Shiloh Revisited

You may have read or heard about the woman soldier whose body was discovered at Shiloh in 1934.  I wrote a brief post about her several years ago.  The title was "Woman of Shiloh."  But then I had to change the name to "WOMEN of Shiloh" when I discovered that she was not the only one who had lost her life in that terrible battle.  Click [HERE] to read the post.

When I first started researching women soldiers of the Civil War over ten years ago, I felt that a lot of the accounts were not complete and that there was more to learn.  Dissatisfied, I set out to try to find answers.  And thus, Mark and I have embarked on quite a few adventures.  I'm sure he is growing weary of my incessant queries.  How?  Who?  Where? When? Why?  WHy??  WHY????  It's as if I have regressed back to my toddler days or something.  Thankfully, Mark is very patient and I would not have learned nearly as much as I have without his expertise in everything military.  But, I can't help that I'm inquisitive and enjoy sleuthing.   Naturally, the Mystery Woman of Shiloh has always been on my radar.  And even though she will always remain an enigma, please allow me to indulge in my geekiness nevertheless. 

Let's start with a map.  This is the NPS tour map with the park boundaries clearly defined.  I marked the key locations that I will be talking about in this article.  So please refer to it throughout. 

Our story begins with the nine bodies discovered in 1934 by a school teacher named Mancil Milligan while working in his flower bed.

Marker near the Shiloh Church for the school where Milligan taught.
The school is no longer there.

I had a general idea of where Milligan unearthed the nine bodies based on a document I obtained from the NPS.  But the information was so vague, and I never thought I would ever find the location.  So we drove around looking for Milligan's grave instead.  You'd think that would be easier since I knew which cemetery to look for.  Nope.  GPS doesn't seem to work too well at Shiloh....even the rare times when you have adequate signal.  The thing took us on a wild goose chase.  Finally, the GPS straightened up and led us to our destination.  And, as it turns out, if I would have just lifted my head up from the phone during one of our multiple passes, I would have seen the sign for it on the side of the highway.  Duh.  Anyway, here's the resting place of Mancil Milligan, the man who unearthed the nine bodies of Federal soldiers in 1934, a woman among them.  His parents are buried behind him.

After paying our respects, Mark and I headed back out on the highway. We ended up stopping to talk to a gentleman who pointed us to the location.  The house is no longer there, but the gentleman remembers it and even has a picture of his cousin playing on the front porch.

Yep, it's just an empty lot now.  But for those who appreciate history, places like this are nevertheless invaluable, especially because there is no marker there explaining the location's significance.  Therefore, it will be lost if we do not share the history that occurred there.  With that said, let's continue with the story.


After Mancil Milligan made the discovery, scientists with the Smithsonian working on the Indian mounds there in Shiloh were called to the scene.  They determined one of the soldiers was a woman.  Interestingly, she and her male comrades had been buried in a round hole as opposed to a trench.   This seems to perhaps indicate a hasty burial and that these nine bodies had been isolated.  But there's no way to prove - or disprove - that.

There has been some question regarding Dr. Frank H.H. Roberts's ability to discern the sex of the skeletons.  However, research reveals that in his official job capacity, he routinely did so on remains much older than the Civil War soldiers. Besides, the scientists were not looking for a woman when they analyzed the remains, especially when they determined they were Civil War soldiers, so something must have stood out for them to classify the soldier as a woman.

Speaking of theories, I set out to try to determine who these soldiers were, their regiment(s), and why they were so far south away from most of the fighting - outside the park boundary matter of fact.  One option is that the woman soldier and her male comrades were members of a patrol that encountered Confederate pickets in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 6th, 1862, thereby igniting the Battle of Shiloh.  Acting completely on his own accord, Colonel Everett Peabody, commanding the 1st Brigade of Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss' Sixth Division sent out a patrol commanded by Major James E. Powell.  Peabody had a hunch that something was out there lurking in the dark, and he was going to find out.  He was right.  Powell and his 250 men from Companies B,E, and H of the 25th Missouri Infantry and two companies of the 12th Michigan (I have yet to find out which companies they were) ran into Major Aaron B. Hardcastle's 3rd Mississippi Battalion Infantry.  At approximately 4:55 a.m., Confederate cavalry videttes fired on the patrol and returned to the picket line.  The patrol then attacked and exchanged fire for about an hour with Hardcastle's pickets in Fraley Field.  Of course, in the pre-dawn hours, the Federals didn't realize that Major General William J. Hardee's entire Confederate corps was waiting behind Hardcastle's pickets in the shadows.  When the patrol finally figured out what they had run into, they fled back towards their camps.  The Battle of Shiloh had begun.

Vantage point of Powell's patrol looking across Fraley Field. 
Hardcatle's 3rd MS Battalion Infantry was stationed upon
the ridge to the upper left of the picture.

Position from Hardcastle's 3rd MS Battalion Infantry looking across
Fraley Field towards Powell's patrol in the previous picture

Hardcastle reported four killed and nineteen wounded in the opening fight.  Federal casualties are unknown because both Powell and Peabody weren't around to file a report.  They were killed later on.  However, it has been noted that the first Federal officer killed of the day was Klinger.

No, not him!  Lieutenant Frederick Klinger of Company B, 25th Missouri Infantry, which was part of the patrol.  I have yet to find where he was buried.  Was he interred as an unknown in Shiloh National Cemetery?  Or was he one of the nine soldiers discovered in 1934 by Mancil Milligan?

Was the woman soldier with the nine part of Powell's patrol?

In the map above, I have highlighted in yellow the area of Fraley Field where the opening shots rang out.  You can see Prentiss' Recon. Party (Powell's patrol) marked, and I added the location where the nine bodies - a woman among them - were discovered in 1934.  The distance between the plaque marking Hardcastle's position pictured above and the mass grave is approximately a quarter to half a mile.  There was no other action that happened that far south.

At the end of the first day - April 6th - Major General Leonidas Polk, the "Fighting Bishop," and his First Corps camped in the area.  Was it his Confederates who gathered the dead from Powell's patrol and buried them in the round hole on what would become Mancil Milligan's property?  If that is the case, that means the woman soldier would have been with either the 25th Missouri or 12th Michigan.  But why would they not have buried them on Fraley Field instead of a quarter to a half a mile south of it?  Did the nine Federal soldiers get cut off from their patrol in the pre-dawn hours in the woods and run into Confederates who killed them?

If the nine soldiers were not part of Powell's patrol, how did they get there?  While I haven't been able to find out for sure, there were probably Confederate hospitals established in this area.   Were the nine Federal soldiers wounded in the fighting later at another part of the battlefield, taken prisoner, and brought to one of these hospitals where they died?  If so, are there still Confederate soldiers buried in this area?

Were these nine soldiers wounded and taken prisoner later in the battle only to die during the Confederate retreat?  They did move through this area on their way to Corinth.

Unfortunately, we probably won't ever know the answers to these questions unless a diary or letter comes to light from a soldier who mentions burying them.

Regardless of how the nine came to be buried in the round hole, it was not their final resting place.  They were reinterred in Shiloh National Cemetery, section R.
 

Grave of nine Federal soldiers, a woman among them, discovered in 1934
Shiloh National Cemetery, Section R
Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh

It has been suggested that the woman soldier found with the nine bodies was a laundress "in the wrong place at the wrong time."  There were two laundresses who were killed in the beginning of the battle after the Confederates had driven back Powell's patrol and advanced through the Federal camps.  These women were with the 16th Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out who they were or where they are buried.  But if you look at the map at the beginning of the post, you will see how far away the 16th's camp was to the location of the mass grave.  It's a distance of a little over two miles.  Plus, the laundresses were running for the rear towards the river when they were killed, away from the location of the mass grave.  Not only that, but newspaper accounts say that there were TWO laundresses with the same regiment killed around the same time, which means they probably fell near each other.  So they were probably buried together.  Only one of the nine bodies was determined to be a woman - not two.  Furthermore, per Victorian morals, members of the burial detail may not have wanted to bury a woman among a bunch of men.  The woman soldier was disguised as a man, so the men who buried her were likely not aware of her true gender when they placed her in the ground with the eight men. With that being said, there are incidences where burial details knowingly interred women soldiers with their male comrades in mass graves.  This happened at Shiloh and Dover when Federals buried Confederate women in trenches.  See my book, Behind the Rifle, for more details.

So it is highly unlikely the woman buried among the nine Federal soldiers was actually a laundress instead.

Click [HERE] for an article I wrote about laundresses.

At least one more woman lost her life at Shiloh.  A member of an Illinois unit found her lifeless body while on burial detail.   She had been shot through the head and was a Confederate.  There are five marked mass Confederate graves at Shiloh.  I have circled them on the map at the beginning of this post.  From what I have read, there are more than likely several others on park grounds that remain unmarked and perhaps even more outside the park boundaries.  But based on where the Illinois soldier's unit ended up at the conclusion of the battle, the Confederate woman may be buried in the one I have marked on the map, near Shiloh church.   This one:

Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh

You can read more about the Confederate burial trenches by clicking [HERE].  

Of course, these were the women who died at Shiloh.  There were other females who fought there and lived through the murderous affair.  But that's another post.

Thus ended another adventure.   And, as usual, we were worn out.  Indeed, we pretty much felt like this squirrel we saw in the national cemetery.

Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh

Until next formation...rest - like that squirrel.