Dorence Atwater and The Death List

The story of Dorence Atwater and the price he paid for the truth

(Read carefully for a chance to win a signed copy of my 3 in 1 June release Sophie’s Daughters Trilogy)

In Andersonville, Ga, the most notorious Civil War prison of them all led to the deaths of 13,000 Yankee soldiers. There were terrible deprivations in prisons on both sides, but Andersonville became the best known.

While doing research for my August release Over the Edge, book #3 of the Kincaid Brides Series, a quiet piece of history in Andersonville caught my attention.

The story of Dorence Atwater and the price he paid for the truth.

Dorence Atwater was among the first prisoners to be locked up in Andersonville and he was sick when he arrived at the prison and put in the prison hospital. While he was healing it was discovered that he was well educated (for a sixteen year old) and had beautiful handwriting. Dorence was put in charge of the Death List—a list of all the Yankee soldiers who died and where they were buried.

Dorence was told to keep two lists. One for the Confederate Army and one to be sent North to the Union Army. Dorence feared that the south wouldn’t send the second list North, especially because of the horrors of Andersonville. So he began a third list and kept it hidden, knowing that he could be hanged for keeping this secret list.

He remained in Andersonville for the duration of the war and even with the meager priviledges he received for working for the South, he was gravely ill. He wrote, “People are dying all around me. I can do nothing to save them, but I can let their families know exactly where they are buried–where to put flowers and pray.” He hid the list containing 13,000 names in his laundry bag and smuggled it out through the Confederate lines.

The Confederate army did send a list of all the dead soldiers to the north but there were thousands of names missing and much of the ink was smeared so badly the names were unreadable.

Once home he handed the list to his father and immediately fell ill with diphtheria, typhoid and scurvy. Each of these diseases often kill, Dorence had all three. Within a month, Dorence, though thin and frail, was on the mend. He got a telegraph from Washington DC asking him to bring his Death List to them. On the train to the capitol word came that Abraham Lincoln had been shot.

Only twenty years old, Dorence got a job as an intern in DC and his list was taken to be published. Except it never was. The men who’d taken the list refused to publish it or return it. Dorence stayed at his job hoping he’d have a chance to retrieve the Death List. Months went by and Dorence heard that Clara Barton was looking for the burial sites of all Civil War soldiers. She’d raised the funds to mark their graves but had no way to locate those graves. Dorence told Clara about the Death List and the two began a life long friendship.

Dorence and Clara were receiving thousands of inquiries about loved ones who had not returned. With time the List became old news in Dorence’s office and nothing had yet been done about it; it was available to anyone who worked there. Dorence had only leased the List to the government and the lease was long expired. Dorence took the List since it was the only copy that wasn’t short thousands of names. Clara had already arranged the trip to Andersonville with Dorence for the purpose of putting markers on the graves. President Lincoln had approved this action before his death. Dorence took the Death List and traveled via boat with Barton, and forty-two headboard carvers. Upon discovering Dorence’s original List was missing from Washington, the government clique sent a messenger to Andersonville to bring it back. Dorence “accidentally” handed him the copy that the Confederates had kept so carefully—thousands of names missing, smudged, and generally unusable. The messenger never noticed. He went back to Washington carrying the Confederates’ useless list, while Dorence and Clara guarded the original with their lives. While the courier never noticed, the people who had sent him did.

Upon return to Washington D.C., Dorence refused to tell where his List was. He’d hidden it at the house of Clara Barton. Dorence was given a choice to either tell them where the List was or be court martialed. When he refused to reveal it’s location he was put in ankle chains and marched through town to Old Capitol, a prison which housed the worst criminals. Atwater was placed under arrest and immediately taken to be court martialed. He was given twenty minutes, no defense, a dishonorable discharge and a life sentence. Clara Barton, knowing Dorence’s health was still fragile, knew he wouldn’t last even a month in prison. She consulted President Andrew Johnson who gave Dorence a full pardon and Johnson, impressed with Dorence’s will to stand up for what he believed was right, named him an Ambassador.

He ultimately ended up in Tahiti and married a Tahitian princess. Dorence struggled with frail health for the rest of his life. During a trip back to America, while in San Francisco, he was caught in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1908. Dorence and his wife survived but the Death List did not. Dorence had kept his copy of the List with him at all times for the rest of his life.

In the fire that resulted from the earthquake the official, carefully preserved List was burned.

Dorence never regained his health enough to leave San Francisco, though he and his wife made plans to return to Tahiti several times. He died in San Francisco at age 65 in 1910.

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Leave  a comment to get your name in the drawing for a signed copy of Sophie’s Daughters Trilogy containing three books in one. Doctor in Petticoats, Wrangler in Petticoats and Sharpshooter in Petticoats.

Or Click to Buy

http://www.maryconnealy.com

In the mid-18oo’s, this little girl nicknamed “Gennie” loved accompanying her father, Dr. Nelson Jones, in his buggy on his medical rounds throughout the countryside near their Circleville, Ohio home. Hence the beginning of a lifelong passion for the natural world. To help heal her heartbreak over a broken betrothal, Gennie travelled to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and discovered John James Audubon’s watercolors of birds.  Struck by the beauty of his masterpieces, she decided to illustrate and publish a companion book with pictures of nests and eggs, subjects Audubon did not include in his portfolios.

Although her parents were initially alarmed at the expense of such an undertaking,  they soon encouraged her to help distract her from her fragile emotions. Her brother Howard collected the specimens. Also a country doctor like his father, he wrote up the scientific field notes. Childhood friend Eliza Schultz helped Gennie sketch the eggs and nests. Through correspondence, they learned the lithography process and how to draw on both sides of 65-pound lithograph stones. Gennie’s father used his entire retirement savings to produce the books, selling subscriptions to museums, ornithology journals, a Harvard student named Theodore Roosevelt, and even President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Dr. Jones’s plan was to produce 100 books sold by subscription in five parts. Colored books would cost $5.00. Black and white versions, $2.50. Part One was released in July 1879 to enthusiastic reviews by naturalists and ornithologists.

Tragically, Gennie died only one month after the release at age 32, from a horrific three-week battle with typhoid.  In memory of their beloved sister and daughter, her family continued working on the project. Seven years after her death, the complete “Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio” was first published.   

It was definitely a labor of love. For better lighting, Dr. Nelson Jones added a two-room studio with skylight to their barn. Before Eliza left to study art in New York, she taught Gennie’s mother Virginia how to draw on the lithograph stones. More than ninety copies of every life-sized, black and white illustration had to be hand-colored. Two local young women hired to help used the same imported watercolors and paper that Audubon had used.

More tragedy struck when Gennie’s brother and mother were also stricken with typhoid, leaving Howard Jones with a damaged heart and mother Virginia nearly blind.  Only 26 intact copies of the original 90 books have been located.

I love hearing the birds chirp and sing outside my writing room window. Not long ago, I found a giant American crow’s nest that had blown down from a big tree in our front yard. It sure wasn’t as pretty as these beautiful Genevieve Jones illustrations from Princeton Architectural Press.

Any bird watchers out there?

Click on cover to purchase. I thank the following blog for information as well.  

http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/nestsandeggs/essay.htm

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Thank you all so much for hanging out with me today. I sure appreciated it.

The Winners of the Kindle Version of KNIGHT ON THE TEXAS PLAINS are………

CATE S

QUILT LADY

Congratulations, ladies! I’ll contact you shortly and send the gift certificate to you.

It seems the most frequently asked question of a writer is where our stories come from. My first two published books – KNIGHT ON THE TEXAS PLAINS and THE COWBOY WHO CAME CALLING – came from real life experiences. I didn’t know at the time why certain things happened and why I had to live through them. I didn’t know that I was a writer-in-training and storing up all these life events for future stories.

The Story Behind Knight on the Texas Plains

When I was a child growing up, our family lived next door to a Latino couple. They had a daughter who was a few years older and we became playmates. I was around eight or nine years old. One day an ugly truth came to light and it affected me in a huge way. We learned that the neighbor’s girl wasn’t really theirs. The man had won her in a poker game and brought her to the U.S. illegally. He was really mean. He didn’t work and stayed drunk all the time. He made life miserable for his wife and my friend. I began to wonder what her real father must’ve been like to have wagered his daughter in a poker game. Did she mean so little to him that he could give up his own flesh and blood so easily? I never got an answer to that. But it stayed with me, refusing to go away. That was long before I even knew I’d be a writer one day. I had a burning desire though to give Juanita the happiness that she was denied in life. I just didn’t know how I’d do that.

And then I became interested in writing fiction. I joined writing groups and learned how to put a story together and how to perfect my craft.

A few years later, Knight on the Texas Plains was born. I knew I wanted to write a story about a child that was won in a poker game. I named her Marley Rose.

Duel McClain is a down and out cowboy who’d just buried his wife and son. He’s wandering from town from town, not caring about anything other than dying. So he sits in on a poker game and comes away with an innocent little girl to take care of.

On his way back to where his parents lives, a woman stumbles into his camp. She’s hungry and desperate. He strikes a deal with her-ride along and take care of Marley Rose just until he gets the child to his family and he’ll take her anywhere she wants to go with no questions asked.

Jessie Foltry agrees, only she doesn’t count on the fact that Marley Rose and Duel would wiggle into her heart. All she’s wanted for as long as she could remember is to be a mother. Holding the sweet baby in her arms forges an unbreakable bond. And the nights under the stars with Duel make her dream of things a woman like her can never have.

Trusting Duel was the easy part…living without her knight on the Texas plains would be next to impossible.

This book came out with Dorchester Publishing in 2002. It has recently been re-released as a Kindle e-book for $2.99. I’m so glad that readers who didn’t get a chance to read it now have the opportunity.

The Story Behind The Cowboy Who Came Calling

During the writing of “Knight on the Texas Plains,” I knew I had to write a story about Duel’s brother, Luke. It seemed as natural as breathing. At the time I had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and began losing my vision. One day I could see fairly well and the next I could see little more than shadows. It was one of the scariest times in my life. I didn’t know how I could deal with being blind. I was a writer and I had many more books to write.

In Luke’s story he meets a woman named Glory Day. Glory is her family’s sole support. Her father is in prison and her mother has sunk into a deep depression and she’s developed an addiction for laudanum. Glory’s vision begins to swiftly fade and she doesn’t know how she’ll provide for her mother and younger sisters if she can no longer see. But Luke isn’t going to let her find out. He means to do whatever he has to do to help make Glory’s life easier whether she gets as mad as a hornet or not.

He’ll risk life and limb for the woman he loved. And he does.

Today, I’m happy to say that my vision has returned. Unlike Glory I never had to find out what permanent blindness was like. At least not yet. But it sure let me immerse myself fully in Glory’s character.

The Cowboy Who Came Calling was a 2003 release by Dorchester Publishing. It has recently come out again as a Kindle e-book and sells for the low price of $2.99.

Have you ever dealt with something in your life and then found out much later the reason why such a thing happened? Or feel free to just talk about anything.

I’m giving away a Kindle version of KNIGHT ON THE TEXAS PLAINS to two people who comment.