Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Company D brings the American Civil War to life through the eyes of citizen-soldiers. One Regiment. One Company. Countless stories of courage, sacrifice, and betrayal—exposing the human toll of a war that transformed the United States.
Portland, Maine native Louisa Titcomb was a volunteer nurse at U.S. General Hospital, Division 1, in Annapolis, Maryland. The hospital was located inside the former Naval Academy, being used to house hundreds of sick and injured Union soldiers. In a letter to a friend, here is how Louisa described the grounds in the spring:
“Gay with showers and sunshine. The yards are brilliant with peach blooms, hyacinths, lilies, and the richest beds of English violets. Over which the south wind comes sweeter than ever.”
The pleasant breeze and the thick aroma of blooming flowers must have comforted Private Leonard Peaslee as he arrived at the hospital on May 5, 1862. Leonard was sick and had been since volunteering with Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment.
As he checked into the facility at Annapolis, Leonard thought his stay would be a short one. He hoped that the doctors would finally cure him of his constant aches and pains—but he fully expected to rejoin the Third Maine within a few weeks.
But that didn’t happen.
Leonard Peaslee walked into the hospital—and less than two months later—he was gone. He vanished. His hospital stay, as fleeting and as fragile as Lousia Titcomb’s peach blossoms.
More than 400,000 soldiers were listed as missing at various points in the American Civil War. To be listed as missing meant one thing: No one knew where you were. Maybe you were wounded, lying in the field hospital, waiting for help. Maybe you were captured and marched into a Confederate prison camp. Maybe you had deserted. Or maybe you were transferred for special duty, and no one had recorded it. Most missing soldiers were eventually found. Their status as missing nullified.
But tens of thousands were never found. Most of these were soldiers killed in action and never identified. But some—like Private Leonard Peaslee—simply fell off the face of the Earth.
After the war, Clara Barton, another Civil War nurse, founded the Office of Missing Soldiers. Barton and her team received more than 63,000 inquiries from the general public. They ultimately located more than 22,000 of them and most of these were soldiers who died in Confederate prisons.
Yet despite her best efforts, Barton, who would go on to start the American Red Cross, wasn’t able to find all of the missing soldiers. Tens of thousands remain missing today. Some estimates say five percent of the Civil War dead remain unidentified.
Leonard Peaslee remains among the missing. Leonard’s case is unique in that he didn’t vanish on a battlefield, he wasn’t wounded or captured. He walked into a Union hospital with a non-life-threatening illness and… vanished. Bizarre circumstances given that Union hospitals were meticulous about tracking their patients. So, what happened to Leonard Peaslee? Where did he go?
Today, on Company D, we turn detective and take on the Curious Case of the Missing Private. First, we’ll look back on Leonard’s life and the devasting effects his disappearance had on his family. But we’ll also examine all the available evidence. And maybe—just maybe—we’ll have better luck than Clara Barton and the Office of Missing Soldiers. Because today, on Company D we try to do the impossible. We try and find a Union soldier who has been missing for 163 years.
Hello and welcome back to Company D, the history podcast that tells the forgotten stories of everyday soldiers in the American Civil War. Our show isn’t about generals and grand strategies. It’s about the men in the ranks, their struggles, their triumphs, their fears, and their families.
We focus on one company in one regiment, Company D of the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Why? Because my great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, was one of them. He wasn’t from Maine, but an eighteen-year-old from Dedham, Massachusetts. But in 1861, while living with his brother in Bath, war broke out. And in a moment of youthful patriotism, he enlisted.
His diary—his firsthand account—forms the foundation and the inspiration for this podcast.
I’m your host, George F. Snell III. Yes, I know my name sounds a bit pretentious. But don’t worry, we’re not here for the fancy names. We’re here for the soldiers. Their lives. Their stories.
In this episode, we’re investigating the mysterious disappearance of Leonard Peaslee. A 30-year-old ship’s carpenter. A husband. The father of a baby girl, a girl named after a flower. Rose.
One day, Leonard was there. The next, he was gone.
So, let’s find him.
CHAPTER ONE: THE MAN FROM WHITEFIELD
Halfway between Bath and Augusta, in a valley along the Sheepscot River, is Whitefield, Maine. A quiet farming community dotted with mills and fields. Three villages made up the town—King’s Mills, Turner’s Corner, and Coopers Mills. The rhythm of life here was steady, shaped by the seasons, the farms, and the river. In the spring, the land smelled of tilled soil, and in the fall, golden fields of hay swayed in the breeze.
Leonard H. Peaslee was born here on September 4, 1833. Leonard was the second of four children. He grew up on his family’s modest 80-acre farm. His father, Nathan, worked the land, and his mother, Christiana (Dutton), managed the home. Alongside his brothers, George and Lakin, and his sister, Joann, Leonard spent his childhood among the rolling fields, livestock pens, and with the steady hum of farm work.
The Peaslee farm only had 25 acres of cultivated fields. But every acre mattered. The farm was in the King’s Mill village in the south of Whitefield. The Peaslees grew hay, potatoes, peas, and beans. Three cows provided milk and fresh butter. A single pig was raised for meat. Seven sheep provided wool for their clothing.
And just beyond their fields, Peaslee relatives, cousins, uncles, extended family, all working their own farms.
By 1855, Leonard’s older brother George had married and set up his own farm. His younger brother, Lakin, had taken over the heavy labor at their parents’ homestead. But Leonard had dreams beyond subsistence farming. He left Whitefield and headed for Bath, a city of shipbuilders nearly four times the size of Whitefield.
There, the smell of sawdust replaced the smell of tilled fields.
Leonard became a ship joiner, a skilled craftsman shaping wood into doors, windows, and fine furniture. His hands, once used to plowing fields and sheering sheep, now built schooners that crossed the ocean. In Bath, Leonard found more than a new trade, he found Cornelia M. Sturtevant. She was the daughter of a blacksmith and the oldest of four children. Cornelia was four years older than him, but that didn’t matter to Leonard.
They married on April 28, 1857, at the Central Congregational Church in Bath. Leonard was 27, and Cornelia was 31. Two years later, they welcomed a daughter, Rosanna. They called her Rose and sometimes Rosie. In 1860, they lived with Cornelia’s parents in a bustling household that included Cornelia’s brother, Frank, her sister, Ellen, and her husband, William Ford.
A crowded household—but about to become a lot emptier.
CHAPTER TWO: YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW
When President Lincoln issued the call for 75,000 volunteers to help quash the Southern rebellion, Leonard Peaslee answered the call. He enlisted for three years as a private in Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment.
When he joined, Leonard was 27 years old. He was taller than the average soldier at five feet ten inches tall. His hair was dark—his eyes hazel. His skin was deeply tanned from working outside in the shipyards. There’s no existing photographs of Leonard—but for some reason we get a very Joey Tribbiani vibe.
Okay, maybe that’s just us.
Like many others, Leonard probably believed the war would be over in a few months. Home by the fall, certainly home by Christmas. At the end of May 1861, Leonard and the rest of the Third Maine were camped on the mustering grounds in Augusta. It was here, beneath the shadow of the State House, that they began their training.
Corporal Abner R. Small of Company G later recalled the scene:
“A sort of park, green with trees and rough grass,” Abner wrote. “I remember the scent of lilacs there at dusk. Below us ran the silvery Kennebec River, and above us rose the old State House, its cupola burnished by the morning sun. We had new white tents. We were clothed in new grey uniforms and equipped and armed.”
Abner was a bit of a poet. The grey uniforms he mentioned would soon be replaced with blue ones. And soon, the Third Maine would be off to Washington, D.C. Families, friends, and onlookers packed the Augusta train platform to say farewell. The Third Maine band played patriotic songs, and families clustered together.
Tearful goodbyes. A last embrace. A final whispered promise. One can imagine Leonard hugging Cornelia, kissing 18-month-old Rosie, and boarding the train with a heavy heart but with the expectation of returning to them soon. The train chugged off with families waving flags and handkerchiefs, and then the train rounded a curve in the track and was gone.
Leonard left Maine a healthy young man who had never faced a serious illness before. That was about to change.
June 7, 1861. Washington, D.C.
The Third Maine arrived, exhausted but eager. The next morning, they marched to Meridian Hill, setting up camp in the sweltering, summer heat. Then came the rain. A torrential downpour that soaked their tents and filled the air with dampness and sickness. By mid-June, Leonard wasn’t marching anymore. The change in climate and the constant drilling and training wore him down. With his joints swollen from rheumatism, Leonard was confined to quarters. While the rest of Company D trained for battle, Leonard lay in bed, fighting off the pain.
It was not a promising start to his military career.
CHAPTER THREE: SICK, UNWANTED AND MISPLACED
It’s unclear whether Leonard ever fought in a battle with the Third Maine, he was that sick. It’s possible he fought at the Battle of Bull Run on July 31, 1861. If so, it wasn’t the combat that did him in, it was the marching. At Bull Run, the Third Maine marched more than 12 miles—maybe as many as 20 miles—in less than 24 hours. Much of it at double time.
Many of the soldiers collapsed on the ground in exhaustion. Some fainted by the roadside. Others tossed away blankets, knapsacks and frock coats to lighten their loads. Not even half of the regiment made it to the battlefield. Regardless, Leonard was back in the hospital the following month, the word “Sick” scrawled next to his name in the Company D rolls.
Leonard was treated for nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys. Nephritis, also known as Bright’s Disease, causes fever, joint pain, fatigue, and blood in the urine. Left untreated, it can lead to kidney failure. By late summer, Leonard was no longer the healthy young father who had kissed his wife and child goodbye in Augusta.
His condition worsened, and by October 31, Leonard was transferred to U.S. General Hospital, Division No. 1, in Annapolis, Maryland for the first time. He was diagnosed with diabetic nephropathy, a complication of diabetes that can damage the kidneys. He remained in the hospital for two months, but on New Year’s Eve, Leonard was released and returned to the Third Maine, now settled into winter quarters outside of Washington, D.C.
Leonard must have been relieved and maybe part of him embraced the colder weather. At least it was more like home.
But Leonard’s health woes continued. He struggled throughout the spring of 1862. He was admitted to the regimental hospital on May 2, treated for chronic rheumatism but kept feeling worse. Two days later, he was transferred back to the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis.
He arrived on May 5, to the pleasant breeze and blooming flowers that so impressed Nurse Louisa Titcomb.
We don’t know what Leonard was being treated for once he got to the hospital, but it’s fair to say either nephritis or complications from diabetes. Either of these conditions could be fatal if left untreated, but Leonard’s case didn’t appear severe. By the end of June, he was deemed healthy enough to return to his regiment. In a letter to his wife, Cornelia, written on June 30, Leonard told her he would soon be leaving the hospital to rejoin the Third.
“He was several times sick in the hospital for a short time,” Cornelia recalled years later. “But at no time did I fear from his letters that he would not get well.”
Cornelia received Leonard’s last letter on July 4, 1862. She never heard from him again. No one did. Leonard Peaslee had vanished.
CHAPTER FOUR: FAMILIES IN CONFUSION
Two events with his family may have contributed to obscuring Leonard’s disappearance, distracting his family from taking quicker action that might have helped uncover Leonard’s fate.
The first event happened on the Peaslee side of his family—on the Whitefield farm where Leonard grew up.
His father, Nathan Peaslee, the patriarch of the family, died on August 6, 1862. His death happened several weeks after Leonard’s disappearance, but maybe not long enough between his letters home for anyone to realize Leonard was gone. Then, before they could notice, an unexpected and heartbreaking death. Nathan died at just 51.
Not to mention that Nathan’s death occurred right as the family was heading into harvest. The family was already stretched thin with his older brother now having his own farm and Nathan’s farm being shorthanded with his passing. As subsistence farmers, the Peaslees were already struggling with inflation and labor shortages in the wartime economy. Now, the head of their family was gone.
Nathan was buried at King’s Mills Cemetery in Whitefield. Afterward, the tight-knit Peaslee clan fell into mourning, and then the harvest was in full swing. Did the burden of losing Nathan and dealing with the harvest shorthanded distract the Peaslees from putting more effort into locating Leonard?
It’s a distinct possibility.
The second event happened with Cornelia’s family back in Bath. Before the war, Leonard and Cornelia had been living with Cornelia’s parents, her brother, Frank, her sister, Ellen, and her husband, William Ford, in a single household—likely in a multifamily house.
Both Frank and William were actively recruited to join a new Maine regiment forming a company in Bath. The Twenty-First Maine Infantry Regiment was looking for men willing to volunteer for a shorter term of service, nine months rather than three years.
Both Frank and William, Leonard’s two brothers-in-law, volunteered during the summer of 1862. The disruption and stress of losing two more members of the family must have been profound, and likely a distraction away from Leonard’s predicament.
Frank and William joined Company C of the Twenty-First and officially mustered into service on September 10, 1862. They left for service just as it was becoming clear that something had happened to Leonard, yet neither Frank nor William was now in a position to help Cornelia deal with her missing husband. They were marching off to the war. The Twenty-First ended up in New Orleans for most of the war, although William had been detached for special duties in New York. But both Frank and William now had more pressing matters to deal with.
When their commissions ended on August 25, 1863, and Frank and William finally returned to Maine, Leonard had been missing for more than a year. One wonders if Leonard’s disappearance influenced William Ford’s next move. He decided to re-enlist, this time volunteering for three years with the Thirty-Second Maine Infantry Regiment as a sergeant.
Then, within a year, he, too, would become one of the missing.
William Ford ran into trouble at the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, a failed assault by the Union Army that General Ulysses S. Grant called “the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war. “During the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, the Union Army concocted a bizarre scheme to dig a mineshaft below the Confederate line and blow it up. This, they believed, would cause a gap in the Confederate defenses—which they could exploit with an attack.
But the scheme failed, spectacularly.
The Confederates had been warned in advance, and had pulled back into a defensive fortification. So when the explosion took place, it simply formed a deep crater.
But the Union Army sent thousands of men into the crater, thinking they would finally break the Confederate line. Instead—they found themselves in a trap, sitting ducks for the Confederates. More than 5,000 Union troops were lost in the onslaught.
William Ford was one of them. He was reported missing in action. Another man swallowed by the war.
Gone—just like his brother-in-law Leonard Peaslee.
CHAPTER FIVE: LOST AND FOUND
When Leonard arrived in Annapolis on May 5, 1862, he appeared to be the only member of the Third Maine at the hospital, which added to his isolation. Had Leonard been sent to the U.S. General Hospital in Alexandria, he would have been with at least nine other members of the Third Maine. Familiar faces. Men who knew him, or at least of him. But in Annapolis, he was by himself.
Leonard was last seen on June 30, the same day he mailed his letter home to his wife. His mysterious disappearance would forever haunt Cornelia, Rosie, and the rest of his family. To complicate matters, he was never officially recognized as missing. The Third Maine kept Leonard on its rolls for more than a year—claiming that he was still sick at the hospital—and later claiming he’d been discharged and sent home to Bath.
Neither statement was accurate.
It was a clerical mistake—repeated over and over again.
It was a mistake that had terrible consequences for Cornelia and Rosie. It made it nearly impossible for Cornelia to secure a widow’s pension—even as she slid into poverty.
We’ll address that tragic situation in a moment.
Years later, William Watson, the captain of Company D when Leonard disappeared, admitted to the mistake. He said that the last time anyone had heard from Leonard was on June 2, 1862, while he was being treated at Annapolis.
“Since that time,” Watson acknowledged. “I know of no one who has heard from him.”
Sarah Sampson, a volunteer nurse in Washington D.C. at the time, remembered seeing Leonard at Annapolis.
“I distinctly remember Mr. Peaslee,” Sarah wrote. “He was several times under treatment there, but not for long periods. I remember when the regiment moved, and he was sent to some hospital sick. He didn’t return. It was never reported. There was much talk about it in the regiment.
“We all supposed him dead,” she stated.
Cornelia recalled years later how she watched, waited, and prayed for her husband’s return.
“For weeks… months… and years,” she said. “And when at last the war was over, I thought he might have been a prisoner and would now surely come back to us. But he never came.”
Cornelia was likely thinking about her brother-in-law William Ford. Remember William? How he went missing at the Battle of the Crater. What Cornelia hoped would be Leonard’s fate—captured and then released—is what happened to William.
Like most soldiers reported missing, William Ford was finally found. He had survived the slaughter at the Battle of the Crater, a battle that became one of the most infamous of the war. Not only because of the battle’s bizarre circumstances, but because evidence was eventually uncovered that Confederate soldiers wantonly executed wounded black Union soldiers. It’s one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War.
William, however, survived the Battle of the Crater. He was captured by Rebels and taken prisoner. He was held in a makeshift stockade prison near Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg. It was an open-air enclosure where Confederates herded captured Union soldiers.
It’s not clear how long William spent as a POW, but he was eventually paroled and discharged from service on May 24, 1865. William Ford got to do something his brother-in-law Leonard Peaslee never had a chance to do, he went home.
CHAPTER SIX: CORNELIA’S ORDEAL
One of the many rejections Cornelia Peaslee received from the U.S. Pension Office while seeking a widow’s pension was quite blunt: “There is no evidence showing the date or cause of the soldier’s death—if he is even dead, and it is apparent that the claimant cannot furnish any satisfactory evidence thereof.”
In other words, show us a body, or you get nothing.
Because Company D repeatedly listed Leonard as either “absent at hospital” or, finally, “discharged, date unknown,” no one in the Third Maine realized he was missing. As a result, no one in the regiment was looking for him. That meant there was no record of Leonard being deceased.
Yet, Cornelia knew her husband wasn’t alive. When she first filed for assistance in 1868, the war had been over for three years, and her husband had never returned. Cornelia knew Leonard, he never would have abandoned her and Rosie. Never.
So Leonard had to be dead. There was no other explanation for his absence. But the U.S. Pension Office wouldn’t believe her. It took an act of the U.S. Congress to get Cornelia her much-deserved widow’s pension. House Bill #1175 was passed on June 8, 1868, and granted Cornelia a pension. All of that for $8 a month with an extra $2 for Rosie. Ten bucks—the equivalent of $175.40 in today’s money.
Cornelia remarried in 1875, and, as a result, lost her pension. Her second husband died in 1894 when she was 64 years old. Facing abject poverty in her elderly years, Cornelia reapplied for her widow’s pension. And guess what? She was rejected again. The reason? She couldn’t prove that Leonard was dead.
It was deja vous all over again. It took yet a second act of Congress to restore Cornelia’s widow’s pension, and it took nearly 10 years for that to happen. House Bill #1518 was passed on February 26, 1907. The good news? The 78-year-old Cornelia, who was now nearly blind, got a raise. To $12 a month.
The only good news in this bureaucratic merry-go-round was that the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Pension Office, the U.S. Army, and several Bath lawyers investigated Leonard’s disappearance and left us a fact pattern to follow. A paper trail, if you will.
Let’s see if we can follow that trail to find out what happened to Leonard Peaslee.
CHAPTER SEVEN: FINDING LEONARD
Okay—it’s time to play detective. Choose your favorite. Travis McGee? Harry Bosch? How about Miss Marple or Inspector Bucket? I think we should avoid Inspector Clouseau. Here at Company D, we’re very partial to Sherlock Holmes.
Here are some crucial facts of the case—pulled from Leonard’s pension files:
Private Leonard Peaslee arrived at U.S. General Hospital, Division 1, at Annapolis, Maryland, on May 5, 1862.
Company D last heard from Leonard on June 2—while he was still at the hospital.
Cornelia Peaslee’s last letter from Leonard was dated June 30, 1862—and sent from the hospital.
There is no death record of Leonard at the hospital.
Two things became clear: Leonard was discharged from the hospital on or a few days after June 30, 1862, and he never made it back to Company D. We can confidently conclude that Leonard went missing while in transit.
This would mean that a doctor would have issued Leonard return-to-duty orders. Those orders would have included a travel pass and maybe subsistence and transportation vouchers. So Leonard must have left Annapolis, sometime between June 30 and July 5, 1862. At that time, the Third Maine was fighting at the Seven Days Battles on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, a distance of more than 150 miles.
To rejoin the Third, Leonard’s most likely travel itinerary would have been:
A train from Annapolis to Baltimore – 30 miles. About a day’s travel.
Then a train from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Another half day.
Followed by a steamship from Washington to Fortress Monroe or Harrison’s Landing. One to two days.
And lastly, up the James River into the chaos of the Seven Days Battles.
By the time Leonard would have been arriving, the Union Army was in full retreat. Confederate forces controlled the roads in the area. The James River was jammed with troop transports and gunboats. And somewhere in that mess—Leonard vanished.
The whole episode sounds like Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” or the movie it was based on “Apocalypse Now.” Anything could have happened to him. Killed by Confederates. Captured and later dying in a Rebel prison. He could have drowned in the James River. Maybe he was murdered and robbed. It’s even possible he received a head injury and suffered from amnesia.
But buried deep within Leonard’s thick file at the U.S. Pension office are two documents that give us a more plausible scenario. The first is called “Declaration of a Widow For Restoration of Pension.” In it, Cornelia Peaslee claimed to have received information that Leonard died in a railroad accident while heading back to the Third Maine.
The second document is from the U.S. Treasury Department, dated August 1, 1902, and bears being quoted directly: “The claimant states that the soldier was last heard from at Annapolis Hospital, Maryland, on the 30th of June 1862, or was killed in a railroad accident while in the line of duty and serving in the U.S. Army, proof of which is now on file in the Pension Department.”
Ah, ah! A railroad accident in a war zone.
A lone soldier killed. Nobody can identify him. He’s buried as a John Doe. Does this explain what happened to Leonard? We think it does, but we wanted to be sure.
So, we uploaded everything we had: Leonard’s fact pattern, travel window, hospital record, and pension file, to the AI platform ChatGPT and asked it: What’s the most plausible explanation for Leonard Peaslee’s disappearance?
What follows is informed speculation, grounded in the data we possess and the wartime context surrounding Leonard’s disappearance.
Here’s what our AI Overlord ChatGPT told us:
“Official military records contain no direct mention of Private Leonard Peaslee, after his hospital release—he essentially vanished from the rolls. He is not listed as a deserter or prisoner, and no battlefield casualty report fits his case. This strongly corroborates the family tradition and pension affidavits: Leonard Peaslee was very likely killed in a transit accident in July 1862 while trying to return to his unit.”
Case closed.
CHAPTER EIGHT: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Cornelia passed away on March 29, 1914, at the age of 84. She died after being confined to her bed for the last seven years of her life and blind for the last five. Cornelia was in the care of her daughter, Rose, who confided that her mother was “a patient and uncomplaining sufferer.”
Rose was a lifelong resident of Bath and was married for 67 years. Unlike her father, Rose lived a long life, passing away at the age of 89 in 1948. She witnessed the invention of the automobile, the airplane, the microwave oven, and color television. She experienced two World Wars and the Great Depression.
But she never had a father.
When Rose was 18, she married Edwin Parris. Edwin was a well-known Bath spar maker—a carpenter who specialized in crafting ship masts. Together, they had five children. Rose honored the memory of the father she never truly knew by giving her first-born son the middle name Leonard.
Leonard Peaslee vanished amid the chaos of war, yet his name endured, passed down by his daughter in quiet remembrance. Sometimes, that’s how history survives—not in monuments or medals, but in middle names, diaries, and the stories families share with one another.
That brings us to the end of the Curious Case of the Missing Private.
Thank you for tuning in to Company D. We hope you enjoyed this episode and look forward to having you join us for the next one. Please send us a note on our website or reach out to us on social media. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform.
I’m your host, George F. Snell III. See you next time. And remember—If you’re going to start a war. Keep it Civil.