The Morrills and Reminiscences - C. H. Morrill

This army corps was under the command of General Burnside.
Shortly after we were mustered in, our regiment joined the Army of the Potomac. General Burnside was soon afterward made Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Potomac. Our first engagement was the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. General Burnside prepared for an attack on the Rebel army. The Federal troops were on one side of the Rappahannock River, while the Rebels under "Stonewall" Jackson occupied the other side. The Rebel forces had possession of the city of Fredericksburg. Their main army was on much higher ground in the rear. About the time General Burnside had his forces marshaled ready for the attack, rain began to fall in torrents, the country was flooded, and Burnside's army was stuck in the mud. The attack was abandoned for the time. Some weeks afterward our army was again ready. The central attack in front of the city was begun by a fierce cannonading, which lasted about twenty-four hours. Our men made several efforts to place pontoon bridges across the river. The Rebel sharp-shooters kept up a fusillade from buildings near the river bank, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the pontoon bridges were placed. When this was accomplished, our army, consisting of nearly 100,000 men, crossed the river and attacked General Jackson's forces on the heights above the city. Our soldiers were obliged to charge up the hill in the face of a terrible fire of cannon and musketry. The Rebels were located on the top of

the ridge behind a stone wall. It was in this battle that General Jackson was dubbed "Stonewall." After several attacks by our troops, with fearful loss, we were ordered to retreat. We recrossed the river and again occupied our old camping ground. Our regiment lost more than 200 men. The loss to the whole Federal Army in this battle was 12,653.
     We were afterward sent to Kentucky. We marched from Covington to Lexington, where we camped for about two months. We were then ordered south and marched through Cumberland Gap to Knoxville, Tennessee. Here, surrounded by Confederates, we were driven into the city of Knoxville. During the siege we were almost without food. Corn on the cob and dry bran constituted our rations for many weeks. At last the Federal Army, coming from Nashville, drove the Rebels away and we were again free.
     From Knoxville we again marched through Cumberland Gap to Cincinnati, Ohio, where we received orders to go to Vicksburg, Mississippi. This was during the siege of Vicksburg. We remained near the city, under artillery fire from the Rebel forts, until the surrender. We then went north by boat and soon joined the Army of the Potomac under General Grant. We were engaged in the battle of Spottsylvania, and in other battles down to Petersburg. During the siege of Petersburg our regiment was under continuous artillery fire.
     In all, the Eleventh New Hampshire regiment had mustered into its ranks about 1,500 men. When

General Lee surrendered, we had but a few over 200 in line. We lost our colonel, our lieutenant-colonel, and our major; some of the officers were killed and some taken prisoners. Nearly all of the companies in our regiment were commanded by non-commissioned officers.
At the close of the war, after three years' service, I was discharged. In September, 1862, just before enlisting in the army, I had married Harriet Z. Currier of Nashua, New Hampshire. After my discharge from the army we resided in Nashua for about one year. While there I worked in a machine shop and received as wages 75 cents a day. In six months my pay was increased to $1.25 a day. I realized that it would be impossible to provide a comfortable home for a family on so small a wage; and therefore, determined to take Horace Greeley's advice, I went to Rockford, Illinois, where I found work in a soap factory at $50.00 a month.

Although I had never been a farmer, I was ambitious to be the owner of a farm, and I soon determined to go farther west in search of a government homestead. With this end in view I purchased a team of horses, and in the spring of 1866 my wife and I, in a covered emigrant wagon, started west. I had no knowledge of the country west of Illinois, and no definite idea where to locate. After three days' travel we reached Savanna on the Mississippi River. There was no bridge

and everyone had to cross in a ferry-boat. As we were waiting for the boat I made the acquaintance of Mr. J. P. Smith and wife. Mr. Smith was a Yankee from New Hampshire; he had been in the West several years. He was also seeking a western home on government land. He had some knowledge of central Iowa, as he had looked the region over the year before, and had decided to locate near Webster City. I gladly accepted his invitation to join his party. We made the journey by easy stages. Neither family had children. The trip was one of the most enjoyable of my life.
After about three weeks we arrived at Webster City. There we learned that government land could probably be had about fifteen miles south. We then went to a small settlement, known as Hooks Point, now called Stratford, located about half-way between Webster City and Boone. The land there was very flat, and in wet seasons crops were damaged by too much moisture. The land on which I located was a portion of what was known as Des Moines River Land.
The following is a short history of the Des Moines River Lands as they were known in 1866.

In 1846 a grant was made by Congress to the State of Iowa to aid in making the Des Moines River navigable. This grant consisted of every alternate section of land embraced in a strip five miles on either side of the Des Moines River from its mouth to Racoon Fork, a distance of 100 miles, making a total of 900,000 acres.


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