Oliver Dart’s Civil War

Oliver Dart, whose bones sweeten the ground in Elmwood Cemetery in Vernon, Connecticut, is not entirely forgotten. There is a "Commemorative Biographical Record” that, in a few poignant paragraphs, traces the broken ligaments of his brief life. He died at 40 years of age from consumption or tuberculosis.Graves swallow up the joys and sorrow of a man’s life, and there is nothing more silent than the grave. Dart had no monuments erected in his honor – no celebratory statues to put up or, frequently in our time, pull down – and the biographical record is unsentimentally brief.

It  reads in part:

Oliver Dart met with an experience during the war of the Rebellion that few could have survived. He was a member of the 14th C. V. I., and [on] Dec. 14, 1862, when the battle of Fredericksburg was at its height, a shell burst in the midst of Company D, his company, killing a number of men and blinding Mr. Symonds, of Rockville, while a fragment of the shell tore off the lower portion of Mr. Darts face and jaw, and inflicted a severe wound on his arm. For hours he was left on the field of battle, thought to be either dead or fatally wounded.

The “Symonds of Rockville” mentioned in the record was Dart’s brother-in-law. Among other “brothers in arms” mustered within days of each other in mid-July 1861 were Charles Dart, a brother mortally wounded in 1862 at Fredericksburg, a slaughterhouse for Union troops, and Benjamin Hirst, a friend, wounded at Gettysburg in July 1863 and transferred to Veteran Reserve Corps. Hirst died in 1909, full of years. Oliver Dart’s brother George enlisted in April 1861 and was mustered out in August of the same year.According to the record:

On December 13, 1862, Oliver and the rest of the 14th [regiment] crossed the pontoon bridges and began marching through the town of Fredericksburg… the 14th began their assault but immediately came under ‘a most galling fire of shot, shell, and musketry.’ They quickly took cover behind a high board fence which temporarily gave them refuge. The intense Rebel fire soon began to tear it apart. As the fence crumbled, a shell burst in front of Company D (who only had 25 [men] at the start of the assault). A 2x3 inch piece of iron crashed into the ground, throwing dirt and gravel into the eyes of Corporal John Symonds before crashing through a piece of the fence and finally smashing into the face and right shoulder of Oliver. Corporal Charles Lyman later recalled that ‘the shell fragment would have ripped through Oliver’s head had the fence not redirected it.’ Sergeant Benjamin Hirst (Oliver’s good friend) wrote in a letter to his wife ‘Poor Oliver Dart…he looked as though his whole face was shot away.’ Oliver lay on the ground, unconscious, with Symonds next to him, blinded.

At the Rowe House, where Oliver was temporarily patched up, Regimental Chaplain Henry S Stevens wrote, “On the northern porch lay, among others, our Dart, his face torn off as though slashed by a cleaver, and by his side lay Symonds, his eyes swollen with inflammation to the size of eggs, the sand grains showing through the tightly stretched and shining lids.”

Oliver was rescued from inadequate hospital care in Washington DC by his brother George who, along with his wife, became Oliver’s primary care giver. “Oliver also spent a lot of time at the Soldier’s Home in Hartford where they [George and his wife] made a special cup to allow him to eat.”

It was  the Civil War that came crashing into Dart’s face, leaving him permanently scarred in body and soul.

In order to receive his pension, Dart, never expected to survive his wounds, was obliged to undergo a photograph, taken at Kellogg Brothers’ in Hartford. This is the photograph:

In later years, Dart grew a beard to hide his deformities.

I  discovered Dart’s story while looking for column material to flesh out a few pieces I had written concerning the defacement of memorials and statues of some people who, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg --  where Dart’s friend, Benjamin Hirst, was wounded – bequeathed  “a new burst of freedom” to the nation.

My wife, legally bind from birth, though not at all disabled and possessed of a fierce love of liberty and independence, likely walked past Dart’s modest gravestone dozens of times  with Titan, her Fidelco guide dog.

The next time we visit there, we will bring a yellow rose, in her mind an emblem of a woman’s love for a man, and place it on his grave over his sweet bones. Andree is quite certain that no one else – such as the “numskulls,” her word, who defaced the Lincoln memorial or the crowd of “protesters” who hauled a statue of Ulysses Grant to the ground – will crowd his grave. But we three will celebrate in prayer Dart’s great courage.

We three – and the perishable rose.