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

Continued from June 2025… We conclude the Civil War era story of Emma Hurlburt and John Rawlins.

Mary Emeline “Emma” Hurlburt met widower John A. Rawlins, chief of staff to Major General Ulysses S. Grant, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, during the summer of 1863. That December, back in Danbury, Emma Hurlburt married by-then Brigadier General John Rawlins [see details in Notes… article of June 2025]. In the spring of 1864 Emma, with John’s three children, spent time with John’s parents at their farm near Galena, Illinois.

Julia Dent Grant, wife of General Grant, met and became friendly with Emma when Julia visited Vicksburg after the Union victory there. John Rawlins, in the latter part of 1864, traveled to St. Louis to confer with Union army leadership regarding activities in Tennessee. From there he wrote to Emma: “I was out to see Mrs. Grant, at her father’s…. [She] inquired most affectionately after you and your welfare. She is very anxious to have you visit her at Philadelphia and go with her to City Point [Virginia] on a visit to the General and myself. We will discuss this when we meet which I hope will be in New York Thursday or Friday….”

In early 1865, Emma indeed spent time with John at City Point, a large Federal supply, transportation, and communications center established on the James River south of Richmond. She was there with Julia Grant and wives of other Union officers during a visit by President and Mrs. Lincoln. When news of Lee’s surrender came on April 9, Emma and Julia were aboard a steamboat moored on the river in front of City Point.

Julia Grant relates the following somewhat chilling incidents in her Personal Memoirs, prepared in the 1890s but not published until 1975. Briefly stated, a few days after Lee’s surrender, Julia and Emma were in Washington, D.C. President Lincoln invited the Grants to accompany him and Mary Lincoln to an evening theater performance on Good Friday, April 14. This invitation was publicized in the newspapers. That morning a messenger came to the Grants’ hotel room, purportedly sent by Mary Lincoln, to confirm the theater engagement. Julia wanted to leave the city later that day for Burlington, New Jersey, where the Grants had rented a house and their older children attended school. She prevailed upon her husband to beg off the President’s theater invitation. Julia Grant and Emma Rawlins, and their children Jesse and Jennie, had lunch together in the afternoon. The women took note of four men sitting at a nearby table watching them and listening, one of whom looked like the messenger from earlier in the day. Late that afternoon, as the Grants were riding in a carriage to the train station, a rider who resembled another of the four men from lunch galloped past on a horse, leaned in close, and “glared” at General Grant. Subsequently, a bystander who witnessed the incident identified the menacing rider as John Wilkes Booth. That evening the Lincolns, with two other guests, attended the play at Ford’s Theater, where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

After the war, Ulysses Grant was appointed General of the Army by President Andrew Johnson. John Rawlins had been promoted to brevet major general and was named Chief of Staff of the Army, with headquarters in Washington. John, Emma, and their children resided in Georgetown, then an incorporated municipality within the District of Columbia.

The great domestic challenge of the years immediately following the Civil War was navigating the economic, legal, political, and social complexities of Reconstruction. The War Department had oversight of the federal military occupation of southern states and the Freedmen’s Bureau. There was, as well, a bitter political standoff between President Johnson and Radical Republicans in Congress. This led to Johnson’s impeachment (and acquittal) in 1868. Later that year, Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican nominee, was elected President of the United States. He took office on March 4, 1869, and appointed John Rawlins his Secretary of War [see note below]. Both men resigned from the army.

Rawlins wanted this office and did his best to perform his duties. Interestingly, one of his decisions was setting the height over water of the proposed Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The Secretary of War’s approval was needed because of commercial ship traffic and the movement of navy vessels on the East River. But by 1869, Rawlins was seriously ill. He had suffered the effects of tuberculosis since at least 1864, and his condition grew progressively worse. Sadly, as well, two children, Mary and Willie, born earlier to Emma and John Rawlins had died, Mary in 1866 and Willie in 1867. In the summer of 1869 Emma was expecting again, and was in Danbury with the Hurlburts. John came in August to spend time and a third child, Violet, was born on August 17.

John experienced hemorrhaging of the lungs during this visit. Nevertheless, at the end of the month he returned to Washington to attend a cabinet meeting on the topic of U.S. intervention in Cuba, then under the control of Spain. He suffered more and severe hemorrhaging and on September 6, 1869, John Rawlins died in Washington of tuberculosis. He was 38. Emma was not with him. Their new baby daughter, seventeen days old, had died in Danbury three days earlier, on September 3.

John Rawlins’ funeral was held at the War Department on September 9, with much public ceremony. It was preceded by his lying in state and followed by a formal military procession to the cemetery. Emma and the older Rawlins children, James, Jane (Jennie) and Emily were present, as were Emma’s parents, Stephen and Sarah Hurlburt, and their Danbury minister, Rev. William G. Haskell, and other relatives. John was interred first at Congressional Cemetery in Washington; his remains were moved to Arlington National Cemetery in 1899. On September 19, 1869, a memorial service for John A. Rawlins was conducted at the Universalist Church in Danbury, Rev. Haskell officiating. William G. Haskell, born in Massachusetts in 1839, was himself a veteran of the Civil War. Haskell served during 1864-65, first as a private, later as sergeant major, and ultimately second lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Heavy Artillery. Stationed in Virginia and North Carolina, he performed the duties of a clerk and acting adjutant. William Haskell entered the ministry after the war and was called to First Universalist in Danbury in 1868.

Rev. Haskell’s sermon and tribute to John Rawlins runs to thirteen printed pages. Following are excerpts:
“…when there is remembered the relationship which connected him [Rawlins] with the family of an old and respected citizen of Danbury – long a member of our little church – that his children have been regular attendants of our Sunday School since my pastorate here, the obligation is more imperative that I should give this poor memorial of his life….It became his privilege [as Grant’s chief of staff] to be consulted in every great movement about to be made, and upon the sagacity, wisdom, and prudent forethought of this officer, the issues of great [Civil War] battles often largely depended….But let me say to you that the necrology of American patriots and statesmen will hold no purer name than that of John A. Rawlins. Whatever he did, he did from a thorough conviction of its right. He was that which was declared God’s noblest work, – an honest man.”

In his will, John named Emma and President Grant co-guardians of his three surviving children, James, Jennie, and Emily. Emma and the children moved from their residence in Georgetown, D.C., to Danbury and lived for a time with the Hurlburt family on Franklin Street. Later they had their own home, including Emma’s mother, Sarah, on Balmforth Avenue.
Sorrow and disruption continued for this family. In April 1870, Emma’s father, Stephen, died at 68 “from injuries sustained by a runaway horse.” After Emma married again, to Charles F. Daniels, in early 1872, the children were first sent to boarding schools in Connecticut and later placed in the care of other family members [see note below]. Emma’s second marriage was short-lived; it ended in divorce in March 1874. And, by ths time, Emma herself had fallen ill. Later that year she became another Rawlins family fatality from tuberculosis. On November 6, 1874, Emma died at a hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, age 34. She had traveled west with her mother in an unsuccessful effort to regain her health. Mary Emeline “Emma” Rawlins was buried in the Hurlburt family plot, section F of Wooster Cemetery, in Danbury. Emma’s mother, Sarah, out-lived her husband and her own three children. She died in 1893 at age 93.

John A. Rawlins’ monument in section 2, Arlington National Cemetery, is inscribed “Erected By His Orphan Children.” He is memorialized with a statue in Rawlins Park, NW Washington, D.C., not far from the White House. Rawlins Township, near his hometown of Galena, Illinois, is named for John Rawlins, as is Rawlins, Wyoming. There is also a Rawlins County in northwest Kansas.

Pictures of and additional information about Mary E. “Emma” Hurlburt and John A. Rawlins can be found at this website: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/to-emma-with-love.156956/

[Note – Secretary of Defense today.]
[Note – The three older children lived to be adults.]