Notes on Two Hundred Years (and More)
by Douglas H. Parkhurst

Continued from April 2025… We are looking at Civil War soldiers associated with First Universalist Society, the present-day Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury (UUCD).

Benjamin F. Skinner was born in Massachusetts about 1836. The 1860 U.S. Census shows him living with his mother, Harriet, in the borough of Danbury and employed as a furrier. This likely meant he worked in a shop where furs were cut and prepared for the hat-making process. Benjamin became a member of First Universalist in 1859 and served on the seating committee, perhaps meaning as an usher. His sister, Emma J. Hadden, and brother-in-law, Charles L. Hadden, were active in the Universalist Society as well.

Benjamin Skinner began his Civil War military service in April 1861, with a three month enlistment as a private in the Wooster Guards, that is Company E, 1st Connecticut Volunteer Infantry [see details in Notes… article of April 2025]. Sadly, Harriet Skinner died three days after her son mustered in. The soldier’s life must have agreed with Benjamin Skinner; soon after returning to Danbury in the summer of 1861 he helped organize Company D, 7th Connecticut Volunteers. He enlisted for three years and was made captain of the company. Between late 1861 and early 1864, the 7th Connecticut saw action in the southeastern United States, around Port Royal Sound and Hilton Head, South Carolina; Fernandina and St. Augustine, Florida; and in the Battle of Olustee, Florida, the largest Civil War battle in that state.

In February 1864, shortly after Olustee, Benjamin Skinner resigned from the army due to illness. He moved to a farm in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, and made an unsuccessful effort to recover his health. He died in June 1866 of what was termed “hereditary consumption” [see note below]. An interesting provision of Benjamin’s will was his leaving his “swords, swords’ belts, and guns” to his sister Emma, with instructions that they not be sold or otherwise disposed of, but passed on to Emma’s descendants upon her decease. Benjamin Skinner’s remains were returned to Danbury and interred near his mother’s in section E of Wooster Cemetery.

Lewis A. Ward joined Company C, 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, in August 1862. He mustered in as a corporal and the next year was promoted to sergeant. Lewis served until the end of the war and was mustered out in July 1865. The 17th was primarily a Fairfield County regiment. Most members of Company C came from Danbury and neighboring towns. In 1863 it was engaged in the battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Morris Island and Fort Wagner. Company C saw action in the St. John’s River and St. Augustine areas of north Florida in 1864 and 1865.

Lewis Ward was born in New Jersey in 1832. U.S. Census records show Lewis and his wife, Mary Lavinia Ward, residing there in June 1860. Lewis was employed as a marble cutter; subsequently his occupation was given as carpenter. Soon thereafter the couple moved to Danbury. First Universalist records show Mary admitted to membership in October 1860. She later served on the Sunday school and missions committees.

Lewis joined First Universalist in 1866. He became very active, serving as an usher, moderator pro tem, on the committee on the sick, and for multiple years as a trustee. Around 1881, Lewis went to Orange, New Jersey and then to Pueblo, Colorado, where he was engineer at a planing mill; Mary remained in Danbury. Lewis Ward died suddenly, in Pueblo, in 1883, and was buried in Pueblo Pioneer Cemetery. His obituary described his “pleasant good nature, winning many friends wherever he went.” Mary Ward worked in Danbury as a hat trimmer and later as manager of a local relief agency and “investigator of out door poor and widows pensions.” For many years she boarded in the Main Street home of Dr. Sophia Penfield. Dr. Penfield practiced homeopathic medicine and was the first licensed female physician in Connecticut. Beginning in 1890, Mary Ward collected her own Civil War widow’s pension. She died in Danbury in 1927 at age 91. Mary’s gravestone in section D of Wooster Cemetery is inscribed “A Life Devoted To Helping Others.”

Joseph T. Bates was born to a Universalist family in Danbury in 1843. His parents were Stephen and Deborah Taylor Bates, married in 1837 by Rev. Salmon C. Bulkeley of the Universalist Society. Stephen, long an active congregant, was a farmer and blacksmith in Danbury, and Joseph is listed in the 1860 U.S. Census as a carpenter apprentice. In 1862, at age nineteen, Joseph Bates enlisted as a private in Company B, 23rd Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, for a nine month term of service, to end in August 1863 [see note below]. For much of that time Company B was stationed at La Fourche Crossing, Louisiana, southwest of New Orleans, engaged in defending that city, in Union hands since mid-1862. It was part of the force that repulsed a Confederate cavalry, artillery, and infantry attack at La Fourche on June 20 and 21, 1863.

In 1870 Joseph Bates was working as a carpenter. He soon advertised himself as a contractor and builder. Joseph married Abbie Starr Taylor in 1871 and during the next decade three daughters were born, Eva, Anna, and Marian. By 1880 Joseph was doing business in Danbury as a lumber merchant. His business prospered and J.T. Bates and Co., besides lumber, began selling lime, cement, lath, and builders’ materials. In addition, Joseph Bates owned saw mill and planing mill equipment and timber rights in west central Alabama. He was a member of the local James E. Moore Post No. 18, Grand Army of the Republic.

Joseph and Abbie Bates both belonged to First Universalist. Joseph, over the years, served many terms as a trustee, was church clerk, an usher, and an association and convention delegate. In anticipation of the construction of the new church building at 347 Main Street in the early 1890s, he donated $5,000 (the equivalent of perhaps $175,000 in 2025). Joseph Bates died in 1905 and in his will named First Universalist Society of Danbury a contingent beneficiary. In 1909 Abbie Bates began collecting her Civil War widow’s pension. She died in 1914. Joseph and Abbie are interred in the Bates family plot, section K of Wooster Cemetery.

[Note – “Consumption” in the nineteenth century was what we generally know today as tuberculosis.]
[Note – Members of Company B were almost entirely from Danbury.]

To be continued in June 2025… We will meet a young Danbury woman with ties to the high command of the Union army and U.S. government.