Towards the end of the Civil War, Fort Smith, Arkansas, became a refuge for widows, orphans, and contraband. But in December 1864, the federal government closed the fort and ordered all refugees evacuated. Photo courtesy of Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

By William Furry

On December 26, 1864, approximately 300 refugees, at least 40 of them children orphaned and otherwise displaced by guerrilla warfare and extreme poverty in northwestern Arkansas, were loaded onto a steamboat at Fort Smith and shipped down the Arkansas River to vague and uncertain futures in Illinois. Their forced exodus was directed by U.S. Army Chaplain Francis Springer, a citizen of Springfield, Illinois, and a friend and former neighbor of Abraham Lincoln. The immediate destination for many of the refugees was Sangamon County, Illinois, but their ultimate homes were dependent upon the kindness and generosity of strangers, who were waiting in Springfield to take the refugees in.

The order to evacuate Fort Smith, signed by General Edward R. S. Canby, commander of the Military Division of West Mississippi on December 5, 1864, was a military necessity. The onset of winter and the inability of the army to adequately provision the fort for the thousands of refugees who sought safety and shelter there were cited as reasons for the closing. Nevertheless, the order was protested vigorously by Arkansas Governor Isaac Murphy, the state legislature, and several high-ranking Union army officers in the Western theater.

Two weeks before Christmas, Canby s order was set in motion. Unbeknownst to him, official letters of protest were sent to Washington, D.C. and delivered to President Abraham Lincoln, who, in concurrence with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and Generals Harry Halleck and Ulysses S. Grant, had the order rescinded on January 10, 1865.

But for the orphans and other refugees, the reprieve came too late. Their fate was sealed, their lives and fortunes changed forever by an act of military expediency.

The three-week boat and train journey was a nightmare, exacerbated by below-freezing temperatures, poor provisions, and indifferent officials. Many refugees starved or froze to death along the way. But none of the children could have prepared for their fate in central Illinois at the hands of their unknown "benefactors."

Using journals and letters, contemporary newspaper accounts, census records, and family histories, I will present the lives of several children who made the fateful voyage, as well as Chaplain Springer's efforts to ameliorate their suffering from his post in Arkansas.

Hardships of an "orphant" girl

Martha Melissa "Mattie" Tully was seven years old when she made the long trip to Springfield with her older sister, Mary Jane "Jennie" Tully, and their brothers Lewis Benjamin (5) and Dixie (3). An older sister, Sarah Louisa Tully (14) went to Texas.

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The Tully children's parents, John W. and Audrey Elizabeth Tully, were war refugees. John, a native of Tennessee, had served in the Confederate Army and been wounded, possibly at the battle of Stones River, before making his way to Arkansas to meet up with his family. Audrey Elizabeth was from northeastern Mississippi, where she and John married in July 1851. Why and how she came to be living near Fort Smith with five children in the summer of 1864 is unknown. What is known is that her death in September of that year was the first of many calamities to befall her young family.

Martha Melissa "Mattie" Tully was seven when her parents died. Forty years later she wrote down her experiences as a war refugee in "The Hardships of an Orphant Girl"

Martha Melissa "Mattie" Tully was the middle child and . had a gift for language. Forty years after the evacuation of Fort Smith, she recorded her memories of that painful year in a narrative she titled "The Hardships of an Orphant Girl."

"Well, my father went away from home. I don't know where he was, I was too young to think much of such things—my sister thinks he was a soldier, and I remember we all got into a wagon and moved; we lived on Boston Mountain then—and we made several moves, and before we got settled my father took to his bed and never got up again. "We lived near Fort Smith then one summer, and there the saddest thing of my life happened. Father helpless, and no one to do anything for us but Mother, Mother fell sick and died in a short time.

"I low plain it all comes back to me now as I write. There near the door she lay, and there on the floor near her we had a little pallet and there we cried out our grief. Morning came at last, and some one come with a coffin, I don't know who it was. I shall never forget that coffin—it was a plain pine coffin, without paint or varnish, and no lining, and they placed her in it, and then they took her away, no one to attend the funeral except two or three. I never saw her grave, but they told us she was placed in the Fort Smith cemetery."

Audrey Elizabeth's death was not recorded in the Fort Smith New Era; indeed, the deaths of refugees were so common in Fort Smith they went unnoticed by anyone but the next of kin. But Reverend Francis Springer seems to have taken an early interest in the family, and the death and funeral of Audrey Elizabeth could have been the catalyst.

"An excellent man"

Francis Springer was born in Roxbury, Pennsylvania, on March 19, 1810. His father, John, was a veteran of the War of 1812. Francis' mother, Elizabeth, died when the boy was five years old, and his father died the following year. Both Francis and his older sister, Elizabeth, were "prenticed" out to neighbors, but after Francis' new guardians moved to Maryland, the Springer children's ties were permanently severed.

At the age of fifteen, Springer went to work for a furniture builder and sign painter. He took religious instruction from Reverend Benjamin Kurtz, D.D., pastor of the Lutheran church of Hagerstown, Maryland, who later was instrumental in getting Francis admitted to Pennsylvania State College at Gettysburg. After four years of study at Gettysburg and three years of private reading at Hartwick Seminary in Schoharie County, New York, Springer was licensed as a minister of the Gospel on October 18, 1836, by the Lutheran Synod of Maryland. He was ordained the following year.

In 1837 Springer married Mary Kriegh, one of nine children and the only daughter of Phillip and Mary Kiesa Kriegh, of Clear Water, in Washington County, Maryland. Over the next twenty years they would have eight children together.

Springer was ordained a Lutheran but he was clearly a man of ecumenical principles and varied interests. Within a month of his arrival in 1839 in Springfield he had opened an academy and was preaching regularly in both the Methodist Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. Within a year he was preaching in the Baptist pulpit and to his own Lutheran congregation, which met in his home.

The Springers built their home in 1840 at the corner of 8th and Jackson streets in Springfield. Four years later, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln moved into the house immediately to the north. Though neighbors for only a few years, Francis Springer and Lincoln remained friends until the latter's death in April 1865.

In 1847, Springer moved his family to Hillsboro, where he had been invited to take on the presidency of the Hillsboro Academy, a struggling school in the center of town that quickly became known as the "Literary and Theological Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Far West." While in Hillsboro, Springer edited the Prairie Mirror, a

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Reverend Francis Springer returned to Springfield in June 1863 and had this photograph made. The next -month, at the age of 53, he returned to the army.

weekly newspaper with strong Whig leanings. Five years later he returned to Springfield with the Literary and theological Institute in tow, newly instituted as Illinois State University and bearing a mandate to train "suitable young men for the ministry of the gospel." Even before the institution opened its doors in Springfield, Lincoln donated money to the university, of which Springer was the President. In later years, Robert Todd Lincoln attended the "university, and was one of its youngest—though not brightest— students. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln himself was elected to a term on the University's Board of Trustees.

Reverend Springer both taught at and presided over the institution until 1855, when he resigned due to bitter disputes within the Lutheran church over the University's debts and its curriculum. But he was soon after named Superintendent of Public Schools in Springfield, the post he held when war broke out in 1861.

Springer turned fifty-one four weeks before Fort Sumter was fired upon. In September 1861, after Lincoln's call for volunteers, Springer and his seventeen-year-old-son, John G., enlisted together in the 10th Illinois Cavalry. Due to his age and experience, Reverend Springer was made unit chaplain and later given an officer's commission. In the late fall of 1862,  the Tenth officially became part of the Army of the Frontier and took part in the Battle of Prairie Grove (December 7), one of the most pivotal engagements of the war in the western theater. After the battle. Springer ministered to hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers, assisted surgeons in their makeshift field hospitals, and recorded his experiences in his private journal.

The following January, Springer helped recruit a regiment of loyal Arkansans into the First Arkansas Infantry (Union). In late February, weary and ill, Springer resigned from the army and returned to Springfield to recuperate. But his work for the war effort was far from finished. On April 10, 1863, Reverend Springer wrote to President Lincoln and asked for a post chaplaincy either in the volunteer army or regular army. "Having been with the army about 18 months," Springer wrote, "I find a cavalry reg't. does not afford very encouraging opportunities of usefulness, & that my period of life is not well suited to endure the rough fair, fatigues & exposures of cavalry duty in the field." While in Springfield, Springer made himself useful preaching, attending meetings, and having his picture taken in his military uniform. He also worked to raise money for the newly established Home for the Friendless, an orphanage for the children of soldiers lost in the war. By mid-July, he had recovered to full health and decided to return to the Army of the Frontier.

Springer joined the Army of the Frontier at Fort Gibson, Indian Nation (later named Fort Blunt) in campaigns to liberate northwest Arkansas of rebel forces. After an extensive and grueling march, the Army of the Frontier marched into and took possession of Fort Smith on September 1, 1863. Reverend Springer was temporarily named post chaplain at Fort Smith and placed in charge of war refugees. There were thousands—mostly widows, children, and contrabands. On December 1, 1863, Springer wrote to Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull and asked him to speak to President Lincoln about making the chaplaincy appointment permanent.

"But for the difficulty of getting a hearing, & not wishing to trouble him,—I would address myself directly to the President," Springer wrote. "You will do me a kindness by bringing the matter to his attention. I have cause to believe that I can be useful here. I have been acting post chaplain ever since our army came here... have only a few days ago been actually so appointed by competent authority.

Trumbull's handwritten note forwarding Springer's request to the president received this brief but sterling endorsement:

"I personally know Mr. Springer to be an excellent man, and if he can be appointed consistently, I shall be glad.

A. Lincoln, December, 22, 1863"

The official letter naming Springer Post Chaplain at Fort Smith came through on January 19, 1864. This was the only post chaplaincy (there were just thirty such positions) of the war to receive Lincoln's personal recommendation.

Unhappy new year

The summer and fall of 1864 were difficult times for the Union army in Arkansas. A series of military setbacks including the disastrous Red River Campaign exacerbated efforts to bring Arkansas back into the Union. And guerrilla warfare seriously threatened the supply lines coming into Fort Smith. With the onset of winter, there was serious talk of closing the fort.

Reverend Springer's work with the Arkansas refugees began as soon as the fort was recaptured. To meet the needs of the refugees, he implored the churches and civic leaders of Springfield to send supplies, noting in his appeals that the refugees were not rebels but hapless victims of the war. When the order came to evacuate the fort, Springer sent word to his Springfield friends that he was sending several hundred refugees north by boat and train, and that they would he arriving in a matter of weeks.

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Although most of the early records for the Springfield Home for the Friendless were destroyed by fire in the early 1900s, a two-page, handwritten document relating to the 1864 refugees survives—a manifest listing the names of 40 children who left Fort Smith on that grim December day.

Information on the manifest was sparse: only names, ages, siblings, parentage, and if known, family disposition were recorded. For example, little Joseph Bilderbeck's mother died soon after her husband, a Union sympathizer, was dragged from his sickbed and "hanged by bush-wackers.' His sister, Cynthia Valeria, survived the steamer journey only to freeze to death in an unheated railroad car somewhere between Cairo and Decatur. The names of four of the five Tully children were listed on the manifest, too.

Mattie Tully's account of her family's removal from Fort Smith is personal, heartbreaking, and understated.

Mary Jane "Jennie" Tully was nine when she became a Civil War orphan. She went to work in the home of a Springfield merchant.

"As I have said, it was just at the close of the war, and a man, the Reverend Mr. Springer, Chaplain at Fort Smith, Arkansas, thought it best to get together a lot of homeless children and take them north and get homes for them, so they hunted the town over and got together a whole boat load of children and the four youngest of our family was with them, my oldest sister having gone to live with a family by the name of Church... So the rest of us was take from our home in the evening, and taken to a large room with all the rest of the homeless ones... there to be ready for an early boat. [B]ut you know, it is said, be it ever so humble, there is no place like home, so when all was quiet, we got up and took our baby brother, and went back to our poor helpless father. When morning dawned, they came for us again, and we were taken away. Our father had his bed moved up close to the windows that he might look at us as we were marched up the plank to the boat, and that was the last time we ever saw our father, or he us. So we started."

Mattie notes in her narrative that her brother, Dixie Tully, was already sick when they left Fort Smith. Within two days of their departure, the three-year-old died. His body was taken off the steamer and buried at Little Rock. The steamer continued down the Arkansas River to Napoleon Landing, where the refugees boarded the steamboat R.J. Lockwood and proceeded north to Cairo, and from there they traveled by train to Springfield. For a more objective account of that leg of the journey, we turn to the Decattir Magnet, January 19, 1865. It should be noted that two days before the children arrived in Cairo, the river town had been hit by "one of the most violent snow storms of the season, and that a steamer called Odd Fellow, while moored in 100 feet of water, had been struck and sunk by ; "gorge of ice."

"On Saturday last one hundred and fifty... refugees from Arkansas arrived at our depot, on the 111. Central, enroute for Springfield, where provisions will be made for their relief. Out of nearly three hundred who left Cairo a few days since, the above number reached here. Their dead were left at nearly every station between this city and Cairo—. While here our citizens administered to their wants so far as they could. Two or three deaths occurred among them at our depot.—... A spectacle exhibited itself at the depot, which we pray God we may never again behold. There upon the floor were stretched out upon quilts, men women and children suffering from diseases that must ultimately result in death."

The full mistreatment of the refugees was revealed in a letter to the editor from Chaplain J. H. Leard, published the following week in the Illinois State Journal, and subsequently reprinted in the Fort Smith New Era.

"At 9 o'clock a.m. we were ordered aboard a train of boxcars, without stoves or any means of heating. Our emaciated crew had not felt fire for the last twenty hours, and were shivering with cold. To remain we saw no help; to go was to suffer. The order of the agent was particularly so, and we were piled in. All on board the hog train, we moved on to the switch, where, with other freight, we stood four hours. We set off at 1 p.m. and in twenty-four hours we reached Richview, a station ninety miles from Cairo. Here we were again 'switched off to await the arrival of passenger trains. By this time, four persons, two adults, widows, and two of our orphan children, had perished with cold. Horrible but true!"

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There would be several more deaths before the refugees reached Springfield. Matties account of the children's train trip says nothing of the deaths, but notes that the rail cars were "without fire or seats, and they placed some boards for us to sit on, or we jumped around to keep warm..."

According to Mattie, the children upon arrival in Springfield were: "marched to a hall to stay until someone should give us a home. Of course, the news had gone ahead of us, that we would be there that day, so there were a good many people there to look at us, and take one or more, as they pleased. My sister and I sat together, and our brother just in front of us, and we had had so many partings already that we were afraid to let go of each others hands."

Matties account is further illuminated by the journal of Anna Ridgely, daughter of a wealthy Springfield banker, who visited the refugees on at least two occasions in January 1865. "The Refugees: January 29th. "This is a lovely day. I have been out to Sunday School and church as usual and this afternoon Annie (Eastman) came for me to go the Home for the Friendless. I believe I have never written about the refugees who were brought here about two weeks ago. About one hundred and fifty persons arrived here from Arkansas. A military post called Fort Smith was broken up and these poor creatures were left perfectly destitute. Mr. Springer, a gentleman from here, a Chaplain from one of the regiments, knew of this home and sent them here, but it is not nearly large enough to contain them.

.. .They were taken to the Union League Hall and then taken care of as well as they could be. They were all poor people and most of them sick from cold and exposure for on the way they were put into horse and cattle cars without any fire and many of them froze to death. They were in a most destitute condition, covered with filth and rags and many of the women had on men's coats.

...I saw little children lying sick, some women perfectly prostrated with fever and one man seemed to be dying. The doctor told me that he had taken the wrong medicine, and a drunken nurse had given lineament meant for a man's leg. The room was large, warm, and well ventilated. Today on our visit to the Home I saw more of these refugees. Two little sisters looked so wasted away I hardly think they can recover. One little boy

A steamboat ticket issued on the day after Christmas, 1864, transporting a refugee woman and child (without subsistence) out of Fort Smith.

looked so sick and unable to sit up that I took him in my lap and held him all the time we were there; but the one who most excited my sympathy was a little fellow about five years old. He had lost his mother. She died since they came here and he is left entirely alone. He takes no interest in anything, will not play or smile but only sits sadly by himself and sometimes calls for his mother."

What happened to all the children after they arrived in Springfield has never been fully documented. Mattie Tully, who gives a most complete and lamentable account of her treatment at the hands of her "benefactors," died childless in 1920, but raised several orphan children with her husband, John Lightfoot. "Hardships of an Orphant Girl," her account of the treatment she endured as servant to a wealth rural physician and his cruel aristocratic wife, was prefaced with these words:

"I write this little book because I think it aught to be in every home whether there is children or not, if there is children it will learn them what a dreadful thing it is to lose their parents, if there are no children it will learn the older ones how to treat a child if one should come into their homes after the death of its parents. Every thing in this book is strictly true, all of the names, and places, except the names of the folks who raised me, their names are Mr. and Mrs. Savage, which suits them much better than their own."

Matties "benefactors," James and Catherine Maison Gibson of rural New Berlin, though rich in land holdings and resources, were far from charitable. According to Mattie, she was fed table scraps, dressed in rags, and never allowed to attend school. She was "taken in" to be a servant to the Gibsons and their extended family, which included a divorced daughter and her three children, all of whom tormented Mattie. In 1S76, when Mattie was finally removed from the Gibsons' farm (a Sangamon County sheriff escorted her from the property in 1876 and released her into the custody of her sister, Mary Jane), she weighed 80 pounds and showed evidence of abuse.

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Though Mattie and her sister lived out the remainder of their lives in the same town until Matties death in 1920, they saw little if anything of their brother, Louis Benjamin. According to Mattie, Louis was taken in by a line family "who raised him like their own. He received a fine education, grew up and got married and died some years later." Her version is overshadowed by her brother's obituary, which appeared in a Jonesboro newspaper in 1891.

"Died, Dec. 18, 1891 of pneumonia, Louis B. Tulley, aged 32 years. He was raised near Springfield, Ill., under religious auspices. He had a fair education but like a great many others was a failure as far as wealth is concerned. He was a hard-working, honest, and kind-hearted man. He had no relatives in this portion of the state, and leaves a wife and three children to be thrown on the mercy of a cold world. To those fatherless little ones and the mother is extended the sympathy of all."

Mary Jane "Jennie" Tully was taken in by the family of a prominent Springfield merchant named Kimber, and lived as a servant in a house on Aristocracy Hill near downtown. She married Levi Coon, in 1872, soon after her eighteenth birthday. She had four children, one of whom was this writers great-grandmother.

Sara Louisa, the Tully sibling who went to Texas, was heard from only once again, that in a single letter forwarded to her brothers and sisters dated March 20, 1866. In it she tells her lost family how she is getting by (poorly), how she is treated (kindly), and how hard she must work. She closes with this note:

"Oh! My dear brothers and sisters. How I long to see and be with you, will that day ever come. I hope god in providence will unite us again and that we may spend the remainder of our days together. .. Let us pray our heavenly father that we may meet again on this earth and enjoy the society of each other, but should we not meet on this earth, let us try and meet in heaven, where parting is no more. My greatest desire of all earthly things is to see and be with you, oh may this day soon come. I write that you might know that I am living, and where living, and hope that you will write soon to me,

Your affectionate sister, Sarah Tully
Mr. Springer will please forward this letter to my Brothers and Sisters in Illinois."

Rev. Springer did forward the letter, which my great-grandmother kept in a small silk purse with a boll of cotton. Rev. Springer was at John W. Tully's bedside when he died in March 1865, and copied down all the vital information from the Tully family Bible— the birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, and deaths—and forwarded it to the Tully children in Springfield. He performed this service for as many of the orphan children as he could, knowing that as refugees their family records would otherwise be lost.

As post chaplain at Fort Smith he continued to work with widows and orphans, and was instrumental in setting up the Freedman's Bureau in Arkansas. He resigned from the army in the summer of 1867, returned to Springfield and resumed his work in the public schools.

Sarah Tully was never heard from again. Her life in Texas and death in Oklahoma were lost to family history until the spring of 2002, when my co-researcher, Deborah Brothers, tracked down one of Sarah's greatgrandchildren, Brenda McFarlin, now living near Fort Smith. We exchanged e-mail addresses and began a correspondence, eventually meeting face-to-face over coffee one autumn afternoon.

The fates of dozens of other orphan children who escaped war-torn Arkansas in 1865 are still being researched. Though the names of several show up in the 1870 census for Sangamon, Christian, and Logan counties, their stories remain untold. None was listed as attending school in the 1869 report of the Superintendent of Public Schools, which suggests that many were placed into service and not afforded a conventional education.

The fates of dozens of other orphan children who escaped war-torn Arkansas in 1865 are still being researched.

Rev. Springer was president of the Springlicld Board of Education in 1868-1869, but his role was largely administrative. In 1870 he moved back to Hillsboro to direct that community's school system, returning to Springfield in the early 1880s.

He died in October 1892, and is buried in Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery, across a deep valley from the final resting place of his friend, Abraham Lincoln. Martha Melissa and Mary Jane Tully are buried there also, along with their husbands and families. The "Savages" are buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery too, a large stone angel marking their resting place. A less auspicious marker in the cemetery pays tribute to the Home for the Friendless, wherein the unmarked graves of hundreds of life's refugees bear witness to their less fortunate journeys.

William Furry is the Executive Director of the Illinois State Historical Society and the editor of The Preacher's Tale: The Civil War Journal of Reverend Francis Springer, Chaplain, U.S. Army of the Frontier (2001, Univ. of Arkansas Press).

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