Today marks the 160th anniversary of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This ultimately led to the surrender of other Confederate forces throughout the country and ended the bloody American Civil War. After four years of terrible warfare, between 650,000 and 750,000 soldiers were dead. Practically everyone in the nation found themselves affected by the war. In fact, the Civil War’s repercussions are still being felt today. It still matters.
Just 47 years later, the ill-fated Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912 during her maiden voyage. Onboard were several people who’d experienced the Civil War firsthand or had relatives who served. Of the approximate 2,200 people aboard Titanic, more than 1,500 died. It was a catastrophe of epic proportions that shook the Edwardian world to its core. Similarly, the Titanic disaster resonates with us today — even after more than 110 years after the fact.
Both tragedies rocked the world, and continue to captivate interest well into the 21st century. Given the relative close proximity between the two events, it’s not surprising that there’s some overlap. Today, let’s look at some of the personal connections between these two catastrophes.
Washington Augustus Roebling II
Washington Augustus Roebling II was born in Trenton, New Jersey on March 25, 1881. A businessman and head of the Walter Automobile Company, he was returning home to the United States and sailed aboard the Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
His namesake was his uncle, Washington Augustus Roebling. Born on May 26, 1837 in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, he became famous for finishing the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after his father’s death in mid-1869. Before becoming a celebrated civil engineer, however, Roebling had a distinguished career during the Civil War.
Washington Augustus Roebling joined the New Jersey Militia in 1861, but resigned two months later because he wanted to see action. He subsequently joined Company K of the 83rd New York Artillery. He saw combat at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and the Siege of Petersburg before the war’s end.
By the time of Gettysburg in July 1863, Roebling was serving as Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren’s aide-de-camp. He was one of the first Union officers on Little Round Top on July 2, 1862, and observed Confederate forces advancing up the hill. With no troops or defenses on Little Round Top, he reported back to General Warren. The general ordered Colonel Strong Vincent’s brigade to take the heights and deny Confederate forces the high ground. The Union troops arrived just in time.
One of the regiments in Vincent’s brigade was the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain — who would earn the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. Roebling also dispatched the 140th New York Infantry to Little Round Top, where they provided vital reinforcements to the tenuous Union position. After several assaults, the Confederates abandoned the attempt.
Washington Roebling ended the Civil War as a Brevet Colonel and married General Warren’s sister Emily (an accomplished engineer in her own right) on January 18, 1865. Upon his incapacitation with decompression sickness, Emily Roebling managed the project in his absence. When the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, however, Washington Roebling became a household name. He eventually died on July 21, 1926 and was interred at Cold Spring Cemetery in Putnam, New York.
He lived long enough, however, to see his nephew and namesake die in the Titanic disaster. Washington Roebling II’s body was never found.
Major Archibald Butt
Major Archibald “Archie” Butt was a Georgia-born US Army officer who served in the Spanish-American War. He eventually became a trusted military aide to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and was active and well-respected in Washington, DC’s cultural, social, and political circles. Major Butt traveled on the Titanic with Frank Millet following a six-week vacation in Europe. They visited Rome, Berlin, and Paris together. Major Butt perished in the following disaster.
Archibald Butt was born on September 26, 1865 — just months after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. His uncle, Brigadier General William R. Boggs, served as a Confederate military engineer and built fortifications throughout Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. He was also the Chief Engineer of the State of Georgia for a time.
Born on March 18, 1829, Boggs attended West Point and was classmates with the likes of Philip Sheridan, James B. McPherson, and John Bell Hood. Initially assigned to the Topographical Bureau, he later transferred to the Ordinance Corps. Boggs resigned his US Army commission when Georgia seceded from the Union in January 1861.
Although he never commanded troops in combat, Boggs rose through the Confederate ranks and eventually became a Brigadier General under Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith in the Trans-Mississippi theater.
After the war, William Boggs became an engineer and helped build railroads throughout the West. In 1875, he joined the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute as a Professor of Mechanics. Boggs died in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in September 1911.
Frank Millett
Francis “Frank” Millet was an artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and writings. He also served as a member of the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC. He lived with Major Butt in Foggy Bottom, where they hosted large parties attended by President Taft, senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court justices. It’s been suggested in recent years that the two men were involved in a romantic relationship.
Born on November 3, 1848 in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, Frank Millet was only 12 years old when the Civil War erupted. His father, a surgeon, tended to wounded soldiers on the battlefields in Virginia and would bring the boy along to act as an assistant. In Spring 1864, the Millets worked in the Union 2nd Corps Hospital at Fredericksburg after the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Frank noted in his diary on May 20, 1864:
Went to dressing wounds and picked out about half a cup full of maggots out of one man’s leg. This afternoon we amputated 5 stumps and fingers and at night took up our old quarters again at Mr. Bradshaw’s.
The horrors he witnessed in the hospital didn’t deter the young Millet from enlisting in the war upon returning home. He joined the 60th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Ansel Dyer Wass. Frank became a drummer boy in Company C. He was just 15 years old.
The 60th Massachusetts officially formed on August 1, 1864 as a 100-day regiment and reported to Washington, DC for duty. It counted 927 men in its ranks. In 1864, these “Hundred Day Men” freed up veteran units from light duties across the Union for frontline service. The 60th Massachusetts was eventually assigned to Indianapolis, Indiana where it guarded Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton.
Drummer Frank Millet mustered out of service with the rest of his regiment on November 30, 1864. The 60th Massachusetts never saw combat, though it lost 11 to disease. Millet later graduated from Harvard University and worked as a writer and editor before turning to art.
Sadly, Frank Millet died in the Titanic disaster. The CS Mackay-Bennett later recovered his body and returned it to Massachusetts.
Colonel Archibald Gracie IV
Colonel Archibald Gracie IV is perhaps one of the best-known Titanic survivors due to the detailed account he wrote after the sinking, titled The Truth About the Titanic. Born into a wealthy family in Mobile, Alabama on January 15. 1858, he served as a colonel in the 7th New York Militia and was an amateur military historian.
Before sailing on Titanic, Colonel Gracie wrote and published a book called The Truth About Chickamauga. This was a battle in which his father, Brigadier General Archibald Gracie III, figured prominently in.
Archibald Gracie III was born on December 1 ,1832 in New York City. He studied at the University of Heidelberg before attending West Point. Gracie graduated in 1854, but subsequently resigned his commission in 1857. Gracie joined his father’s banking firm in Mobile, Alabama and eventually became its president.
Gracie became a captain in the Washington Light Infantry and joined the Confederate Army in 1861 after Alabama seceded. He became major of the 11th Alabama Infantry Regiment, and commanded sharpshooters during the Siege of Yorktown April 5 to May 4, 1862.
Major Gracie was eventually promoted to brigadier general in November 1862. He commanded a brigade comprised of the 43rd Alabama Infantry, 55th Georgia Infantry, 12th Georgia Infantry, 1st Georgia Artillery, and the 1st Florida Dismounted Regiment. General Gracie covered Braxton Bragg’s retreat at Perryville, and later played a signifcant role in the Battle of Chickamauga — his brigade lost over 700 men.
Brigadier General Gracie was present at the Siege of Petersburg from July to December 1864. On December 2, a day after his 32nd birthday, an artillery shell exploded directly in front of him — killing him instantly. He’d been scheduled to take leave the next day to see his newborn daughter. Archibald Gracie III’s body was returned to New York City and buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx
Archibald Gracie IV survived the Titanic, but eventually succumbed to the effects of exposure in the frigid North Atlantic. He died on December 4, 1912 — 48 years and two days after his father died. Colonel Archibald Gracie IV was buried close to Brigadier General Archibald Gracie III in the Bronx’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
Isidor Straus
The co-owner of Macy’s department store, Isidor Straus and his wife Ida boarded Titanic at Southampton after a winter holiday in Europe. He was one of the richest passengers aboard the ship, behind John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim. He’d also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1895 to 1897.
Isidor Straus was born on February 6, 1845 in the the Kingdom of Bavaria, the oldest of five siblings. He subsequently moved to the United States in 1854 with his family. They settled in Georgia just a few years before the Civil War erupted.
In The Truth About the Titanic, Colonel Archibald Gracie IV tells of his shipboard friendship with Isidor Straus:
During our daily talks thereafter, he related much of special interest concerning incidents in his remarkable career, beginning with his early manhood in Georgia when, with the Confederate Government Commissioners, as an agent for the purchase of supplies, he ran the blockade of Europe.
Although he never served in the Confederate armed forces, Isidor Straus came very close to doing so. He’d been accepted to West Point just before the Civil War broke out. However, the hostilities prevented him from going to New York. Straus was elected as an officer in a Confederate militia unit but wasn’t allowed to serve because he was so young. Instead, Straus became a Confederate agent abroad. He helped acquire blockade runners for the Confederacy and served as a bond salesman in London and Amsterdam. Straus eventually returned to the newly reunited United States.
After the war, Isidor Straus married Rosalie Ida Blun in 1871. They had a loving relationship, which has subsequently become famous in Titanic lore. Ida refused to leave her husband, and Isidor refused to board a lifeboat before the other men. They remained inseparable to the very end and both perished in the sinking.
Only Isidor’s body was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett. Ida was never found. Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is his final resting place, just as it is for his shipboard friend Colonel Gracie.
Captain Edward Gifford Crosby
Captain Edward G. Crosby was a Great Lakes shipping magnate returning to the United States aboard Titanic with his wife, Catherine, and daughter Henrietta. They boarded at Southampton, having taken the First Class Boat Train from Waterloo Station. Somewhat humorously, one passenger mistook Captain Crosby for John D. Rockefeller as they boarded the train.
Edward G. Crosby was born on February 18, 1842 in Rochester, New York. His family moved to Michigan in 1856. When the Civil War broke out, Crosby joined the 1st Michigan Cavalry Regiment and served as a private in Company E. This was part of the famed Michigan Brigade commanded by Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer. The Wolverines became one of the most famous brigades of the war, and its commander even more so.
Private Edward G. Crosby saw significant combat. He was with the 1st Michigan Cavalry at Second Bull Run, Gettysburg, and the Overland Campaign. Crosby mustered out with the rest of the regiment at war’s end and returned home.
After the Civil War, Crosby married Catherine Elizabeth Halstead and they moved to Muskegon, Michigan before settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They had three children: Martha, Henriette, and Frederick. He founded the Crosby Transportation Company in 1903, and owned a small fleet of ships: the Nyack, the E.G. Crosby, the Conestoga, and the May Graham. His fortunes grew, and he eventually became head of the Great Lakes Shipping Company.
Captain Edward Crosby died in the sinking, though his wife and daughter survived. The CS Mackay-Bennett eventually recovered his body at sea. Crosby was cremated and initially interred at Milwaukee’s Fairview Mausoleum. However, he was later disinterred and buried in the city’s Graceland Cemetery in the 1990s.
The Untold Stories
It’s not lost on me that all the Titanic passengers mentioned here sailed in First Class. This probably explains why their Civil War connections are well known. But it’s unlikely that they were the only ones with personal or familial ties to the war. Remember, there were over 2,220 people aboard the White Star liner.
Approximately 25% to 33% of the Union Army consisted of individuals born outside the United States, totaling between 543,000 and 625,000. Over 2 million soldiers served in the Union army. By comparison, only a few tens of thousands of foreign nationals served in the Confederacy, making up roughly 5% of its armed forces.
Given that both the Union and Confederate armies had large amounts of immigrants serving in their ranks, there are undoubtedly other Titanic passengers and crew from Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, France, and other nations with relatives who served in the American Civil War — or who perhaps even served themselves. But those stories are likely lost to history.
On this, the 160th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox Court House, it seems only fitting to remember those who have direct ties to two of the biggest tragedies in modern history. Indeed, we remain fascinated with both the American Civil War and the Titanic disaster to this day.
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