Ironton Register 8 March 1888 – Ulysses Hamlin was wending his way to Foster Stove Foundry, where he is employed as an engineer, and the Register was trudging along by his side, engaging in such conversation and propounding much inquiries, as seemed to him necessary for fishing up a dim recollection from Mr. Hamlin’s reservoir of war memories.
Mr. Hamlin was a member of Capt. Joe Barber’s Company H 6th Ohio Cavalry. He remarked that as an inquiry for a “Narrow Escape” took him suddenly and without time to consider what was the most interesting he related a couple of little affairs that took place just after the Wilderness Battle of 1864.
Ulysses Hamlin was then a blacksmith in his company. Every company had two blacksmiths, and so important were the services that they had to keep to their commands and take advantage of every little stop to repair the horses’ shoes. At one time when the regiment was on the skirmish line – this was at Crossroads, just after Cold Harbor – he was busy shoeing the horses when he had a very close call.
The balls were ripping about but not so frequently as to interfere with the duties. He was engaged putting a shoe on a horse and had stepped to the stump of a little sapling to straighten out a nail when zip came a rifle ball and struck the stump on which he was working. He picked the ball up and hurrying through with that shoe he moved his shop to a safe place.
“But there was a time that now comes to my mind,” said Mr. Ulysses Hamlin. “When I was very much frightened. And while it was a ‘Narrow Escape’ for me it wasn’t with the man I was with.
It happened in 1864 in Grant’s Richmond Campaign which constant succession of hard fighting and “Narrow Escapes’ for everyone. Our regiment was marching in columns and had encountered the enemy ready to fight. In fact, the rebs had planted their artillery and had commenced formed down the road over which we were marching.
“Our regiment filed to the right to form a line of battle and another man both of us regimental blacksmiths were in the rear of the column. It promised to be a very hot place and my comrade wanted to get back to where it was safer, but I replied that it was safer to stick to the regiment than to go back over that road.
He insisted that as we had no arms with us we could do no good and so should keep out of danger and I insisted that it was going into greater danger to turn back for the cannon had begun to make things hot along that road. While we were thus galloping to the rear of the column and debating what we had better do the regiment had all filed to the right and left us alone in the road – two valiant blacksmiths facing a rebel Battery.
“It was a critical looking place and we dashed our spurs into the horses’ sides to get out of it when the boom went a reb cannon and then came the shriek of a shell and my companion who was close to my side fell to the ground. The shell had taken his leg. In a moment, an ambulance hurried up we lifted him in and started to the rear. But poor fellow, the injury was mortal, and in a few days, he died. Somehow when the subject of the war comes up that incident comes with it and I always link my ‘Narrow Escape’ to that poor man’s fate.”
The Following Obituary is Ulysses Hamlin’s Son
The Newark Advocate, Newark, Ohio, 27 Jan. 1942-Ulysses Grant Gene Hamlin, 72, an employee of the Wehrle Stove Company for 17 years, died Monday at 7 p.m. in the home in 26 West Harrison street. He had been in failing health for the past five years, his condition becoming serious last February. He was born Nov. 25, 1869, in Hanging Rock, Lawrence county, Ohio, the son of the late Ulysses and Gertrude Hamlin.
He made Newark his home for many years and served as a molder at the Wehrle Company. Mr. Hamlin was a member of the Christian Science Church and of the Moulders Union.
He is survived by his wife, Marjory Hamlin, of the home; two daughters, Mrs. Harry Lynn of Cleveland Heights and Mrs. Carl Wise of Washington, D.C.; two stepchildren, Mrs. Charles Lusk of Newark and Mrs. Inez Watson of Sacramento, Calif.; two brothers, Thomas M. of Newark and Louis R. of Koknmo, Ind., and a sister, Mrs. Charles Frecka of Ironton. A son, Eugene, preceded him in death.
The body will remain at the Gutliph & Henderson Funeral Home where services will be conducted Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
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