate in Grant’s grueling Overland Campaign in Virginia. On May 18th at the Battle of Spottsylvania, he found himself trapped in a low, swampy clearing covered in felled trees. “Formed in line… and soon as daylight came the advance began through a thick wood… a storm of bullets mingled with grape and shell greeted us… to the crest of a hill from which the rebel breastworks and a battery… could be seen… between us a low swampy space into which the rebels had felled trees making an abatis. At the sight of this… the 56th staggered in their advance, got confused, crowded upon one another and in spite of the efforts of their officers were soon in full retreat… Over our heads flew the bullets with their ‘Zip Zip’, the cannister with their ‘Whir Whir’, and the screaming shell cutting off the tree tops…”

Less than a week later, Henry was captured by the 7th Alabama Infantry at the North Anna River. “Marched towards them supposing them our own men when suddenly a half a dozen or more jumped up took aim and yelled out ‘drop that gun’ — kept towards them yelling out ‘don’t fire on your men’, only to receive a second yell from them,” he wrote on May 24. “Then to suddenly realize that death or surrender was my alternative and with a feeling of shame and mortification, threw down my gun which I had hoped to carry home (with scar of rebel bullet received at Jackson, Mississippi)… Was soon taken in charge by a member of the 7th Alabama with a reproof for not dropping my gun at their first call, and the remark that in ‘another minute you would of been a dead man.'”

Henry was stripped of his gear and processed into the overcrowded Libby Prison in Richmond. “In Libby Prison,” he wrote on May 27. “Can hardly realize it. Have imaged almost every other fortune of war as it might come to me but that of a “prisoner of war.” Feel that He who has cared for me thus far in battlefield, camp, march, and hospital, will care for me and help me to cheerfulness and patience while in prison… Read my name reported “Missing.” It will be many months before I get at liberty.”

Photo of Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, taken in 1865

From Richmond, Henry was transported deep into Georgia to the notorious open-air stockade of Andersonville, arriving on June 7: “Just as the day close we were marched through the gates many of us feeling that the words ‘Abandon all ye who enter here’ might have a real meaning to us. Found it much worse a place than I had expected or that it had been represented to us by the citizens while en route. So crowded that it seemed as if there was no room for us new comers to stretch out upon.”

A letter Henry wrote from Andersonville on June 20, 1864 to let his family know he was alive and well, even though conditions were bad there

Because of his rank, the camp commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, placed Henry in charge of the 3rd Mess of Detachment #76, making him responsible for the daily roll calls, hospital runs, and ration divisions for 90 fellow prisoners. Though recommended for a Medal of Honor for his leadership during captivity, no official record of its disposition survives. 

As Union General Sherman advanced through Georgia, the Confederates systematically moved prisoners to elude him. Henry passed through temporary stockades in Savannah and Millen before arriving at the Florence Stockade in South Carolina. Starving and exposed to a brutal winter freeze, he recorded this heartbreaking dream on November 28, 1864: “Midnight of the twenty-third, found us massed in one of the vacant squares of the city of Savannah chilled to the bone with the cold, weak and faint from hunger. We lay down in heaps to keep warm. Those of us from Massachusetts, talked of the morrow, Thanksgiving Day… Went to sleep with mind and heart busy with the thoughts of the great old Thanksgiving days of the past… I was at home, sitting at my mother’s table alone clothed in my prison rages, and before me a large turkey cranberry sauce, etc. I grasped the carving knife to help myself and awoke to find that the grey November clouds had gone, and the stars were glittering overhead, and I was cold and hungry.”

Freedom and the long walk home

Henry was finally exchanged on March 3, 1865, near Wilmington, North Carolina. His close messmate, Corporal Benjamin F. Pratt, 3rd, was so weak that Henry and his comrades had to carry him on a makeshift stick-and-blanket stretcher. Tragically, though Pratt made it back home to South Weymouth, he succumbed to a smallpox epidemic in 1866.

“Pen cannot describe our emotions as we caught sight of the old flag, our cheers mingled with tears of joy,” Henry wrote on March 3, 1865. “The thoughts rising in our hearts of something to eat, something to wear, and home again! Pratt roused by the commotion when told its caused, cried ‘let me see it’, and as we lifted him joy shone upon his face as he gazed upon it waving in the morning sun.”

After receiving a 30-day furlough to visit his family, Henry prepared to head back to the front lines from Worcester, Massachusetts on April 15, when catastrophic news struck: “Just as I was preparing to start from Worcester, ‘for the front’ again, came word of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. With streaming eyes I read the fatal words on the newspaper bill board… At every station were crowds eager for the latest news of the saddest tragedy of the war.”

Henry was officially mustered out of the United States Service on June 9, 1865. Journeying home through New Jersey and New York, he reflected on the profound, jarring contrast between a prosperous North and a shattered South: “The scenery of this place was a perfect feast to the eye of summer beauty,” he wrote on June 11. “Everything in town and open country telling of peace and prosperity. Hard to picture the contrast presented with what we have just left behind in the desolated towns, and hamlets. Farms, fields, forrests, and deserted houses of the southland. With the joy of going home and the satisfaction that the ‘three years’ of army life with its horrid ‘engineering of war’ were over…”

Returning to a quiet life

On June 13, 1865, Henry arrived back in Readville, received his final discharge papers, paid six dollars to keep his trusty musket, and returned home to West Dedham to take up “the next thing in life’s programme.”

Three years later, on June 3, 1868, he married Abbie Frances Cheney.

Henry’s wife, Abby

Together they raised 7 children, living in Boston and Roxbury. Henry built a successful civilian career, opening a grocery store and market located at 1800 and 2219 Washington Street.

Henry (left) in front of his grocery store

Today, Henry rests in Highland Cemetery in Norwood, Massachusetts.

The grave of Henry W. Tisdale

His Civil War gear remains safely preserved at the Dedham Historical Society, alongside a hardbound copy of his diary. And in West Alton, New Hampshire, his Model 1861 Springfield Rifle still hangs proudly above our family fireplace.

Many thanks to MyHeritage user Mark Farrell for sharing his ancestor’s incredible story and writings with us. Explore more American Family Stories and discover how ordinary families experienced extraordinary moments in U.S. history on MyHeritage’s America 250 hub.