Charles H. Smith (1836 - 1863)

Born 1836 in Connecticut, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 3 May 1863 at about age 27 in Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Virginia, United States

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Biography

Storrs, John W., "The 'Twentieth Connecticut': A Regimental History," (1886) Ansonia, Conn: Press of the "Naugatuck Valley Sentinel," Appendix, viii

Sergeant Charles H. Smith, my 2nd Great-Grandfather, was 27 years old when he died fighting for the Union in the Battle of Chancellorsville during the Civil War. Like many of the fallen in that bloody campaign, his remains were never returned to his family in Connecticut, and his final resting place is unknown. However, he may have been one of those who were hastily buried in shallow graves by the retreating Union Army, later to be recovered and reburied in the newly consecrated (1865) Fredericksburg National Cemetery in Virginia. The Union Army lost 1,694 soldiers in the Chancellorsville Campaign. Interment of the remains of Union soldiers who died in all the nearby battles was completed by 1869, 15,243 in number. Only 2,473 could be identified.

citation: https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/virginia/Fredericksburg

Charles was survived by his widowed mother Pamelia Richards Smith, of New Haven, who took in his wife Maria Miller Smith and the couple's two young daughters, Mary (Clarke) and Amelia (Hotchkiss), my great-grandmother, who were aged 4 and 2 respectively when their father died. The remaining family was extraordinarily close. Pamelia, at age 77, preceded Maria, at age 52, in death by only three years, and the two women are buried under a single headstone at Oak Grove Cemetery in West Haven, CT, that identifies them as the widows of father Charles and son Charles H. Smith. The two sisters remained close friends for life, and they are also buried together, with their respective husbands, under a single large headstone at Greenwood Cemetery in Providence, RI. After the premature death of Amy, daughter of Herbert and Mary Clarke, Amelia Richardson Smith Hotchkiss was the only line forward in my family's Hotchkiss Ancestry. Her son, Wilton Augustus Hotchkiss, was my grandfather's father and an only child. My father, Robert Dissmore Hotchkiss, was also the only child of his parents, Robert Wilton and Evelyn (Dissmore) Hotchkiss. Neither my brother, John Wilton Hotchkiss, nor myself have biological or adopted children, so our long Hotchkiss line, which goes back to the early settlers of the New Haven Colony in the late 1600s, ends with us.

Sources

• "Rhode Island, Vital records, 1846-1898, 1901-1953," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F8CW-6FF : 4 November 2020), Charles H. Smith in entry for Amelia Richards Hotchkiss, ; citing Death, West Warwick, Kent, Rhode Island, United States, Rhode Island State Archives, Providence; FHL microfilm 004249884.

• "Connecticut Deaths and Burials, 1772-1934", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F7JG-652 : 16 January 2020), Charles H. Smith in entry for Maria M. Smith, 1893.

• US census data, CT, 1860