52 Ancestors 2015: #1 Susan Driskill, Civil War Widow

"Love's Melancholy" by Constant Mayer, 1866
Public Domain from Wikipedia Commons

On August 18, 1862, Susan Driskill Latham's life was changed forever. Her husband of nearly 22 years, the father of her seven children, died from typhoid fever in a military hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.

Susan H. Driskill was born in 1827 in Kentucky.  At the age of 17, she married James Harvey Latham on September 25, 1844 in Clarksville, Tennessee.  They settled in Todd County, Kentucky, where they lived at the time the 1850 census was taken. Sometime between 1854 and 1856, the Lathams moved to Greeneville, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

James and Susan had nine children; seven of them survived childhood.  Two year-old Cordelia and baby Stephen, just 11 days old, died from scarlet fever in 1856. James and Susan's youngest child, Harvey Edward Latham, was born less than a month before his father was mustered in with his regiment on October 10, 1861.

It is doubtful that James Harvey Latham ever saw his wife or children again -- he died less than a year later. On the day of his death, he was quickly buried at the Nashville City Cemetery, then was later re-interred at the Nashville National Cemetery.  It does not seem likely that Susan would have been able to visit her husband's grave.  She had young children to care for, Nashville was over 100 miles away, and wartime made it unsafe to travel.

At the start of the Civil War, Kentucky was one of the neutral "border states", split in two over the issues of slavery and seccession.  Since it was a strategically important stronghold to both the North and South, Kentucky saw many fierce battles, many of them not far from where the Lathams lived. Perhaps this explains why Susan Latham and her seven childen moved to Hamilton County, Illinois between 1863 and 1864.

On October 12, 1864, Susan married Edmund Hawthorn, a widower, in Hamilton County.  She was 37; he was 51.  Edmund became the guardian for Susan's younger children, and his signature appears on the marriage license for my third great grandfather, John Wesley Latham.  Edmund and Susan had one daughter, Ida, who was born on June 13, 1867.  Susan's three oldest children (George, John, and Sophronia) were married and lived nearby -- and Susan now had three grandchildren.

Then, on November 20, 1869, Edmund Hawthorn died in Logansport, Illinois.  Susan was widowed twice by the time she was 42 years old.  But what happened to Susan after Edmund Hawthorn died? Unfortunately, I don't know.  Susan Hawthorn appears in the 1870 census with her four youngest children, but I haven't been able to find her in any records after that.  Perhaps she married a third time, or maybe she died before the 1880 census was taken.

Recently, I was able to connect with a cousin partly because of this blog!  She read my post on James Harvey Latham and visited his grave in Nashville a few weeks ago.  I have wanted to visit his grave myself for a long time, and it would be even more meaningful now that I know about Susan.

52 Ancestors: #37 James Harvey Latham, Survived the Battle of Shiloh

Pen-and-ink and watercolor map by Captain Leon J. Fremaux.

My 4 times great-grandfather, James Harvey Latham, was among the 111,000 men who fought at the two-day battle at Shiloh. The carnage amounted to the greatest devastation known on the American continent to that date -- more than 23,000 casualties.  Yet somehow he survived the horrible battle.

James was born on February 5, 1823 in Todd County, Kentucky. His parents were Stephen R. Latham and Mary Elizabeth Sears.

On September 25, 1844, James married Susan H. Driskill in Montgomery County, Tennessee. He was 21, and she was 17.  The Lathams raised their family in Greenville, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. They had nine children: George Washington, John Wesley (my 3rd great-grandfather), Sophronia, Mary Susannah, Cordelia Josephine, twins Robert Oscar and Stephen Finis, Margaret Marcella, and Harvey Edward Latham.  Tragically, two of their children, three-year-old Cordelia and newborn Stephen, died from scarlet fever in 1856.

James enlisted as a private in Company K, 11th Kentucky Infantry, which was attached to Fifth Division of the Army of the Ohio.  On April 6, 1862, his regiment engaged in the Battle of Shiloh. Colonel Pierce Butler Hawkins, commander of James' brigade, in his report of the battle stated:

The enemy ... [was] drawn up in considerable numbers in the brush and playing upon us from their batteries ... We were compelled to fall back to the original line of battle. I then by your order charged the enemy, and succeeded in driving [them], found and captured one piece of artillery ... holding it until the engagement ceased.

Shiloh was the first battle for the men in the 11th Kentucky Infantry. For James Harvey Latham, it was also his last battle.

James' gravestone at Nashville National Cemetery

On August 18, James was sent to General Hospital #1 in Nashville, Tennessee. He died ten days later on August 28, 1862, from typhoid fever at the age of 39.  He was buried the same day in Nashville City Cemetery and was later re-interred in the Nashville National Cemetery. By the end of the war, the 11th Kentucky had lost 214 enlisted men by disease.

Two years after his death, James' widow Susan married a man named Edmund Hawthorne.  Mr. Hawthorne became the legal guardian of the four minor heirs of James Latham (namely, Mary Susannah, Robert Oscar, Margaret Marcella, and Harvey Edward) and helped them obtain a pension of eight dollars a month.

Like countless others, James had his life cut short by disease during the war.  James Harvey Latham's grandfather, Elijah Stephen Latham, lived to be 102 years old.   Elijah's father, Jeremiah, died at the age of 104.  Jeremiah's father, Phillip Latham, was born in 1710 and died in 1820.  Yes, that's 110 years!  I wonder how long James Harvey Latham would have lived if he had not been struck down by typhoid fever.