Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-08-10

sa t# %casas of mistaken
II is#HA kHA Iidcntity among sol
s ssEs u. -Aa&gA- diers and o hers
s = HsS (xxs;SFfSsa iwhcro tho personality
IN MSa DOR identity has been
IL. 2ssssS; l ;a entirely lost through
70 S>r@s '''' the effects OF disease
OF insanity. AS these records are pub
Tic property, anybody may draw on
them for information who can get ac-
cess to them; and having lately come
across some very singular incidents
occurring in the search for a lost
soldier, II will repeat them for the
benefit of or old comrades
The soldier was Thomas B. Hough-
Ton, late private OF Company III,
One Hundred and FoTtietA New York
Volunteers. During the FredericEs.
burg campaign Of the fall and winter
of 1862 he fell sick on the march. He
was told to go to an ambulance.
, Whether he did so or not will prob
ably never be known. The man dis
appeared from the sight and knowl-
edge of his friends and comrades, and
his fate remained mystery at the
close of the war. Such occurrences
were by no means rare among the hun
drcds of thousands of men who com
posed our armies; but the subsequent
experience of his wife in trying to find
him was decidedly unique.
The wife of the missing soldier re-
sided in Ontario County, State of New
York. Between November, 1866, and
August, 1867, the Superintendent of
the Government Hospital for the In
sane at Washington caused a notice to
be published in several Northern pa
pers, calling attention to the case of a
patient in that hospital He had been
found at Tallahassee, Fla, when the
Union troops occupied that place at
the close of the war; and while moth
ing was positively known of him, he
was believed to be Union soldier.
He had lost the power Of speech and
was evidently insane. In September,
1866, he had been at Tallahassee if
teen months, and nobody there knew
anything about him. He was sent to
Washington with the idea that he was
a soldier, that he might receive treat
ment in the Government hospital, and
S4ItlU i4C w i11lO1c CDutCulGuUlf
seen, to be recognized.
That was time when thousands of
distressed wives and mothers at the
North We're anxiously looking for It'd
ings of their "lost soldiers" Mrs.
tHoughton, among others, saw the no
tice that was published in the papers,
and in the faint hope that the unknown
might be her lost husband she went to
Washington. She took with her a
daguerreotype Of him which had been
taken just before the war, and q lock of
his hair, cut from his head before he
left home with his regiment The hair
was of the same texture and color as
shat upon the head of the unknown,
except that the latter was tinged with
gray, as we'll might have occurred
through the hardslips and sutferings
OF captivity. Examined with the mi
croscope the hair appeared to be the
same. There was not a marked general
resemblance between the face of the
unknown and that of the picture, which
might be accounted for in the same
tway, supposing the man were the miss
ing Houghton. But there were features
of the picture which showed very
close resemblance to the man. An I'M
usually light blue was common to the
eyes OF both. Tho thumbs were long
and pointed, the fingers tapering-
something rare among laboring men.
The man would sit and twirl one thumb
over the other in thought, which Mrs.
.Houghton recognized as an old habit
OF her husband. She said that when
the man looked down, she could not see
any resemblance to her husband; but
when he looked up, as if about to speak,
she could recognize him.
These proofs, of course, would not
be deemed at all conclusive; but there
were others which might well be
thought So No marks or scars on the
person Of the patient had been given in
the advertisement; but Mrs. Houghton
gave with the utmost eXactness the po-
sition and desert ption of several. There
was a mole on the back; the toes We're
bent under from wearing shoes that
We're too short, which caused partial
lameness; there was q scar on the fore
head, under the hair; another on the
foot; another OH the ankle, which she
said had been caused by saw falling
across it; and others on the breast and
back, which she said came from deep
irritation of the skin from wearing han-
mel in hot sun, at which time her hus-
band was under the doctors care fol
two months. Some scars appeared on
the arms, but she said that she knew
nothing of them. The doctors ut the
hospital thought that this might well
be, as these scars apparently came from
recent bleeding.
The patient was not entirely dement,