One Soldier's Story

One Soldier's Story

By Steve Wick

Henry Prince's Civil War Diary

The memorial stands on a curve in the road near the American Legion Post, a silent piece of granite atop a patch of freshly cut grass. Cars pass it day after day, year after year, and it seldom attracts a visitor.

But those who stop to admire it are rewarded, for this monument on Route 25 in Southold speaks for itself. On its four sides, in long columns, are names of local men who fought in the Civil War -- 83 names, including several pairs of brothers, and multiple sets of cousins.

They were 83 men from a small town at the eastern end of Long Island. Men who on their enlistment papers said they were farmers, fishermen, mariners, butchers, laborers, carpenters, teachers and students. Men who were barely 20 years old, and men who were approaching 40, with children at home. Men whose family histories were, by the start of the war in 1861, more than 200 years old in this old English town -- men with names like Horton, Tuthill, Booth, Case and Wells. And men whose histories in America had begun when they got off a boat a few years before.

Perched on the granite pedestal rich with names is the concrete statue of a soldier. Clutching the barrel of his rifle with both hands, he is the vision of a man who has seen men die, seen whole regiments slaughtered in the course of a long, bloody day.

"When you look at the records, you can see that many of the enlistment dates are the same, or just a few days apart," says Southold Town historian Antonia Booth. In an old ledger she keeps in her office are the names of dozens of men who enlisted on one day -- Aug. 21, 1862 -- and formed the heart of a new regiment, the 127th New York, Company H. "They went to the Presbyterian church in Southold on that day and heard a call for enlistment and signed up."

On Long Island, monuments to American wars and to those who fought in them are as ubiquitious as church steeples and baseball fields. They honor soldiers from the Revolution to Vietnam. Some are grand, flooded with light at night, towering over the land around them, unveiled with great fanfare and speeches by politicians and veterans. Others are small, weatherworn and off the beaten track. They sit by roads and in town parks, seldom attracting more than a few curious people. These monuments have stories, too, but not many people know of them, or look at the names carved on them, never connecting the flesh-and-blood histories of men who lived in their towns and went off to war to people who might live there today.

This is the story of one of those monuments, the Civil War memorial in Southold. It was erected in 1887 with great fanfare, parades and speeches. In a town that was then nearly 250 years old, the day of the unveiling was one of the biggest in its long history. On that day, hundreds of people stopped what they were doing and walked or rode in their buggies to stand around the monument and hear all 83 names read out loud. As they listened, drums played and bugles sounded, and the sweet music floated across the surrounding farmland like the ringing of church bells. On that day, everyone knew someone whose name was carved in granite.

Beyond being a biography of a war memorial, this is also the story of one of those 83 names, a young farm boy who enlisted in the U.S. Army that summer of 1862. His name is carved on the south side of the pedestal, third from the top -- H. W. Prince. By the time the war ended in 1865, Henry Prince would know that 29 men from his hometown -- out of a total of 109 who enlisted -- had been killed.

Prince was one of the lucky ones. He came home. 

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