Notes on Two Hundred Years (and More)

by Douglas H. Parkhurst

We continue our look at Civil War era persons associated with First Universalist Society, the present-day Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury (UUCD). This month we meet a young woman with connections to the highest levels of the Union army and later the federal government.

Mary Emeline Hurlburt [see note below] came from a local, multi-generation Universalist family. She was born in Danbury, in 1840, to Stephen A. and Sarah Peete Hurlburt. Stephen Hurlburt had long experience in fur cutting and blowing, initial steps in hat-making [see note below]. By the late 1850s, Hurlbut and Co. had thirty employees operating fur processing machinery run by water power and “a thirty horse engine.” A machine for forming hat bodies was being installed in the company shop as well. Stephen was one of the original directors of the Danbury Cemetery Association (“new” Wooster Cemetery, off present-day Ellsworth Avenue) when it was organized in 1850. A pillar of First Universalist Society, Stephen Hurlburt served as a trustee, moderator, chorister, and on a variety of committees over many years.

One of Mary Emeline’s great-grandfathers was Stephen Ambler, who was among the twelve organizers of the Danbury Universalist Society in 1822.  Her great-grandmother, Rachel Munson Ambler, after being widowed in 1825, married Rev. Solomon Glover of Newtown, Connecticut, himself a widower. Solomon Glover, known as “Father Glover,” was ordained a Universalist minister in 1801, among the earliest in Connecticut. During the 1830s, Irel Ambler, uncle of Mary Emeline’s father, was a local agent for the Universalist Union,a denominational periodical. Irel’s son, Rev. Russell P. Ambler, served Universalist churches in New England, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Ambler and Hurlburt descendants were associated with the Danbury congregation into the mid-twentieth century.

Around 1860, Mary Emeline, who was also called Emma, became governess to the several children of William and Anna Lum. William was a prosperous planter and businessman in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Emma stayed on with the Lums after the Civil War began and was with them during the siege of Vicksburg and when the city fell, in July 1863, to Union forces under Major General Ulysses S. Grant [see note below]. The Lum house was large and convenient and General Grant and his staff took over the downstairs for their headquarters. The Lum family continued to reside on the upper floors. Emma Hurlburt, a northerner, soon became a contact person between the Lums and Union army leadership. She was described by Confederate officers who knew her this way:

“She was greatly admired and respected….Pleasant and winning in manner, the charms of her society and her manifold courtesies and kindness…will be remembered by those who were among the many who were cheered by her kindness and elegant hospitality.”

Here we will pause to review some background information that while not directly related to UUCD history, will be useful in telling Emma’s story.

John Aaron Rawlins, born in 1831, was an up-and-coming young lawyer in his hometown of Galena, Illinois, in the years before the Civil War. Ulysses Grant moved to Galena in 1860 to work in the Grant family leather goods business there and the two men became acquainted. When secessionists shelled Fort Sumter in April 1861, John Rawlins, a politically active Democrat, became an advocate of President Lincoln’s call to arms and fiercely pro-Union. Ulysses Grant, an 1843 graduate of West Point who had served as an army officer for eleven years before resigning his commission, returned to military service as a colonel of Illinois volunteers. He was soon promoted to brigadier general. Grant asked Rawlins, who had no military experience, to serve as a captain and assistant adjutant general on Grant’s staff. Rawlins agreed. Complicating the start of John Rawlins’ army service was the death, from tuberculosis, of his wife, the former Emily Smith, that August. She left her husband and three young children, James, Jane (Jennie), and Emily. The children were cared for by other family members after their father’s departure in September.

Captain Rawlins was aide, confidant, gate-keeper, and friend to General Grant. Through 1862 and 1863, as Grant assumed wider and greater command responsibilities, Rawlins’ own duties and influence grew. John Rawlins became the key member of Ulysses Grant’s staff and ultimately was appointed chief of staff. In late July 1863, Rawlins traveled to Washington, D.C., as Grant’s personal representative, to apprise Lincoln and his cabinet of the recent successful efforts of Union forces in and around Vicksburg. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary after this meeting: “Was much pleased with him [Rawlins], his frank, intelligent, and interesting description of men and account of army operations….His honest, unpretending, and unassuming manners…the absence of pretension, and I may say the unpolished and unrefined deportment, of this earnest and sincere man, patriot, and soldier….[he] has a mind which has served his general and his country well. He is a sincere and earnest friend of Grant…”

Ulysses Grant wrote this: “He [Rawlins] comes the nearest being indispensable to me of my officers in the service, but if his confirmation [promotion] is dependent on commanding troops, he shall command troops at once.”

And later: “No staff officer ever before had it in his power to render as much service, and no one ever performed his duties more faithfully or efficiently [as did Rawlins].”

We now return to Grant headquarters in Vicksburg, August 1863. John Rawlins, recently promoted to brigadier general, took notice of Miss Emma Hurlburt, and she of him. It was not long before romance blossomed and he proposed marriage.

Rawlins biographer James H. Wilson (1916), who served with both Rawlins and Grant during the war, said:

“…she was in every way worthy of him [Rawlins], he had the best wishes of his family and friends, and especially of both General and Mrs. Grant. It was a pleasure to all to see this strong and rugged man softened and humanized by the smiles of a beautiful and interesting woman. It was a still greater pleasure to see him fairly made happy a few months later, by the union of her lot with his for life.”

By October Emma Hurlburt was back in Danbury. In December John Rawlins went on leave. He wrote this to a friend in early January 1864: “While North, at Danbury, Connecticut, on the 23rd [of December], I married Miss Mary E. Hurlbut, whom I first met at our headquarters in Vicksburg, where she had been during the siege, having gone South with friends previous to the outbreak of the rebellion….”

The newlyweds traveled to Chicago and from there to Galena, Illinois, to visit John’s family. Later that winter, John and Emma, with John’s three children, had a few weeks together in Nashville, Tennessee, where Grant’s command had moved its headquarters.

The Civil War continued through 1864 and into the first months of 1865, with fighting in the west, south, and east. In March 1864, President Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant as Lieutenant General and General-in-Chief of Union armies. Grant, with Rawlins and staff, came east and established headquarters in Culpeper, Virginia. The Overland Campaign, with Grant’s Army of the Potomac facing off against the forces of Robert E. Lee, began in May.

Emma and John Rawlins stayed in touch by letter and brief visits when he could get away. In August 1864, John began an extended sick leave in an effort to recover from a lung disorder, characterized as chronic bronchitis, of which he had symptoms since the previous winter [see note below]. Members of Grant’s staff kept Rawlins informed, by mail, of developments in the field. John spent most of this time in Danbury, with Emma and family, returning to Virginia in early October.

In a grinding campaign with heavy losses on both sides, Grant’s army slowly pushed Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia south to Petersburg and Richmond, then west to Appomattox Court House. With other Union forces taking control of the Shenandoah Valley, Confederate defeats in Tennessee, and a Federal army sweeping across Georgia before moving north through the Carolinas, the stage was set for Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865.

[Note – Hurlburt is sometimes spelled Hurlbut. Both spellings are used on the family monument in section F of Danbury’s Wooster Cemetery. Also, Stephen A. Hurlburt of Danbury should not be confused with Major General Stephen A. Hurlbut of Illinois, who commanded troops in the west and south during the Civil War.]

[Note – In “blowing,” useable fur is separated from hair, dirt, hide, or other foreign matter. The useable fur can then be made into felt for hat bodies. Beaver, nutria, hare, and rabbit fur was commonly used. See W.H. Francis. History of the Hatting Trade in Danbury, Conn. Danbury: H.L. Osborne Publishers, 1860.]

[Note – The taking of Vicksburg in 1863 was crucial to Union forces’ control of the lower Mississippi River.]

[Note – Rawlins’ illness was likely the beginning of tuberculosis, which disease would later claim his life.]

To be continued in July 2025…