"The Civil War era graffiti from Beverly tells the stories of very ordinary people who wished to be remembered at a time when our nation was fighting through the evils of slavery, racism, inequality, and factionalism"
For my time at the Beverly Heritage Center, I could talk about how exciting it was to restore a stained glass window to the Beverly Bank Building through a window cling. I could also talk about what it was like to connect with a descendant of an enslaved woman who lived in Beverly in the mid-19th century who was researching her family’s history. But the most exciting part about my time in Beverly this year was discovering the earliest known bit of graffiti from the Civil War.
Now is an extremely curious time for Civil War sites. People are questioning monuments, battlefields, and gravestones connected to this period in history, and rightly so. Sometimes the discussion is fruitful, sometimes it is chaotic, but one of the most frustrating things about the discussion is that the issue central to it only focuses on the “great men” of both sides. One of the most forgotten elements of the American Civil War is the experience of everyday people caught in the fray. The graffiti that the people left on the walls in Beverly shows the agency, individuality, humor, sorrows, and experiences of ordinary folk caught up in this time.
Chris Mielke (right) and Chris Mills (left). Mills is a conservator who specializes in restoration of Civil War era graffiti.
My specific task was to survey nine buildings in historic Beverly. I documented, photographed, and assigned unique numbers for each individual piece of graffiti. In the end, we were able to find 453 drawings, names, dates, additions, and inscriptions. The earliest graffiti of the Civil War was found in the Andrew Collett/Montgomery Hart House. A man from Rockingham County, VA wrote his name and the date “July 14 ‘61”, indicating that he was present there days after the Battle of Rich Mountain.
Most of the drawings reflect the realities of war – men in uniforms, cannons, horses, etc. But they also reflect idealized scenes as well: idyllic farmsteads, churches, ladies with Marge Simpson hair, flowers. Sometimes they are humorous – the Confederate General Henry Wise is depicted riding on a crocodile in a building that served as the Union soldiers’ hospital. Abraham Lincoln appears as a rhinoceros and Jefferson Davis appears as a demon in one corner as well.
Beyond the need to document this for the sake of historic preservation, these tell the stories of very ordinary people caught in an all-encompassing struggle that forever changed the nation. A teenaged magician wrote his name on the wall while recovering at the Hospital – he served with a Union regiment from Ohio. Mrs. Richards wrote her hometown and “Nurse of this ward” as a means of being remembered. A boy who played music in a Pennsylvania regiment ended up leaving for home after writing his name on a Beverly wall since he was too ill to fight. The Civil War era graffiti from Beverly tells the stories of very ordinary people who wished to be remembered at a time when our nation was fighting through the evils of slavery, racism, inequality, and factionalism. Now, more than ever, the stories of quotidian heroes who fought for what is right is needed.
