Albert E Studley: 1846-1864, our killer angel

“In the dark of the trees he could smell splintered wood and see white upturned faces like wide white dirty flowers.”
― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

After our second great grandfather George Studley and the 19th Maine buried the dead at Gettysburg, the pursuit of Lee began on foot back into Virginia, sometimes subsisting on half rations, men overcome by heat dying by the roadside, others thankful just to be alive, at one point 36 miles without rest or sleep.  Through the fall of 1863, they engaged the Confederates at Bristoe Station for a solid sixty hours and weathered the bitter cold of the December Battle of Mine Run.

Unlike other regiments, the 19th sustained few desertions.  They settled onto Cole’s Hill for the winter encampment and many of the men and officers were granted a fifteen day furlough that December.

Likely George, now an officer,  took advantage of the furlough to return to Camden, Maine, and the family he had been away from for sixteen months.  Harriet had been pregnant with our great grandfather, Sidney, when George enlisted in 1862.  While George was away at war, she cared for their six children ranging from age 8 months to teenager, as well as trying to make ends meet.  George was a carpenter so the family likely had only his service pay for support.  Her mother had died several years earlier, and her father was elderly.

Albert was the oldest of George and Harriet’s six children, three girls and three boys, in a family whose roots extended into the early 1600’s in Maine and Massachusetts.  He was 5’3” - not a big guy - with light complexion and grey eyes.  His great-grandfather had been one of the earliest settlers in the area and his mother’s side immigrants to the Plymouth, Massachusetts area, all sturdy stock to endure the privation of the times.

Albert E. Studley
Inscription on back of photo:  Albert E. Studley, born Camden, Maine
Mustered in at Belfast March 1st, 1864
Killed May 10th 1864 at Spotsylvania Court House
5 ft. 3 in, light complexion, grey eyes
6th Battery Light Artillery

 

At age 38 in 1862, father George was no spring chicken to be a soldier.  He enlisted in that early part of the war when men were volunteering to fight for the cause.  His 42 year old brother, Benjamin, enlisted in the 28th Maine Infantry, also in 1862, and brother, John III, in the 12th Maine Infantry in 1865 at age 42.  Their father, John Studley, Jr., fought in the War of 1812.

Such was the setting for George’s oldest son, Albert, turning 18 when his father returned home on furlough that December.  It is no surprise  then, that Albert enlisted in the First Battalion, 6th Maine Light  Artillery Regiment just a couple months later on February 29, 1864.

To give some background, “light artillery” are units whose cannoneers are individually horse mounted to allow the battery to travel faster.  They would operate with little organizational structure, assigned to go where needed.

With the standard six weeks of training, Albert would have joined the 6th Maine Light Infantry veterans of Gettysburg in mid-April 1864.  During Albert’s brief military career, the 6th Maine Light Infantry traveled with the 12th Corps, Army of the Potomac.  His father, George, was attached to the 19th Maine, 2nd Corps, but both Corps were engaged in the brutal and unrelenting Overland Campaign starting with the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864.

The Overland was a fight of two Titans, Generals Lee and Grant, opening with Grant electing to cross the Rapidan River downstream from the Confederate defenses, thinking perhaps Lee would not engage in the tangled thicket known as The Wilderness.

On May 5th, the first day in the Battle of The Wilderness, the 19th Maine had some action but on the 6th they hotly engaged superior numbers of Confederates while fires raged through the woods and at one point the breastworks of the 19th were on fire, “in some places Longstreet planted their colors on our works…the loss was severe.”  A Confederate offensive drove the Union Army back, and with this Grant responded by shifting 10 miles south to Spotsylvania Court House to place the Union Army between Lee and Richmond and find more favorable ground for battle.

The whereabouts of Albert and the 6th Maine Light Artillery during the Battle of the Wilderness are not known to this writer but the 19th Maine diarist at one point on the second day mentions the 6th Maine Battery.  The Wilderness, however, was an infantry battle and the 6th's battery of cannons of little use.

The 19th Maine’s commander, Seldon Connor, was wounded in the Wilderness and replaced by Major Welch.  The Second Corps moved south toward Spotsylvania on May 8th; the 19th Regiment's diarist writes,

“the experience of the last three days cast its shadow over the troops.  As they marched away, the men of the Regiment, unaccustomed to weeping, looked, with moistened eyes and quivering lips, into the burning woods behind them, where so many of their comrades lay, unburied, comrades who, in their dear old homes, had been their neighbors and schoolmates.”

Lee was able to maneuver his troops south of Grant, and on May 9th the 19th Maine engaged at the Po River.  Both sides built earthworks with some skirmishing going on in preparation for the confrontation at Spotsylvania Court House.  On the 10th, the 19th Maine took part in the charge on Laurel Hill held by the Confederates, the main obstacle to taking Spotsylvania Court House,

“the soldiers would cheerfully respond to any order General Hancock might give.  Our Division had more confidence because he was there.  So when the order was given to charge, Webb’s Brigade went forward with the rest of the line, with a wild rush toward the nearest point of the Confederate works.  On account of the trees and underbrush it was impossible to keep a regular line of battle.  The works to be captured were on higher ground, but the troops never reached the Confederate entrenchments.”

While George’s regiment was charging Laurel Hill on May 10, somewhere nearby young Albert was engaged in some of his first serious action when wounded by a shell.  He was moved to a field hospital and died the following day.

Private Albert E. Studley was originally buried at Laurel Hill, Spotsylvania, and later moved to Fredericksburg National Cemetery, Plot # 767.

Although we don’t know the exact location of the 6th Maine on the 10th, the fact he was first buried on Laurel Hill indicates this as the site of the field hospital and that Albert was wounded nearby.  His father’s 19th Maine Regiment was engaged in the assault on Laurel Hill on the same day.

Being in the vicinity, George probably learned of his son’s death the same day.  Lieutenant George Studley had another year of bloody fighting before the war ended in June 1865.

Lt. Studley and his two brothers all survived the war.

Sources:  The History of the Nineteenth Regiment of Maine Volunteer infantgry, 1862-1865, John Day Smith, 1909.

Thanks to Theresa Thrush, our cousin who found Albert's photo among her mother's collection last summer.

The Cousins have created a Living Legacy to Albert through the Hallowed Ground Living Legacy Tree Planting Project to Commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil Way by planting and designating one tree for each of the 620,000 soldiers who died, each life as valuable as Albert's.

Kenmare to Killarney - Another Walk Done!

Monday, 8/22/11, Kenmare to Killarney.  We arose bright and early for our hike through Killarney National Park.  Dennis the taxi driver didn’t take us as far as we wanted but it was a lovely day for walking and there was a minimum of sucking muck and rocks.  The park is beautiful. 

Along the way, we passed a sheep standing up on a rock, bleating his fool head off.  I think he was lost and calling his herd.  “Where are you?”  It still haunts me.

We arrived at the pick-up spot where Dux the cab driver after a bit picked us up to transport us to the Mystic Rose Guest House.  That was a different kind of place, I tell you, as was Kaynes, where we had dinner. 

Back home to get ready for traveling to Iceland on the morrow.  Another walk done!  

Sneem to Kenmare - If you leave me by myself for long, I WILL spend money.

On Sunday, the taxi driver and I dropped Kathie and Kathleen off at Blackwater Bridge, along with Mary and Bree who had also played hooky from the trail the day before.  I got dropped off with the bags at Neidin House in Kenmare.

I walked to town to check out the place, bought some dental floss, an Irish language book, and an unframed JoAnne Yelen gicleé.  (The limited edition at the link is similar to mine but not nearly as beautiful!)  JoAnne was a hoot – she called her sister-in-law Pam about my foot.  She said her brother is also an artist but he prefers kayaking.  Obviously a very talented family.

I dropped my stuff off back at the B&B and then headed for lunch at Bread Crumb Café.  The food was so-so but I had a fun conversation with a 12 year old boy from Salamanca.  He spoke English quite well (he said he had learned at his “academy”) and wants to visit San Francisco and New York.  Cuteness.

I went back to the room to wait for Kathie and Kathleen but they didn’t get back until after 5 p.m. because they apparently got lost trying to find the place.  Kathie said that along the way she had met a John McGrath twin and would’ve had dinner with him if he’d asked.  No wonder they got lost.

Instead, we had dinner at Foley’s Bar, where Kathie and Kathleen had beef and Guinness pie and I had a roast veggie goat cheese tart with a gin and tonic.  Yum!  After dinner, we walked out to see the stone circle and then back home to prepare for our last day.  I would be hiking.  YAY!

Caherdaniel to Sneem - How Not to Lose Weight on a "Walk"

Saturday, 8/20/2011, was supposed to be a hike from Derrynane to Sneem.  Kathie was up in the night with an infected blister on her big toe.  When she said she couldn’t walk the trail that morning, you could have knocked me over with a feather.  Rather than Kathleen walk by herself, we all three caught a ride with Patrick to Sneem.  We stopped along the way to see Staigue Fort, a defensive ringfort thought to have been built by some local lord or king back in the 4th century AD.  Below, Kathleen and I inside Staigue Fort.

In Sneem, we walked from our B&B, the Coomasig View, downtown, past a family of white sheep with one black sheep.  I guess there’s one in every family.

In a lovely little yarn store, I bought some wool yarn.  We visited a graveyard, where an English Lady Albina Broderick was buried.  She had moved to Ireland and started a hospital and school, and she wore raggedy clothes.  That’s all I know about her.  Here’s a plaque that tells her story.

Charleston isn’t the only town with a Rainbow Row, I guess.

Kathleen did a four hour hike by herself while Kathie and I had carrot and parsnip soup with salad at the Village Kitchen, followed by ice cream – Bailey’s Cream for Kathie and rum with raisin for me.  You just can’t find that kind of stuff around Charleston.

At the “chemist”, we bought some foot pad stuff and then walked home.  Along the way, we passed this house that we thought was pretty nifty.

Kathie soaked her feet while I wrote notes and napped.  Then we went out for dinner at Sacré Coeur Restaurant.  We would NOT be losing weight on this trip, no sirree, Bob.

Waterville to Caherdaniel - Not Walking but Not Idle, Either...

So on Friday, 8/19/11, I caught a ride with our hostess’s husband to our next night’s lodging.  Along the way, my very pleasant driver and I chatted quite a bit.  He asked what we think of Obama in the U.S.  It’s always interesting to hear an outsider’s point of view on the US.

At the family-friendly Derrynane Hotel in Caherdaniel, I settled in and then tried to walk over to the village but went the wrong way.  I turned around to go the right way, but it was raining and the wind was blowing so hard that I gave up and went in to do laundry instead.  Get this – there’s no fee to use the laundry and the hotel even provides detergent!  The downside was the washer takes an hour and a half to do a load.  Still, you wouldn’t find that in the States.

I had some French onion soup for lunch in the window-walled lunch room/bar.  I even had a scone so I could linger a bit and enjoy my view of the ocean and outdoor pool.  When I couldn’t justify dillydallying any further, I checked out the sauna and steam room for use later, then went outside to try walking to the village again.  I hadn’t left the drive before meeting Kathleen and Kathie arriving from their day’s walk.  They looked like drowned rats.

While they settled, I finished up laundry.  Outside, the day turned sunny and beautiful.  We went outside to take some pics of the rocks and surf.  Joan, see that heart-shaped rock formation in the pic below?  I took that photo just for you!

Our dinner in the hotel’s dining room consisted of some very nice salmon and profiteroles.  Yum!  Of course, that all had to be followed by some basking in the sauna – or was that before dinner?  Or did we do it at all?  That’s the trouble with waiting two years to write up a vacation.

Thursday, 8/18/11, Cahersiveen to Waterville – Kinda Whiny on the Ring of Kerry.

Along with her new hubby, my Kelly will be taking off soon for a honeymoon in Scotland and Ireland.  Sweet!  Love both of those places, although that last walk in Ireland was a toughie.  I was inspired by Joan’s recent visit to Iceland to finish up the tale of our visit there; let’s see if I can finish up the account of our Ireland walk in August 2011.

The first day was a very long day but my energy didn’t flag.  It did, however, on the following day – perhaps because I was plum tuckered out from Wednesday.  So for me, Thursday was nine and half hours of muck and rock, gazillions of stiles to climb over, terrible directions, and cursing and blaspheming.  It occurred to me several times that I should not have come along on this walk with Kathie and Kathleen.

(For whatever reason, I posted the photos I took on Thursday with Wednesday’s account.  Guess that shows how closely Kathie reads my blogposts.  Sigh.  Here are some of Kathie’s pics from Thursday.)

BTW, cows are intimidated by the hands-on-your-hip stance.  Trust me, I have experience with this.

We arrived in Waterville after 7 p.m., had a bite at the Lobster Bar, and called our B&B for a pick-up.  Who picked us up but Anne, our Glenbeigh B&B’s hostess and sister of this evening’s hostess at the Golf Links View B&B?  Small world.

That evening, I noticed a blister growing under the edge of the nail on my left foot’s second toe.  What???  ARRRRGGGHHHH.  What a pain…literally.  If that baby popped while we were slogging through all that boggy muck, I would get a nasty infection.  Kathie took one look at it and suggested I take a cab the next day.  Damn.  She was right though.  

So, Kath, feel free to jump in any time here with your account of what happened over the next two days of walking with Kathleen.  I was MIA.

Wrapping it up.

I’m going to wrap this up now, k?

Sunday, August 28, 2011, the first day of clouds and rain in Reykjavik since we arrived.  We were supposed to travel home today, but due to Hurricane Irene’s closing JFK, we were stuck in Iceland for a few more days.  Oh darn!   Our apartment was already reserved by someone else, so Ellert agreed to move us into another of his apartments.  We left our bags in his office and walked over to the National Museum.   Here we learned, as Joan mentioned in her post,  that the male DNA of Icelanders is from Scandinavia and the female DNA is from the British Isles, meaning that when the Vikings’ women told the boys to go on without them, those plundering maniacs hit the drive-through for some girls to go.  Otherwise, we might have been Icelanders, Kath.

Leaving the museum, we hiked back to check in with Ellert, stopped at Bonus for groceries, and then walked on home for tuna sandwiches.  Delta had rebooked our return for six days later, so we spent the afternoon trying to find other flights that would get us home sooner.  Really, Delta?  Luckily, we were able to get flights out on Wednesday via Iceland Air.  This accomplished, we were whooped!  Kathie cooked chicken for salad and we watched CNN for a while, then went to bed.  (Post script:  In Delta’s defense, I understand from Kathie that Delta later refunded our fares.)

Monday, August 29^th – my birthday.  We slept in, had some breakfast, finished working on details for our return trip, showered, and had lunch.  We then walked along the shore drive, enjoying sculptures and architecture. 

If you can't read the sign on that last sculpture, be sure to enlarge it so you can.  

Back home for more salad, CNN, and reading.  The sun showed up exactly at 4 p.m. as predicted by Weather.com.  

On Tuesday, August 30th, we checked out of the apartment, left our bags with Ellert, and took off for the sculpture garden which we found was closed until 2 p.m.  Oh well, we’ll have to see that one when we visit again.   Along the way, we passed this interesting house.  

Yes, that’s grass on the roof.  Perhaps they have guinea pigs up there to eat the grass and keep it from getting too high?  I don’t suppose you could get a mower up there.

We strolled on over to the Nordic House on the campus of the University of Iceland.  

Nordic House was designed by Finnish modernist architect Aalvar Aalto in the sixties to house the university’s Nordic Languages department.  The building is one of his later works and features his signature traits, such as the ultramarine blue ceramic rooftop that takes its organic shape from the mountain row in the background, the central well in the library, and the extensive use of white, tile, and wood.  He also designed and installed the furnishings – lamps, furniture, book shelves, everything.  I so like Scandinavian design.

By now we were hungry so we decided to lunch in the facility’s Restaurant Dill, which serves “New Nordic” food.  We had some tasty Arctic char, while through the window we kept an eye on a fellow diner’s shepherd and another’s baby (left outside in its stroller).  Then we took a tour of the building with Aalvar (actually an actor since the real Aalvar has been dead since 1976), who told us that Restaurant Dill is the best in the city – or was that the best in Iceland?  

We hustled back to Ellert’s office to be picked up by Úlfar for the ride to our airport hotel (Hotel Keflavik).  Since it rained the rest of the afternoon and evening and there really wasn’t much to do outside the hotel, Kathie and I lazed around and read, had dinner, and went to bed – sad that we would leave Iceland in the morning.

Thus ended our fabulous trip to Iceland.  I hope you all don’t mind my memorializing these trips here – I think it’s so much nicer to read later than a diary.

The South Coast

Saturday, August 27, 2011.  This was to be our last day in Iceland.  Helke picked us up for the South Coast tour, along with Stephen and Kelly, a couple from Texas by way of DC.  It was a fun day with beautiful weather, sheep, cattle, Icelandic horses, volcanoes, cool rock formations, and waterfalls.

We drove along Route 1 down through the lava fields to get to the South Coast.  11% of the country is covered in lava fields.  A rather self-limiting factor when it comes to population growth, I would think.

We stopped for a bit in Eyrarbakki, an old trading/shipping village.  The church was built in 1890; its altarpiece was painted by Queen Louise of Denmark.  I was so stunned by the electric blue picket fence, however, that I didn’t notice any queenly altarpieces.

According to Wikipedia, Eyrarbakki was the main port on the south coast.  A young merchant sailed in 985 AD from Eyrarbakki for Greenland, but instead reached North America. On his return trip, he landed in Greenland where he told Leif Eriksson of his discovery and sold him his boat, which Eriksson used for his own journey to North America.  Today, Eyrarbakki’s primary employer is a prison, the largest in Iceland.  Can’t be a very big employer, though – I read somewhere that there are no more than 200 prisoners in the whole country.

If the light was different in the pic above of Eyrarbakki’s beach, you could almost imagine you’re looking at someone’s vacation photos from the Big Island of Hawaii.

We stopped and walked up to Skógafoss, this lovely waterfall.  I think the boys and Kathie ascended the stairs to the top.  Lump that I am, I did not.

Volcanoes.  On average, there is a volcanic eruption every five years.  From the van, Helke pointed out Hekla in the distance, but I’ll be honest with you – there were so many hills/mountains/glaciers in the area that I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one was which.  Hekla, however, was once believed to be the entrance to Hell.  We also passed Eyjafjallojokull, the one that erupted in 2010 and stopped air traffic to Europe for weeks.  Helke described the aftermath to us – volcanic ash turning the day to night, etc.  Frightening, and yet the farmers still work their land there just as they did before.

This must have been a volcano at some time.

 

We traveled on to Vik, where we stopped for lunch.  Such a scenic place!  We thought this church was maybe the one on the cover of our guidebook, and indeed it was – although the lovely lupines on the book had either all died or been photoshopped in.

The basalt needles in the photo above can be seen from Vik.  Legend has it that they were three trolls waiting to sink a ship.  The two on either side of the middle one look like they maybe should have spent some more time at the gym.

Check out this cool rock formation.  It’s called Dyrholaey.  It reminded me of an elephant with a very, very heavy trunk.  Poor guy.  Can elephants get elephantiasis?

On the other side of Dyrholaey from Vik is Reynisfjara, where Helke pointed to the puffins way out in the water.  There was a very cool audio effect here - the waves receding on the lava pebbles sounded a bit like going through a shell curtain.  The puffins and tinkling shell curtain sound, combined with the weird rectangular rock cubes covering the slope of Reynisfjall around this sea cave (Hálsanefshellir), make this off-the-beaten-path place unforgettable.  

There are so many waterfalls in Iceland, all generated from glacial meltwater.  After seeing Gullfoss yesterday and Skógafoss this morning, I figured I’d seen enough.  I mean, you see one waterfall, you’ve seen them all, right?  At this point, we stopped at yet another one, Seljalandsfoss.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was climbing the path to get behind the waterfall.  Not being one for crowds, I started to hang back but Stephen coaxed me into walking behind it.  I’m glad he did because, back there, it was like looking at a sheer sparkly white curtain of tiny moving droplets.  I tried to focus on one drop and trace its crashing drive to oblivion – mind-altering!

Another 11% of the country is covered in glaciers.  Our last stop for the day was at a glacier.  We walked up to the edge.  Look at the photo below – who needs color film?  There were some teens/twenty-somethings climbing up the steep face of the glacier in sneakers.  One slip and someone would have been severely injured – at least.  In response to Helke’s concerned call up to them, the young (overweight) man at the far left of the photo yelled back, “I’ve been doing this for 15 years”.  The girls looked scared, however.  

Kids.  Glad they weren’t mine.

All fun days must come to an end.  When we got back to Reykjavik, Kathie and I had dinner at Geysir (again) and then went home to watch CNN coverage of Hurricane Irene worrying the US’s East Coast.

Viking Poems

From a visitor’s guide that we picked up in Reykjavik:  “Hávamál are words of wisdom which served as spiritual provisions for the Vikings on their long journeys over rough sea to discover new lands.  These sayings are more than a thousand years old and give a valuable insight into the Viking way of thinking.”  Here are some examples.

A true friend
whom you trust well
and wish for his good will:
Go to him often
exchange gifts
and keep company.

Better weight
than wisdom
a traveler cannot carry.
The poor man’s strength
in a strange place,
worth more than wealth.

Huh?  How about this one…

He is truly wise
who's travelled far
and knows the ways of the world.
He who has travelled
can tell what spirit
governs the men he meets.

That’s kind of a no-brainer, hm, Kath?

No man should call
himself clever
but manage his mind.
A sage visitor
is a silent guest.
The cautious evades evil.
Never a friend
more faithful,
nor greater wealth, than wisdom.

Hmm.  Well, I think I get that one.  Here’s one I definitely get.

Ale
has too often
been praised by poets.
The longer you drink
the less sense
your mind makes of things.

Let’s try to keep that last one in mind as we’re walking pub to pub across England next month – ok, Pint Virgin?

Such Wisdom

Being a relatively small population, the people of Iceland are not only up on their current events, they are engaged.  While driving us along, our South Coast tour guide Helke candidly told us about the 2008 Icelandic bank failure that occurred when, he said, the banks were privatized to make them “more efficient”.  From a February 2013 Forbes article:  

Instead of allowing the criminals responsible for bank fraud to run free as the years passed by, Iceland thought it might be wise to actually indict bankers who committed serious financial crimes that contributed to the collapse. By paying off loans for consumers, forgiving homeowner debt (up to 110% of the property value), and throwing the offenders in prison, Iceland was able to bounce back. Now, its economy is “recovered” and is growing faster than both the US and European economies.

Their president’s comment, as quoted by Forbes:

"Why are the banks considered to be the holy churches of the modern economy?  Why are private banks not like airlines and telecommunication companies and allowed to go bankrupt if they have been run in an irresponsible way? The theory that you have to bail out banks is a theory that you allow bankers enjoy for their own profit, their success, and then let ordinary people bear their failure through taxes and austerity. 
People in enlightened democracies are not going to accept that in the long run.”

Such wisdom.

Golden Circle, Extreme

Friday, August 26th.  This morning, a lady driver by the name of Rex (pronounced like Rags) picked us up late for the Golden Circle Extreme tour.  Already in the van was Daniel, a photographer from Seattle.  Our itinerary – big rocks, big glacier-going buses, big waterfalls, and, well, not so big geysers.

We had a set time to get to the glacier, so we pretty much flew through Þingvellir, a narrow valley between two walls of rock.  What’s really nifty about this place is that you can stand in one spot and have one foot on the American continental plate and the other one on the European continental plate.  Honest!  It’s the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs north and south through the country.  The plates are slowly drifting apart, resulting in volcanic eruptions, geothermal activity (geysers and hot springs), and the occasional earthquake.  Check it out.

The first Icelandic parliament convened in this area in 930 AD, making Iceland’s one of the oldest continuously operating parliaments.  The flagpole in the pic below marks the Law Rock, where the law speaker recited the laws by memory.  The cliff behind created a natural amphitheater.

The surrounding plain hosted the campers who came for the festivities.  It’s full of small crevices caused by the plate movement.  Kind of like stretch marks.

On to snow (ice) mobiling on a glacier.  It was a long, bumpy road to get to the glacier…

…and an equally bumpy ride on the snowmobile.  Good thing Kathie drove.

After lunch (at 4 p.m.!), we visited Gullfoss, or Golden Falls.  Massive and deafening.

Then on to Strokkur, a geyser that erupts every 5 minutes or so.  Waiting between eruptions, Kathie and I watched the guys sitting on the benches with their cameras poised to get a great shot.  The longer the wait between eruptions, the more spectacular the blow.  Fun!

On the way back, we stopped by Kerith crater.  Nice colors.

Back home, we hiked to the little shop down the street for pizza and Coke carryout, the universal Friday night dinner.