Belle Prairie teacher big part of 1st Minnesota

Henry Taylor was born in Massachusetts, later moved with his family to Illinois and went to college in Iowa.

He ended up settling in Cass County, Missouri — which is where he died in the first decade of the 20th century.

But along the way, there was a stop in Morrison County. Which is how the then-school teacher from Belle Prairie came to play his role as part of perhaps the most remembered military unit in Minnesota history.

Both Henry (full name Patrick Henry Taylor) and his older brother Isaac were members of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War — a group that saw action in many of that conflict's pivotal battles including Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg and, most famously, Gettysburg, where today a monument commemorating the pivotal role the unit played in that engagement now stands.

"There's no question about it, the story of that regiment is really the story of the Civil War in many ways," said Richard Moe, the former president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the author of 1993's "The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers."

It is a story worth remembering this Memorial Day. And one that can be drawn in large part from diaries and letters both Henry and Isaac wrote during those years.

Henry had first arrived in Belle Prairie in 1859. His aunt Elizabeth Taylor Ayer and her husband Frederick had already established a mission there in the late 1840s. And Henry taught both in Belle Prairie and in nearby Little Falls until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

"She had written back to her family out east and I think that's what drew a number of her relatives in this direction," said Mary Warner, manager at the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum in Little Falls.

Henry had lost sight in one eye as a child when he was struck by a flying wood chip from his father's chopping block. He feared that might preclude him from serving in the conflict, but on a trip to St. Cloud, he met a recruiter for the 1st Minnesota and promptly signed up.

"I am the only one who goes from Belle Prairie," he wrote his parents in one of the many letters and diary entries from the brothers included in Moe's definitive book on the unit.

"I have taught two weeks on my term in Little Falls, but you know schools come after Law and Government. I shall probably take the oath day after tomorrow. The 'Star Spangled Banner, o long may it wave.' "

Isaac — then living in Illinois — came north to Minnesota to assume Henry's teaching duties. But a few months later, he joined his brother.

Henry saw his first action at the first Battle of Bull Run, according to "Campaigning With the First Minnesota: A Civil War Diary," edited by Hazel C. Wolf and available on the Minnesota Historical Society website. Both brothers then saw action at Ball's Bluff.

Henry was wounded — though not seriously — at the Battle of Savage's Station in June 1862. And it was there the brothers each elected to stay behind to take care of their more injured comrades — a decision that meant being taken prisoner by the Confederate Army.

"We hesitated for we had no orders to stay," Isaac wrote in a letter again included in Moe's book. "But the boys were suffering from thirst; they were lying on the ground in the open air, and it had already commenced to rain. Who would dress their wounds and take care of them on the morrow when the burning sun would pour his rays upon them?"

The two spent months as prisoners of war, being held, among other places, on Belle Island in the James River near Richmond, Virginia — the capital of the Confederacy.

"They volunteered to be taken prisoner so they could take care of their fellow soldiers who were wounded," Moe said. "That says everything about these two brothers."

The Taylors were both eventually paroled and found their way back to the 1st Minnesota, which is how they came to be at Gettysburg in the first days of July 1863.

On the second day of the battle — July 2 — the regiment was ordered to charge a much larger Confederate force and succeeded at great cost in preventing the Union forces from being pushed off Cemetery Ridge, a key part in the eventual outcome.

Most of the men present at the time were killed in that effort. Among them was Isaac Taylor, whose body was later discovered by his brother.

"A shell struck him on top of his head and passed out through his back, cutting his belt in two," recorded a still-grieving Henry. "The poor fellow did not know what hit him."

The task of burying his brother and notifying his family fell to Henry as well.

"That had to be excruciating for him," Moe said. "His letters home are the most poignant letters of that kind I've ever read. He speaks so eloquently of Isaac and what he meant to him."

Henry was mustered out of the army after his three-year enlistment ended, though he re-enlisted 10 months later and served until July 1865, by which time the war had ended.

He eventually moved to Missouri, and according to the Cass County Historical Society, he had seven children and co-founded Patrons and Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Co.

He was later elected as associate judge of the county court from the south district and served as a deacon in the Baptist church.

But it is his time in Minnesota, and with the unit in which he served, for which he is best remembered.

"Both Henry and his brother believed in what they were doing," Moe said. "They were passionately devoted to their country and they fought for the country as they knew it.

"They really represented the best both Minnesota and the Union had to offer."

This column is the opinion of Times writer Frank Rajkowski. Call him at 255-8772 or email him at frajkowski@stcloudtimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @rajko1972 and like him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sctimesfrank.