With area Memorial Day activities curtailed, a visit to local cemeteries is in order to visit graves of our veterans. One would think the rigors of a “Forlorn Hope” assault on a Confederate fortification in Port Hudson, La., in 1863 would be enough violence for one Union soldier’s lifetime, the story told in Part 1. But a Great Barrington man— recipient of the Medal of Honor — went on to experience a traumatic gunpoint home invasion a decade after war’s end. That story will be told in Part 2.
Part 2
What came of survivors of the Union Army’s assault on Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May 1863? We have space only for the few mentioned in Part 1 of this story.
Col. William F. Bartlett, who left Harvard to enlist in the Mass. 20th Regiment, lost a leg to a sniper’s bullet in Virginia in 1862. He recuperated, completed his education then joined the 49th only to be shot in the wrist at Port Hudson. He mustered out of service then promptly re-upped and organized the Mass. 57th Veterans and returned to Virginia. He retired with the rank of brevet major general. After the war he managed several ironworks.
Lt. Col. Samuel Sumner, who before the war had been a Great Barrington postmaster and a state senator, moved to Bridgeport, Conn., and became a probate judge then clerk of the Superior Court for Fairfax County.
Beanpole Major Charles T. Plunkett returned to Pittsfield and managed Sun Printing before going to Galveston, Tex., to broker cotton, then to New York, then back to Pittsfield to become a probation officer.
Lt. Thomas S. Siggins, in command of his company of fascine volunteers, according to a Berkshire Courier account “ran to the front, shouting ‘Forward’ to the now faltering men, and fell with a ball in his shoulder. Springing to his feet he was again struck down, terribly pierced through his mouth and neck. All day long he lay behind a rotten stump, suffering with pain and thirst that no words can describe, and listening to the thud of the bullets, which fell so near that the heels were shot from his shoes. When at night he was picked up and taken to the surgeon’s quarters he was so weak from loss of blood that he could not lift his head, and no one who saw him at that time had any hope that he could recover.” A field medic’s drastic measures meant Siggins lost his left eye, its blood supply cut off in the surgery.
Siggins, an operator of the Russell gristmill before enlistment, returned to town, opened a small grocery then went into insurance. He became clerk of courts in 1871, was treasurer of the Housatonic Agricultural Society and served on the Great Barrington Water Board and Board of Selectmen.
His grave is in the Water Street Cemetery.
Back home, Fred Deland joined the National Mahaiwe Bank in Great Barrington as a clerk. Five years later he was appointed cashier.
Eight thugs invaded the home of Deland’s father, William N. (1808-1875), who was quite ill, and his mother, Roxanna Rood Deland (1813-1892), who was caring for her husband. Fred’s sister Emma (1846-1885) also lived at home as did Fred, who had yet to marry, and a household servant. The South Main Street home was just north of where the police station is today. The house was later absorbed into the Mary Frances Hopkins estate — now John Dewey Academy.
The crooks spied on the bank’s chief teller from the recesses of an isolated ravine northerly of Russell House on Castle Hill Avenue. After weeks of plotting, the out-of-town thugs staged a daring robbery in May 1875.
They failed — because they hadn’t read the newspaper.
“A ‘finger man’ posted himself in the village, spent much time seeking a good place of concealment for those who were to follow him and discovered the yawning cavern opening under rocks at the top of a deep gully in a section then rather sparsely inhabited,” Clay Perry wrote in Underground New England. “He spent much time in a thicket of trees on the roof of the cavern from where he could get glimpses of the life of the town down below and be himself fairly well concealed.”
In a letter to his uncle, J.F. Judd, penned within days of the crime, Deland recounted the grim story: “The terrible experience that we [the bank] have so often thought of and feared has finally come to us. For years, as you know, we have felt that we were liable at any time to have a visit from masked bank robbers. Last Tuesday our new chronometer lock was put on, and we said ‘now we shall have no fear of the burglars.’ But on Friday night they came, and words cannot tell the fearful experience we passed through. It was a night of terror past describing….”
Coming from a Medal of Honor recipient this says a lot.
“The bank came out of it very nicely,” continued Deland, justifiably upset. “Our family were the only sufferers, the suffering and loss falling on the wrong parties, in my opinion.”
Masked men broke into the house through a pantry window. Sleeping on the first floor, Mrs. Deland awoke to the noise and screamed. The assailants seized her, raced upstairs and jerked the bed out from under Emma. Frederick heard Emma yelp and ran to the door. “I was met by three men, who rushed at me like wild beasts (as they were). At the same time others were rushing up the stairs. I gave a yell. They seized me by the throat and threw me on my back on the bed,” Deland said.
The robbers wanted the bank keys. Deland explained the new Sargent & Greenleaf double chronometer time lock. He would have shown them a copy of Feb. 17, 1875, Berkshire Courier describing the installation of the new system days before — but it had been given away to friends.
The captain of the band took the bank key and went off. The Mahaiwe bank stood on the west side of Main Street, in a separate building since replaced by the Mahaiwe Block. Jack’s Country Squire was on the site in later years. Returning after an hour, much agitated, the leader took Deland with him. At the bank, Deland opened the vault’s lock, but the bolts wouldn’t move because of the timer. The leader tried for himself, without avail.
Finally, “‘Come along,’ and out of the bank we went. Not a word was said to the others, but they followed on after us. On the way home the man said to me: ‘What day was that lock put on?’ I told him,” Deland recalled. “‘What did you have it put on for?’ said he. Said I: ‘To prevent the bank from being robbed in the way you are trying to now.’ He laughed at that and said we should have had it on when that young man stole our money a few years ago [referring to an 1871 theft], so you see he was well posted in regard to the history of the bank. He then said the lock was a pretty good thing….”
The robbers handcuffed and roped the Delands, took several bearer bonds from a desk and fled. “The terrible excitement of the night has left us all nearly worn out,” Deland admitted to his uncle, “especially father. They told mother they would not bind father, but they did, just as if he had been as strong as ever.” The elder Deland died within a month.
The alarm went out. Lawmen followed a trail to South Egremont, over Molasses Hill to Hillsdale, N.Y., and beyond. In August a man was arrested for selling one of the bearer bonds in New York City. The next month, “Pete” Curley, alias “Peter Alphonsas,” was arrested in Troy, N.Y., for alleged complicity in the robbery. Other gang members were eventually collected including “Red” Leary, the purported leader, George Miles and Oscar D. Peterson.
Deland went on with his life. In 1877, he married Elizabeth Ensign Smith (1838-1916), a native of Torrington, Conn. They settled at Terrace Knoll on West Avenue. He was named bank treasurer in 1883 and became president in 1905, a post he held until he retired in 1916 and moved to Pittsfield.
Deland is buried in Mahaiwe Cemetery.
