The life and family of Hiram Hamilton

Killed in Action on the USS Mound City, June 17, 1862

The service history of Hiram Hamilton, who served in the Western Gunboat Service during the Civil War, is complicated due to a mix-up with the records. His widow mistakenly used the military records of a different and much younger Illinois soldier, an infantryman named Hiram S. Hamilton, for her pension applications.

It seems that Hiram was estranged from his family when he enlisted in the Union army in 1861. This may have led to his wife being unclear about the specifics of his military service or the circumstances of his death. In her pension application, her lawyer stated that their claim was based on “newspaper accounts of his death from general reports and knowing that said Hiram Hamilton enlisted in the service of the United States.” However, through the combined efforts of family members, DNA analysis of Hiram's descendants, and examination of Civil War pension files, we have been able to identify our Hiram Hamilton from the Civil War records and piece together a likely account of his life and service.

Chronology of Hiram Hamilton and Family

1822

• Estimated Birth Year: Hiram Hamilton is believed to have been born in 1822, based on his age (40) mentioned in his later military records, his age range in the 1855 Illinois State Census, and information that we know about his siblings. [11]

• Birthplace: Likely Central or Western New York State, possibly Allegany County, where his family resided in 1830 and where his brother John P. Hamilton was born in 1828.

• Siblings: Hiram is thought to be the third child among nine siblings of John & Altha (Judd) Hamilton.

1831

• The Hamilton family relocated to Sangamon County, Illinois after the 1830 census.

1851

• October 5, 1851. Hiram Hamilton marries Zilpha Wilder (née Vancil), a young widow, in Tazewell County, Illinois. Hiram is around 29, Zilpha between 19-22. Hiram becomes a stepfather to Nancy Jane Wilder, born in 1850. [1] [2]

1852

• September 11, 1852. Birth of their first child, Mary E. Hamilton, near Circleville, Tazewell County, Illinois. [1]

1855

• January 3, 1855. Birth of second child, Hiram Edmond Hamilton, near Egypt (Manito), Mason County, Illinois. [1]

• Illinois State Census. Hiram, Zilpha and children are listed in the Illinois State Census living next door to Zilpha’s parents, John and Nancy (Tuley) Vancil, in Malone, Tazewell County, Illinois. Hiram's occupation is listed as, "Blacksmith Shop" with its "Value of Manufacture" given at $1,510. Malone is located in Township 22, Range 5. [8]

1857

• April 26, 1857. Birth of Susannah Hamilton, their fourth child, near Egypt (Manito), Mason County, Illinois. [1]

1859

• March 6, 1859. Birth of their last child, Tobias Hamilton, near Egypt (Manito), Illinois. [1]

1859 - 1861

Hiram Hamilton separated from his family and in-laws in Tazewell County and, by the summer of 1861 at the latest, was living near his sister, Elizabeth (Hamilton) Foland, and family near Plattesville, Wisconsin. [3]

1860

• June 19, 1860, US Census, Cincinnati, Tazewell, Illinois. Hiram’s wife, Zilpha (Delphia) Hamilton and children are listed (as they were in the 1855 Illinois Census), living next door to the household of Hiram’s in-laws, John and Mary Vancil. Hiram Hamilton is not listed in the census, and his wife is listed as a ‘Widow.’

Zilpha’s status as a ‘widow’ tells us that Hiram was gone and that she was considered to be without a husband. I have seen the same census designation in this era for a woman who was divorced or abandoned. If Hiram was known to have actually died before 1860, rather than just left, then it seems unlikely that he would have been later assumed killed in the Civil War. Hiram's youngest son, Tobias Hamilton, later said in his prison inmate entrance interview that his father died when he was an 'infant.' That would have been around 1859-60 and may mean that Tobias, nor the family, ever knew what really happened to their father, Hiram Hamilton, after he left. [10]

1861 - 1862

• August 10, 1861, at around 39 years of age, Hiram Hamilton enlisted in Company C of the 7th Wisconsin Infantry. He was joined by his two nephews, William Wallace Foland and Felix Lafayette Foland, with the enlistment taking place in Plattesville, Wisconsin. [3] [5] [6] [11]

• Deposition of William Wallace Foland, in July 1920, for his Civil War pension application: “I lived around Platteville, Wis., from the time I was a child till 1861, when I enlisted in Co. C, 7th Wis. Inf. I don’t know the exact date, but it was while they were harvesting wheat and must have been August. My brother, Felix Lafayette Foland, enlisted the same time. We enlisted there at Platteville. My uncle Hiram Hamilton enlisted in the same company at the same time.” … “My uncle Hiram Hamilton, was in the company but he was transferred to the gun boats and was killed on Red River, I understood.” [3]

• Hiram Hamilton transfers from Co. C, 7th Wis. Inf. into the Western Gunboat service as a ‘brown water’ seaman and is assigned to the USS Mound City. [6] [11]

• June 17, 1862. Hiram Hamilton, seaman, is killed in an explosion on the USS Mound City after it had been hit during action in the Battle of St. Charles River. [11] [15] [14]

1863

• June 26, 1863. Twenty Four year old Hiram S. Hamilton of Indiana, is killed by a Minié ball during the battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Hiram S. Hamilton is listed without age in the published rolls of the battle dead. This person is not our Hiram Hamilton. [1]

• August 6, 1863. Living in Circleville, Tazewell County, Illinois, 35 year old Zilpha Hamilton applied for a widow’s pension for her late husband Hiram Hamilton. She attests that she is the widow of Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton, Company D, 31st Illinois Infantry, who was killed at the battle of Vicksburg as published in newspaper casualty lists.

This was not correct. Whether Zilpha knew this was an error or not, we cannot say. She did receive her widows’ pension of $8/month in 1864 backdated to June 26, 1863 [1]. Her actual husband, Hiram Hamilton, of the USS Mound City had been killed in action the year before on June 17, 1862.

1865

• September 28, 1865. Hiram Hamilton’s widow, Zilpha, remarries, Edward Hohl in Tazewell County, Illinois [1]

1866

• January 6, 1866. Zipha appears before the Tazewell County Clerk and swears out an application for a pension for the minor children of the late Hiram Hamilton. Zilpha continues to misuse the service record of Hiram S. Hamilton, on the application. It could be that they did not know what had happened to her husband, Hiram Hamilton, and they used the records that the pension attorney, A. B. Sawyer, uncovered from the newspaper and then augmented with information from the Adjutant General’s Office. [1]

• February 9, 1866. The Adjutant General’s Office in DC writes back acknowledging her pension application for her minor children, application number, 119834.

1874 - 1877

• Death of Zilpha Vancil-Wilder-Hamilton-Hohl. Tobias Hamilton told prison officials that he was 15 years old when his mother died, or approximately 1874. [10] That being said, on his record in the Tazewell Almshouse in March of 1877 he seems to indicate that his mother is yet living. [24]

More on Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton

It’s perhaps helpful to share some details on the life of the ‘other Hiram’, the soldier, Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton, whose service record was used by Zilpha Hamilton in place of her husband’s on her Civil War widow and guardian pension applications. The more we learn about Hiram S. Hamilton the clearer it is that he could not have been the husband of Zilpha.

Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton served in Co. D of the 31st Illinois Infantry Regiment. A 22-year-old single farmer from southern Illinois, he enlisted on August 22, 1861, in Vienna, Johnson County, Illinois. He was born in Indiana and was later killed in the battle of Vicksburg by a Minié ball gunshot wound to the head on June 26, 1863. He died unmarried and without heirs [13].

The timeline makes it impossible for Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton to have been Zilpha's husband. They would have had to be married when he was just 12 years old. Records show that Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton was living with his family in Pope County, Illinois, in the 1850 Census [15]. He was later working as a single farmhand in Johnson County, Illinois, in the 1860 Census [16], just before his enlistment in 1861. They were never married and Johnson County is a long way from Tazewell County.

DNA Identification of the family of Hiram Hamilton

I have been researching the Civil War era ‘Hiram Hamiltons’ off and on since 2003, looking for a likely match to the Hiram who was a son of John & Altha (Judd) Hamilton of Western NY and Central Illinois. In 2017, I made a visit to the National Archives in Washington, DC and looked through all available records on the ‘Hiram Hamiltons’ in the Civil War. That being said, I did not really begin to make progress until we confirmed the identity of multiple of Hiram's living descendants through AncestryDNA autosomal DNA test matches.

The first breakthrough came in November 2018. Since then we’ve identified fifteen living descendents of Hiram Hamilton and Zilpha Vancil that are close AncestryDNA matches to their cousins who descend from other siblings of Hiram Hamilton, with matches across all the other Hamilton sibling families. This provides very strong DNA evidence that the Hiram Hamilton and Zilpha Vancil family of Tazewell County, Illinois is our Hiram Hamilton family.

Paper trail and Civil War Pension Records

This story could not have been told without AncestryDNA matches and without the pension records from the National Archives, of Hiram’s nephews, William Wallace Foland and Felix Lafayette Foland. One record of exceptional value, is the Civil War pension deposition of William Wallace Foland of July 1920. In his deposition, William tells his life story and talks about not only his mother, Elizabeth (Hamilton) Foland-McCann-Cross, but his ‘uncle Hiram Hamilton’ who joined the army with them in 1861 and then transferred to and was killed in action in the Western Gunboat Service. This deposition along with the DNA evidence is strong proof that the Hiram Hamilton, who married Zilpha Vancil in 1851, was the Hiram Hamilton who was killed in the explosion of the USS Mound City on June 17th, 1862.

Putting the paper trail pieces together has been a long process. It's a project that Byron Hamilton, Tom Jackson and I have worked on with the help of documents and members from the Tazewell County Historical Society in Illinois. One of the historical society's active Life members is Richard “Rich” Brehmer of Deer Creek, Tazewell County, Illinois. Rich is also a Vancil family historian and the great grandson of Zilpha's brother, Edmund Vancil.

Post-Script: The Difficulty of Circleville, Tazewell County, Illinois

The area in which Hiram and family lived (Circleville, Sand Prairie Township, Tazewell County, Illinois) was a somewhat lawless region with a storied outlaw reputation. It may have been a tough place to have a business and raise a family. It was dangerous enough that after the Civil War the Sheriff from Pekin avoided going there unless compelled to do so by serious crime. [17] With the estrangement and then complete loss of their father, Hiram’s children may have endured difficult and even traumatic times.

Living in Circleville were the notorious brothers, William "Bill", Emanuel "Man", Isaac "Ike", and Simeon Berry. They were known as the "The Berry Gang." Here is a summary of their story from the book, "Lynch Law", written by a member of the Tazewell County, Historical Society.

"The Berry Gang - This gang of horse-thieves and road agents terrorized the people of Tazewell County for years during the late 1860's. On 30 July 1869, they became involved in a gunfight with a sheriff's posse at Circleville. During the fight, Ike Berry fatally shot deputy sheriff Henry Pratt. Over the next few days there would be a massive manhunt, mob action, and ultimately, a lynching." [18]

Hiram Hamilton’s daughter, the teenager Mary E. Hamilton, was friends with the Berry Gang's mother. She knew them all. She talked to Ike Berry when he came to his mom's house during his flight as a fugitive from the posse. Mary was called to testify at Ike Berry's murder trial. We have excerpts of Mary Hamilton's testimony as published in the paper at the time.

Shortly after Ike Berry’s trial and conviction, Mary E. Hamilton was married at age 17 to a much older Berry family member, a widower, John Berry, who was 67 years old.

Hiram's two sons, Hiram Edmond Hamilton and Tobias Hamilton would serve time in the Joliet Illinois State Penitentiary. Tobias was there three times for multiple years. Hiram Edmond Hamilton and a friend would serve prison time as adults for beating his older sister, Mary E. (Hamilton) Berry, and "mopping the floor with her."

Of Hiram's children, Hiram E. Hamilton and Mary E. Hamilton married and have living descendants today. Susannah Hamilton married but we have not yet located her descendants. The youngest child, Tobias Hamilton, never married.

Tobias would seem to have had the most difficult life and not only had multiple stints in prison but was destitute later in life and in 1877 was nursed back to health from a fever in the county poorhouse, the Tazewell County Almshouse. [24]

Sources:

[1] Hiram-S-Hamilton-Dependents-Civil-War-Pension-File.pdf

[2] Illinois Marriage Index. Tazewell County, Illinois Court Records, Film # 1314686 - 1314688.

[3] William-Wallace-Foland-US-Civil-War-Service-and-Pension-Records-from-the-US-National-Archives.pdf

[4] Felix-Lafayette-Foland-Mothers-US-Civil-War-Pension-File-Elizabeth-Hamilton-Foland-McCann-Cross.pdf

[5] Hiram Hamilton, Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers: War of the Rebellion.

[6] Foland, Hamilton: Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, Internet Archives. Company C, 7th. Wisc. Infantry, Grant Co.

[7] Hiram-Hamilton-USS-Mound-City-Co-C-7th-Wisconsin-Infantry-US-Civil-War.pdf

[8] 1855 Illinois State Census, family of Hiram Hamilton, Malone, Tazewell, Illinois

[9] 1860 US Census, family of Zilphia (Delphia) Hamilton, ‘widow’ of Hiram Hamilton, Cincinnati, Tazewell, Illinois

[10] Tobias Hamilton, Joliet Penitentiary entrance interview. March 1893, Joliet, Illinois.

[11] Hiram Hamilton, Civil War Documents.

[12] USS Mound City, Wikipedia.

[13] Pvt. Hiram S. Hamilton, Illinois, U.S. Databases of Illinois Veterans, 1775-1995. Born. abt. 1839.

[14] Chicago Tribune, Hiram Hamilton, killed in action on the USS Mound City, June 17, 1862

[15] Hiram S. Hamilton, 1850 US Census, with his immediate family in Pope County, Illinois. Not our Hiram Hamilton.

[16] Hiram S. Hamilton, 1860 US Census, single man working in Johnson County, Illinois. Not our Hiram Hamilton.

[17] The Berry Gang of Circleville, Tazewell, Illinois.

[18] Lynch Law, By Jim Conover, James E. Brecher · 1992

[19] Chicago Tribune, 27 Nov 1869, Sat, Page 1 Mary E. Hamilton testifies in Berry Gang trial.

[20] The Pantagraph - Bloomington, Illinois, 22 Jul 1885 Hiram Edmund Hamilton arrested for beating older sister.

[21] The Pantagraph - Bloomington, Illinois, 18 Sep 1885, p. 4 Tobias Hamilton arrested for burglary and larceny.

[22] The Pantagraph - Bloomington, Illinois, 22 Sep 1885, p. 4 Tobias Hamilton, pleads guilty for burglary and larceny.

[23] The Pantagraph - Bloomington, Illinois, 24 Sep 1885, p. 3 Tobias Hamilton, serves 3 years at Joliet State Prison.

[24] Tazewell County Almshouse Register 1871 - 1918, courtesy of Rich Brehmer.