I had intended to update Captain Nicoll’s blog post for the 160th Anniversary of Gettysburg but was frightfully behind doing other things for the overnight vigils. However, I still wanted to update this post because, for all that has been written about Isaac, I have always had a feeling that his story was not “complete.” It’s been that way with my great-uncle’s records as well. I leave them set for several months and suddenly, I’ll get spark of inspiration and think that perhaps I should look in a certain record set or a particular archive I haven’t before, and sure enough, I’ll find some odd tidbit of info. It’s been that way for years with my great-uncle and it’s that way with Isaac, too. I just have this odd feeling that their stories aren’t quite finished
I recently learned about a set of registers at the Department of Health in NYC called Bodies in Transit.[1] Following an outbreak of yellow fever between 1795-1804 in NYC, the New York State legislature authorized a council to make and enforce sanitary ordinances. From this council came the City Inspector’s position and the first Board of Health in 1805. Important to our story here is that in 1859, from the City Inspector’s department, they created a Registrar of Records that would head the Bureau of Records and Statistics.[2] As part of their department, they recorded the transportation of bodies in, out, and through Manhattan between 1859 and 1894.[3]
Why was it important to track bodies through the city? Because of disease. If you had died from something highly contagious, they wanted to know. A body might be turned away if it was considered to be hazardous to public health. So, they created registers to record a body’s transit information. There are headers at the top of these pre-printed registers for name, age at death, place, and date of death, cause of death, nativity, location in transit, where you were to be interred, who provided certification for the transfer (who was in charge of your body), and the name and address of the applicant of the transfer. Later on, in 1871, there were pre-printed application forms that made it easier instead of having these register books.
What does this have to do with Isaac, you are probably wondering by now. I’m getting there, I promise. As you may remember from our previous post on the captain, Isaac died on July 2nd at Gettysburg, and his father wrote that they could not get his body home and had to leave it there in Gettysburg. From the newspaper, we know that Isaac’s funeral took place on October 20th, 1863, at the First Presbyterian Church and he was brought to the cemetery for burial. So that made me wonder, how did they get him home… it was one thing to bring Colonel Ellis and Major Cromwell home via train on ice immediately following the battle but how do you move a man whose been in the ground for several months in the hot summer sun and especially not knowing if he’s been embalmed or not? Much like I get those strange, intuitive feelings with my uncle’s records, I thought maybe I should check these Bodies in Transit registers just to see if Isaac was in here… I had a weird hunch and it couldn’t hurt, right?
BINGO! It turns out, Isaac came home via train on October 14th through NYC. He’s listed so incorrectly in the Bodies in Transit register on pages 262/263, it’s borderline hilarious. I seriously sat there and chuckled for a minute because of the number of mistakes. He’s not listed as Captain I Nicoll, it’s J Nicoll… and he’s not the tender age of 23, he’s 38! His unit is listed as Company B of the 41st NYSV or the 47th NYSV, which both have variations of Nicolls but none that died at Gettysburg or even served there. They get it right that he died at Gettysburg, but wrong that he died of typhoid fever instead of gunshot wounds. They also have it wrong that he died on October 14th… that’s the day of travel. They do have it right that he’s going to Washingtonville, thankfully though I’m dismayed that it doesn’t have the person listed who was in charge of his body – that would have been helpful for further researching. I can excuse the I and J first initial mix-up. That happens all the time in older records with fancy, swoopy handwriting.
The military unit though, I cannot explain for the life of me other than to think it was a clerk’s error in NYC or that someone sent his body along with misinformation. (Though I cannot imagine the Gettysburg end being the error as they were meticulous when doing reburials – I know Samuel Weaver and his crew did some reburials in August 1863 but he paused until late October 1863 when cooler weather set in, so I don’t think this was an error on the sender’s part but that’s just my suspicion until I find otherwise.)[4] Plus, whenever John Nicoll requested to have him sent home, he’d have indicated which unit Isaac was with, so they’d have known right where to go look for him. The unit wouldn’t have been wrong coming from the Gettysburg end either then I wouldn’t imagine.
The manner of death – typhoid vs gunshot – is another startling error. This is another reason why I’m certain it was a NYC end error. From many, many reports, soldiers were often wrapped in blankets and quickly buried as there were no wooden coffins carried with the Army, however, the embalmers usually had them. (There is a whole gamut of articles on embalming during the Civil War if you’re the curious type but some of the embalmers could be quite unscrupulous and many were leery of this “new” practice.) Quoting from Charles LaRocca’s book “First Lieutenant Charles Wood, Company E, who had charge of the burial detail, could not bring himself to throw dirt on the young Captain. He placed his own cap over Nicoll’s face to protect it from the clods that were shoveled in on top of him.”[5] As this was July 4th, I think that answers the outlying question if Isaac was embalmed on not. Samuel Weaver and his crew that did the reburials spoke about the wretched conditions of the bodies they disinterred, so without being terribly gory and disrespectful to our good captain, when it was time to bring him home, the people disinterring him would have known from his wounds and the state of his body that he didn’t die of typhoid. He had three shot wounds, when they (whoever it was) went to move him, I’m fairly certain they’d have seen blood residue. So I’m (again) going with NYC being the problematic portion of the equation here for the cause of death mistake.
I imagine the scenario could be something like this: it’s a clerk in NYC who didn’t pay attention to the fine details of his job or wasn’t filling out things “in the moment” and was trying to remember details long after the train left. Can you see that? Some clerk sitting there going “Wait. How old was that soldier again? I’m just going to guess and say 38. Sounds right. And everyone else is dying from typhoid so yeah… he’s dying of typhoid too.” Or… I’ve also read in some cases when it was a soldier’s body coming through, they’d just sort of skirt the rules and let them go on to their home destination. Can you imagine telling a parent or spouse that they can’t have their loved one’s body because it didn’t have the right form?
However… another possibility lingers in my mind thanks to Jacob Hoke’s book Reminiscences of the War in which he recounts the letter John Nicoll sent to the Hoovers – you know, the people who sent Isaac’s Bible back home after the Rebel took it?[6] In his letter to the Hoovers dated July 24th… so just 22 days after Isaac’s death… John writes “A brother officer found his body, buried where it fell, erected a board at its head with his name, regiment, and company inscribed up on it. I have had it since taken up, but owing to the Government monopolizing the transportation, it proved ineffectual, and we were under the necessity of re-interring it until a more favorable opportunity offers for its removal.” That phrase there about “I have had it since taken up…” just lingers in my mind because who would you contact to do that on the Gettysburg end and so quickly that you know you can’t get it home in time to include that detail in a letter on July 24th? And where would he have been re-interred? Back on the field or in a cemetery temporarily? So many questions that just pop up with that scenario there if Hoke’s version is correct. So maybe the problem could have been in Gettysburg with maybe someone disinterring him and then someone else putting him on the train months later who didn’t know his information. Maybe it was two completely different undertakers that did it and maybe the last one didn’t have all the details correct. (Am I going down that research rabbit hole later? Absolutely.)
Regardless, Isaac did make it home. Sometimes we see in the paper notices of where an individual’s body had arrived for burial from out of state, but we didn’t find that with Isaac; funeral notices ran in NYC and in Newburgh on October 19th to announce his funeral on the 20th. I imagine he arrived home in Washingtonville on the 15th or 16th. It would take a day or two to decide on arrangements with the church/cemetery and to get notices printed. So, there is this progression of him coming through on the 14th in the Bodies in Transit registers and then his funeral/burial notice published within days that fairly much leave no doubt that this entry is his. I can see where some might argue that it wasn’t him in the register because of all the errors. Maybe if it was anyone else with a more generic story or name, sure. But how could it not be him all things considered – first and foremost, he’s the only Nicoll to have died at Gettysburg from Washingtonville. Coupled with the matching funeral notice just days later, it’s most definitely him on that train.
It was a neat little unexpected find and I feel it puts to rest the story that ran in the paper(s) about “friends from home going out to retrieve him.” I mean, maybe they tried but… that story also went along with the whole hokey Masonic burial thing that kept going around. I think it made for “feel good press” at the time, but the truth was waiting in a register in the NYC Health Department. At least now we can tell the captain’s story a bit more truthfully based on fact and not 1863 fiction.
P.S. – I do have an additional set of records to share for Isaac’s story but I’m going to save those for another day.
[1] Hilton, A. (2018, June 15). Bodies in Transit. Retrieved July 9, 2023, from https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2018/6/14/bodies-in-transit
[2] City of New York (n.d.). Bodies in Transit registers. The New York City Municipal Archives Collection Guides. Retrieved July 9, 2023, from https://a860-collectionguides.nyc.gov/repositories/2/resources/13
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ruane, M. E. (2013, September 13). After 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, a grisly but noble enterprise to honor the fallen. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/after-1863-battle-of-gettysburg-a-grisly-but-noble-enterprise-to-honor-the-fallen/2013/09/12/769c47e6-163c-11e3-a2ec-b47e45e6f8ef_story.html
[5] LaRocca, C. J. (2012). The 124th New York State Volunteers in the Civil War: A History and Roster. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.
[6] Hoke, J. (1884). Reminiscences of the War; or Incidents Which Transpired In and About Chambersburg, During the War of the Rebellion. M.A. Foltz.
The Washingtonville Cemetery 