William H. Watson: Colonel Watson

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Ep14: William H. Watson

Show Transcript

Captain William H. Watson desired a promotion.

Badly.

Watson, the second captain of Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment, had been in command of the company for six months, but he was dissatisfied with his rank. He wanted to be a major.

He enlisted with Company D as a first lieutenant and was promoted to captain within six months. He believed he had led his men effectively. He was a prominent businessman in Bath. His father had served as a state senator. In his view, he was qualified.

He didn’t just want a promotion. He believed he deserved one.

So he lobbied hard for it. Watson wrote to Colonel Frederick A. Sewall, organizing a new regiment in Bath, the Nineteenth Maine. Colonel Sewall agreed and, on July 22, 1862, urged Maine Governor Israel Washburn to promote Watson and transfer him to the Nineteenth Maine.

“The friends of Capt. W. H. Watson are desirous of his promotion to the Majority of the Nineteenth,” Sewall wrote the governor. “Captain Watson is now with the Third. I know him to be a capable, efficient officer who has done good service to his country.”

But Washburn didn’t act. So Watson wrote him directly a month later. “It is not often that I seek to promote my personal claims,” he wrote, ignoring the fact that was exactly what he was doing—and had been for weeks.

Watson continued, “For a long time, I have felt as though I should like to be transferred … Now that new regiments are being formed, and it is recommended that the officers should be taken from the old regiments, I do not consider it out of place for me to urge my claim for promotion.”

Confident he would soon be heading to the Nineteenth, Watson resigned his captaincy with the Third Maine.

But Watson miscalculated. Badly. His promotion request was ignored, but his resignation was accepted. He was discharged from duty on October 22, 1862. His Army career appeared to be over.

So imagine his surprise—his shock—when nine months later, he was drafted back into service. Not as a major or even as an officer, but as an enlisted man.

A lowly private.

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to another episode of Company D, the narrative history podcast about the men who served with Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. Our mission at Company D is to tell the true-life stories of the ordinary Civil War soldiers and their families by focusing on one regiment, the Third Maine, and one company, Company D.

One Regiment. One Company. Countless Stories.

Why Company D? Because my great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, volunteered with them and fought side-by-side with these men for more than three years. He left behind a diary of his wartime experiences, which became the foundation for this podcast.

I’m your host, George F. Snell III—three for the price of one.

William Henry Watson was the second captain of Company D and one of its most complicated.

He commanded the company during some of the most turbulent parts of the Civil War, from late 1861 through the fall of 1862, when the U.S. Army was grappling with the consequences of a volunteer army composed of eager amateurs and led by unqualified political appointees.

Men very much like Watson himself.

It was during this period that the Grand Army of the Potomac was dealt humiliating defeats at the Battles of Ball’s Bluff, Fair Oaks, and Second Bull Run.

Watson fit the definition of an officer appointed because of his community status rather than his military experience. He was a tinsmith and the son of a politician, and he was 31 years old when he enlisted.

His tenure with Company D was marred by the Union Army’s defeats, but also by his inability to rise above petty politics and put the needs of his men over his own ambitions.

In many ways, Watson resembled a character we might recognize: the fictional Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby.”

Watson and Gatsby’s lives could have intersected if Gatsby had been a real person and not a fictional character. Watson lived to 98, dying in 1928, at the height of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby” in 1925, so there’s even a chance that Watson read the novel.

If he had, he might have recognized himself in the character of Jay Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Watson was a wealthy entrepreneur. Not on the same scale, but Watson was well-to-do for Bath, Maine.

His similarities to Gatsby had less to do with wealth and more to do with character. Both craved recognition and were willing to mythologize their lives to achieve it.

CHAPTER ONE: THE LOST MIDDLE CHILD

When the war started, William Henry Watson was finally getting his life together, even at 31. He was settling into his three-year marriage, although it many have been more of an arrangement than a true romance. He was working for his older brother, Sewall, who was grooming him for a partnership.

He was a member of the Bath City Grays, the city’s volunteer militia. The Grays were less of a military unit and more of a fraternal organization. While they practiced military drills, they were better known for their fancy uniforms—plumed cone hats, white sashes, and distinctive gray frock coats—and marching in the July Fourth parade.

When the war broke out, and Bath began organizing volunteers to fight against the Rebellion, city officials turned to the Grays for help. The Grays, including Watson, formed much of the leadership of companies A and D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. Watson was named first lieutenant of Company D under the command of Captain Charles A.L. Sampson.

Watson’s younger brother, Charlie, 22, became a private with Company A.

At the time, it likely felt like Watson had found his calling. Because up until that point, his youth had been spent struggling to find a purpose. But to understand Watson, you have to understand his father.

Watson was the third of seven children born to Sewall Watson and his wife, Anstrus Little. His father was born in Massachusetts but moved to Castine, Maine, as a teenager. Sewell was a clerk in a dry goods store when British forces invaded and occupied Castine during the War of 1812.

Sewell became a devout Congressionalist, but also a wealthy trader and Maine politician. He served as town clerk, sheriff, court clerk, and later as state senator and member of the governor’s council. When he lived in Georgetown, he served on its Board of Selectmen for many years. He was described as “a prominent man of business…a man of ability.” And as a “fine, practical illustration of the Christian character.”

Watson may have argued that point. When his mother died in 1843, when he was 12, his father effectively broke up the family.

Watson was shipped off to boarding school with his brother and sister. The Watson children went to Maine Wesleyan School at Kents Hill (now known as Kents Hill School). Founded in 1825, Wesleyan was a manual-labor school that combined education with physical labor, mostly farming.

His father kept three of the younger children with him, but sent the youngest, George, to live with the Dorr family in Augusta. John Dorr was a printer, and a few years after becoming George’s official guardian, he and his wife formally adopted him, and George took the Dorr name.

In 1846, William’s brother Joseph, still living with their father, fell and struck his head in unknown circumstances. His skull was fractured, and he died a few days later. He was 13 years old.

Just nine days after Joseph died, Sewell Watson remarried, taking Alice Delano, a widow and member of the influential Riggs family, as his second wife. They settled in Georgetown, Maine.

After boarding school, Watson and his older brother, Sewall Jr., became apprentices in tinsmithing in Bath. Tinsmiths made, repaired, and sold heating stoves and other tin appliances for homes and trading ships. By 1852, Sewall Jr. had opened a furnace and tin appliance shop on Front Street in Bath. Watson joined his brother in the business, but after a few years, he grew restless.

CHAPTER TWO: GOING TO CALIFORNIA

Watson married 25-year-old Ellen Caroline Hatch on October 16, 1858. They were wed in Bennington, Vermont, before settling in Bath. Ellen was the daughter of Zenas H. Hatch, who owned a carpentry business in Bath, and his wife, Mary (Young).

Yet, despite being married for only a few weeks, Watson inexplicably quit his job at his brother’s tinsmithing shop and headed to California.

Without his new wife. Ellen remained behind—living with her parents and two unmarried sisters in Bath.

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, California became a popular destination for young men from Maine after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill and the rush began. But by the time Watson arrived, the California Gold Rush was long over, and people were already leaving.

It’s possible Watson was already having regrets about his marriage and needed a way out. The myth of California and gold hadn’t fully dissipated, and it may have been a socially acceptable way for Watson to delay responsibility. Regardless of the reason, he went and stayed for more than two years.

The California state census lists a W. Watson from Maine, working as a laborer in Yuba, California, in 1860, near the heart of the Gold Rush region.

Watson mentioned his sojourn to California in a newspaper article much later in his life, but he didn’t provide many details. “I worked at mining for two years,” he said, “But home was a pretty good place, and I came back to Maine.”

But the return to Bath, to his wife, Ellen, and to his brother’s tinsmithing business, didn’t hold.

Watson was able to escape again: this time to war.

CHAPTER THREE: AN AMBITIOUS OFFICER

Watson enlisted and was mustered in on June 4, 1861. Given his family standing and his ties to the Bath City Grays, he was commissioned as first lieutenant of Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. His commanding officer was Captain Charles A.L. Sampson.

In a letter to his brother in 1861, Watson described himself as “a tough-boiled owl”—a humorous19th-century expression meaning exceptionally tough and fierce. He wrote about the difficult conditions of Army life, writing, “I stand it better than most any of the company.”

Within months, Captain Sampson was promoted to major, and Watson was appointed captain of Company D. His leadership was immediately challenged in December 1861 and into the winter of 1862.

The U.S. Army was still acting more like a fraternal organization, with officers elected for popularity, political clout, and loyalty. After Watson’s promotion to captain, Company D needed two new lieutenants. Watson made a formal request to promote Alfred S. Merrill and Woodbury Hall.

But that was against his men’s wishes. They supported William Higgins, Woodbury Hall’s uncle. In fact, the company disliked Woodbury and actively worked against his promotion. There was a lot of political maneuvering and pressure behind the scenes as Maine city councils, boards of selectmen, and wealthy businessmen became involved, pressuring Maine Governor Israel Washburn to support their preferred candidates.

Watson opposed Higgins. Higgins was a loud, bombastic carpenter from Phippsburg, Maine. We don’t have details on why Watson and Higgins didn’t get along, but likely the more refined Watson disliked the gruff Higgins and feared his authority would be undermined by Higgins’s influence over the enlisted men.

When the issue couldn’t be settled, Watson was ordered to hold an election. The men would decide on their lieutenants. Having enlisted men elect their own officers was common at the start of the war, but would largely fall out of favor after early disasters like Bull Run and later Fredericksburg. There was mounting evidence that many “elected” officers were incompetent and poorly trained.

The soldiers of Company D voted for their new lieutenants in February of 1862. It was a landslide victory for Higgins, with Merrill coming in a distant second and Woodbury Hall way back in third place. Watson submitted the results, but urged his superiors to promote Merrill and Woodbury.

And that’s just what Watson’s superiors did. They ignore the election results and Merrill became First Lieutenant, and Hall Second Lieutenant. Higgins remained a sergeant.

The men of Company D were incensed. They petitioned Governor Washburn to reconsider and promote Higgins.

It didn’t happen.

In insisting on promoting his own candidates, Watson may have set the stage for his eventual departure. The resentment fueled by Higgins’s continued presence likely pushed Watson toward lobbying for a promotion to another regiment.

Watson revealed his true feelings about Army life to his brother in one of his letters home: “The thousand and one smaller blunders that help to keep us in a state of ferment all the time—I have not the time nor patience to talk about.”

He would quit just six months after the company election.

CHAPTER FOUR: BATTLES

By the time of the Battle of Chantilly, Watson was already actively lobbying to leave the Third Maine. Yet he was still in charge of Company D.

The Battle of Chantilly happened following the defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run, while Union forces were in full retreat. Watson wrote to his brother: “You would hardly think if you should hear the shot and shell whistling through the air towards you that men would accustom themselves as theydo to it, so as to … sit down and cook their meals with almost a perfect indifference, excepting to duck their heads when one comes too near.”

On August 31, 1862, Union forces were in danger of Confederate forces closing on their flank and rear. The next day, the Third Maine and their brigade were forced to break camp and retreat double-time through the woods to escape the encircling noose. However, Major General Philip Kearny ordered the brigade to halt, turn around, and cover the retreat.

A storm broke across the battlefield, bringing driving rain and thunderclaps crashing across the line, as lightning streaked across the dark sky. When the Third Maine arrived at the battlefield around 5 p.m., the field was a swamp of mud.It was here, the mud-caked, flooded field, that the Third Maine lost four men killed, 38 wounded, and eight missing. One of the dead was Private Stephen Dodge of Company D. Dodge was a schoolteacher and the brother-in-law of Second Lieutenant Woodbury Hall. He died in the mud.

“General Kearny gave us great credit for what we did,” Watson wrote. “It was a bold move for about one hundred and seventy men to run right square into a whole brigade.”

The Third Maine retreated through the night, forced to ford a flooded Bull Run stream, which was nearly waist high and churning in the dark as the regiment crossed it. They didn’t make it back to a Union encampment at Centerville until 3 a.m. the next morning. They wouldn’t get to rest long.

They were ordered back into battle on September 1 to support the Fourth Maine. The Third set up behind some rail fences, and another severe thunderstorm erupted across the area.

Watson described the situation: “It was so dark that we could not distinguish the enemy except by the flash of their guns.”

Watson had his men stand their ground and return fire.

“The fire was rapid and told among us fearfully,” Watson recalled. “It was the only time that we ever had a fair chance in open space to show the Rebels what we were made of, and they found to their cost that Maine boys wouldn’t run.”

Later that same day,  General Kearny was killed.

Less than two months later, Watson, frustrated, but  confident he would soon be transferred as a major to another unit, quit his commission. He was likely very surprised that his resignation was accepted. He was expecting an advancement and was instead sent home.

CHAPTER FIVE: GETTING BACK TO NORMAL

Watson arrived in Bath at the end of October. After four years of marriage, he finally settled into life with his wife, Ellen. He went back to work in his brother’s furnace and tin shop on Front Street.

A month after Watson’s return, a letter appeared in the local newspaper and was signed anonymously by “A member of Co. D.” The author heaped praise on Watson’s leadership, likely quelling any whispers or gossip about why he had resigned so suddenly.

The letter was published after his return, but dated the day he left. It said, “Company D regretted this morning to part with their brave, efficient, and highly esteemed Captain W.H. Watson. He has ever been at our head, ready and willing to perform his duty. He is a loss to our company, but sickness and important business at home have compelled him to resign. He has the sincere respect and best wishes of his company.”

There was no evidence that Watson had been sick. Was the letter written by Watson or one of his supporters. It could have been a genuine expression of praise from one of the men, although it was remarkably upbeat given that Company D had been reduced from 100 men to fewer than 20 due to disease, death, capture, and transfers. We don’t know who wrote the letter or whether they were encouraged to do so.

Several weeks later, on January 2, 1863, Watson was elected junior deacon at the Solar Lodge No. 14, a Masonic lodge in Bath. In July, Watson’s esteem grew further when it was announced that he had entered into a formal partnership with his brother, Sewall. Sewall’s heating and plumbing shop changed its name to  “S.J. Watson & Company.”

Watson was becoming an upstanding citizen and a thriving entrepreneur, and his wife, Ellen, was eight months pregnant with their first child.

But then disaster struck.

THREE AUDIO BOOKS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

CHAPTER SIX: I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU

The U.S. Congress passed the Enrollment Act of 1863 to replenish the Union Army’s troops, flagging under the weight of the war. The law required that all men between the ages of 18 and 45 register. Every state was given a quota and appointed draft boards to administer enrollment and conscription. If a quota fell short, a draft lottery was used to reach the required number. The boards developed an impartial system of drawing lots.

Basically, they drew names out of a hat. The names were placed into a wheel or revolving drum, sometimes called the Wheel of Fortune.

But without Vanna White.

Prior military service was not considered a deferment unless the discharge was due to a permanent illness or injury.

The first draft in Midcoast Maine was held on July 17, 1863, and among the first Bath men to have his name drawn was:

William H. Watson.

The former captain, now drafted as an enlisted man. Watson quit because the Army didn’t promote him to major. Now, he was in danger of returning to the battlefield as a private.

For a man who placed great value on status and rank,  Watson must have been stunned at the turn of events.

But there was a loophole—a feature Congress included to benefit men of wealth and privilege. Men like Watson. The Enrollment Act allowed draftees to hire substitutes to serve in their place. In the Union Army, about 6% of soldiers were substitutes. 

So, Watson wasn’t alone when he hired a broker to find a substitute for him. Brokers arranged all the details and the payment, which could run as high as $800 but averaged between $300 to $500. While the practice was legal, critics complained that it allowed the rich to “buy out” of their obligation. Some even criticized it as unpatriotic and cowardly.

Within a month, Watson hired Josiah A. Temple, a 25-year-old Bowdoin College graduate and Bath school teacher, to take his place. We explored the life of Josiah Temple in in our ninth episode, “The Intolerant Life of Josiah Temple.”

Once Temple took his place, Watson was free of his military obligations. Just before Temple marched off to become a private with the Seventeenth Maine Infantry Regiment, Watson became the father of a daughter, Mary, born on August 4, 1863.

One wonders what Watson thought when Temple was shot and nearly killed three months later at the Battle of Mine Run.

CHAPTER SEVEN: GOING TO MINNESOTA

But Watson, even at the age of 35, decided to run again. That old restlessness returned, and a year after his daughter was born, Watson packed his bags and left his wife and young daughter.

This time, he headed to Minnesota.

In the late 1850s, his wife’s oldest brother moved to Minnesota. He was a farmer in Wheatland, Minnesota, a rural, woodland village nestled among several small lakes.

So when Watson left Bath for Minnesota, he likely stayed with his brother-in-law in Wheatland. At the time, Zenas Hatch Jr. and his wife had an infant daughter named Mary, who was six months younger than Watson’s own daughter, Mary, who was two years old when Watson headed west.

In a newspaper article years later, Watson mentioned his Minnesota journey only in passing. “I left [my business] and went to Minnesota in 1865,” he said. “And after remaining a short time, I came back and again went to work for my brother.”

Did Watson go to Minnesota with the intention of moving there permanently, or were other factors responsible for his brief relocation? At the time he left, Ellen was pregnant with their second child, a girl named Harriet. She would be born on January 22, 1866.

Was he spooked that his wife was pregnant again?

Watson appears to have left shortly afterward his wife became pregnant. We don’t know exactly when Watson returned to Maine or if he was present for his second daughter’s birth.

Around the same time Watson left, his younger brother, Charles, who was still in the U.S. Army, was promoted to captain. Charles would retire from the U.S. Army in 1867 with the honorary rank of major.

Major. The rank Watson had coveted.

CHAPTER EIGHT: VERY IMPORTANT PERSON

Returning to Bath, Watson returned to his duties at his brother’s shop. He and Ellen had a third daughter, Anna, born on September 30, 1868.

For the next several decades, Watson became a leading business and civic leader in Bath. All of his daughters graduated from Bath High School, and he and his brother grew their tinsmith shop into one of the largest heating and plumbing businesses in the state. The Watson brothers did extensive business with Bath’s shipbuilding companies.

Watson became a charter member of the Sedgewick Post #4 of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for former Union soldiers. He became a trustee of the Bath Military and Naval Orphans Home, which was founded by Sarah Sampson, the wife of his former captain, Charles A.L. Sampson. He remained a member of the Masons and, for six years, was elected to the Bath City Council.

His father died in 1882. His brother, Sewall, retired for health reasons and passed away in 1907. The business became his.

In 1908, Watson and Ellen celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary with a large party of more than a hundred guests at their home on Middle Street. The celebration was written up as a feature story in the local newspaper. There was no mention that, for the first eight years of their marriage, Watson and Ellen were together less than three years while Watson was away in California, Virginia, and Minnesota for the rest of the time.

Watson retired at age 70 in 1910. His brother Charles, who became a railroad executive in Georgia and never married, died in 1913 in Ballston Spa, New York. His sister Susan, a Mount Holyoke College graduate and a teacher for the blind, was the last of his siblings to pass. She died on September 15, 1915.

Watson’s wife, Ellen, passed away from heart disease on the last day of 1920. She was 87 years old and buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath. Watson lived in his Middle Street home with his three daughters.

None of his daughters would ever marry.

CHAPTER NINE: EVEN MORE IMPORTANT IN DEATH

Josiah Temple, Watson’s substitute in the Civil War, died in 1920.

Watson would live to 97, passing away in 1928, the last surviving member of Company D of the Third Maine.

At some point in the last decade of his life, people began to refer to Watson, more and more, as Colonel Watson, in reference to his service during the war. He went from leading a single company to commanding the entire regiment. It’s unclear how this misinformation started, but it doesn’t appear as if Watson did anything to discourage it.

Clearly, Watson had not gotten over the slight of being passed over for a major. But now, the major didn’t have the same weight as before—after all, his brother, Charles, had achieved that rank when he left the U.S. Army during Reconstruction. That part of Watson, the one that believed rank derived worth, had never gone away.

And who was left to challenge it? The two real colonels of the Third Maine, Oliver Howard and Moses Lakeman, were both dead. None of Watson’s fellow Company D soldiers were alive.

So Watson became a colonel at the end of his life–and died as one, too.

Watson finally achieved the rank he so badly desired, even if it was fictional.

And in the end, like Jay Gatsby, he became the story he wanted others to believe.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Company D.

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