Restless Hero
Thanks to NortonPete for sending me the link to this story. A Vietnam veteran and a Civil War re-enactor from New Jersey have spent years documenting the graves of Civil War veterans from that state. They published a history of those resting places in 2006. Now, Bob MacAvoy and Chuck Eckhardt have found another Civil War veteran. One named Restless.
Their research has taken them from High Point to Cape May, to more than 1,500 Garden State cemeteries where they've identified 41,000 graves so far, including 2,500 of Confederate soldiers. They've piece together threads of history carved on tombstones, many fading from age and exposure to the elements. In 2006, they published a two-volume tome on their research titled "Our Brothers Gone Before."
But one burial plot MacAvoy recently stumbled upon — at least on paper — was a bit out of the ordinary. It was an 1889 New York Times obituary for an old war horse from Sussex County named Restless.
MacAvoy learned of the article from a friend and was fascinated. Horses had played a pivotal role in the Civil War, carrying supplies and officers, and early on, the odds were against horses, as they were dying in greater numbers than soldiers.
"When we think of war, we think of Jeeps, tanks, trucks, ships and planes," said MacAvoy, whose great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran. "They didn't have that. Everything moved by horse, pretty much. Many cavalry regiments were so short on horses that they fought on foot as infantry."
Restless survived the war. He was "of noble strain, having been sired by Rysdyk's Hambletonian," the horse after which the Meadowlands race is named. Already known for style and speed at age 6, Restless went to war under Col. Samuel Fowler of Port Jervis, N.Y., who led the 15th New Jersey Infantry Regiment comprised of soldiers from neighboring Sussex County, the obituary stated. Fowler rode Restless in battles of Virginia campaigns in 1862, until Fowler had to step down due to ill health, the obituary said.
The horse then was passed on to Chaplain Alanson A. Haines of Hamburg, and rode with him or was loaned to other officers for battle until the end of the war, the article stated. Restless was under fire in more than 30 battles, including "the seven days bloody struggle in the Wilderness … and bore on his body the honorable scars of wounds received at Gettysburg," the obituary stated.
After the war, Haines, who was the son of former two-time New Jersey Gov. Daniel Haines of Hamburg, brought Restless home to the family farmstead in Hamburg, where the horse lived until his death on Nov. 2, 1889, at age 33.
What a remarkable story. Obviously, Haines thought quite highly of the horse, enough to go to the trouble of bringing him all the way back from the war with him. The high regard is obvious, Restless was buried on the family farm, wrapped in the American flag and was given military honors.
By tim, Tuesday, 5 February , 2008 @ 5:55 am
I was raised in the small town of Riverside, NJ, and used to do Civil War reenacting as a hobby. I used to browse the local cemeteries looking for graves from that era, and, to my surprise, found the grave a a Civil War Medal of Honor winner in my old church’s cemetery. Pierre Leon was in the Navy during the war and won the medal in fighting on the western rivers.