"In Order that Their Friends May Find Their Bodies": The Original Burial Location of the 16th Connecticut's Dead

Two nights after the Battle of Antietam, the 16th Connecticut Infantry’s adjutant, Lieutenant John Henry Burnham, sat down to write by candlelight a letter to the Hartford Daily Courant. Burnham’s regiment had just passed through its bloody baptism of fire in the Otto cornfield. By the end of the fighting on the afternoon of September 17, 1862, the 16th Connecticut, which entered the battle approximately 750 officers and men strong, lost 42 men killed and 143 men wounded.

Lieutenant John Henry Burnham, 16th Connecticut Infantry

Burnham worked much of the day on September 19 to oversee the burial of the regiment’s dead. “The collection of the bodies was conducted under my own personal supervision, and after the men had reported them all picked up I examined the whole field myself, so that I am confident none were left on the ground,” he assured the newspaper’s readers, some of whom no doubt knew or loved the men Burnham buried. The adjutant was no doubt aware of this. In his letter, he gave “a minute description of the locality in which we placed the dead, in order that their friends may find their bodies if they wish.”

The adjutant found a suitable location on a hill south of the Rohrersville Road that connected the Burnside Bridge to Sharpsburg. The hill was “just back and west of a white house with a high piazza in front, and opposite of which is a brick house and large barn.” Burnham did not know the names of the families whose farmland became a burial ground. The “white house” was the home of John and Katherine Otto while the “brick house” across the road was Joseph Sherrick’s farmhouse. Burnham continued his minute description: “The bodies lie near a large tree standing alone, and which I had blazed on all sides so that it can be easily discovered.” Headboards with names and companies etched into them surrounded the tree.

Nature has a way of erasing the traces of terrible events that scar its landscape. As days, weeks, and months passed by on the battlefield, slowly, bit by bit, nature reclaimed the ground and wiped away the waste of battle. To ensure nature did not remove the final resting places of these Connecticut soldiers, Burnham was “particular to mention the precise locality of each, so that in the event of the signs being displaced by the elements or otherwise, they may be found,” he wrote.

Burnham’s diligence paid off as families removed the remains of many of their loved ones back home to Connecticut’s soil. Over time, those who went unclaimed were reinterred in the nearby Antietam National Cemetery. Burnham’s worry that nature would obliterate any sign of the Connecticut troops’ burial behind the Otto farm came true. There are no old trees on the hill where Burnham watched his comrades lowered into makeshift graves. The wooden markers are long gone, and so are the bodies.

Thankfully, Burnham’s detailed description of the original burial location of the 16th Connecticut’s dead paired with a postwar photograph likely showing the tree beneath which the Nutmeggers rested can help us locate that spot on the battlefield. The photograph, taken around 1900, shows the white Otto house and whitewashed outbuildings. To the right, or south of the barn, near the 11th Ohio monument, stands a lone, “large tree.” Today, the tree is gone, but walking to its location, a battlefield tromper will notice themselves standing on a hill fitting Burnahm’s description. My best, approximate estimate for the GPS coordinates of the tree and burial site is 39.452217, -77.737707.

Next month, we’ll examine how many friends of the 16th Connecticut’s fallen were able to retrieve their bodies and return them home thanks to Burnham’s letter.