Julie McDonald: Centenarian’s Life Shaped History While She Also Preserved It

As a first- and second-grade teacher, Ruth Herren shaped a generation of youngsters. As a Rosie the Riveter, she helped the United States win World War II. And as a wife and mother, she preserved local history along with her husband, Robert, who hosted Cowlitz Prairie Grange Threshing Bees.

On Sunday Herren celebrated her 100th birthday at Toledo Presbyterian Church with family and friends. Her husband died in 2005, but both of her daughters, most of her grandchildren, and her three great-grandchildren attended.

I enjoyed visiting with Herren in December, when she welcomed me and Michele McGeoghegan into her home and showed us historic family photos and an old Cowlitz Farm map. In January, Robin Murphy and Cynthia Payne interviewed and photographed her to be a Rosie the Riveter “calendar girl” for the 2020 Washington Women in Trades.

In December, Herren also showed us an 1863 diary kept by Bernard F. Blakeslee, a corporal with Company A of the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. She said one of her husband’s relatives picked it up on a battlefield.

“He must have been really broken up when he lost it,” Herren said in December. “I’m just sitting here thinking the heartbreak that poor man must have felt when he realized he lost his diary.”

The diary, which starts Aug. 18, 1863, offers a glimpse of America’s bloodiest war, which killed 620,000, half of the total number of soldiers who have died in all the nation’s wars.

Blakeslee, who left the military as a second lieutenant, was wounded twice in the head and imprisoned by the Confederates after his regiment surrendered in North Carolina in April 1864, when the diary ends. He had mailed earlier diaries home to his father, and wrote about his military service and incarceration in “History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers,” published in 1875. It can be downloaded for free on Kindle.

Blakeslee witnessed historic events, such as the execution of Dr. David M. Wright, described by newspapers as “a prominent citizen,” “Confederate sympathizer” and “former slave owner.” On July 11, 1863, Wright swore at Lt. Alanson L. Sanborn, a 29-year-old from Vermont who was leading Company B, Second United States Colored Volunteers, down the main street of Norfolk, Virginia. When Sanborn tried to arrest him, Wright shot the officer twice with a Colt revolver. The high-profile murder trial attracted the attention of President Abraham Lincoln, who delayed the execution until experts determined Wright was sane.

“Dr. David M. Wright made an unsuccessful attempt to escape last evening in his daughter’s clothes,” Blakeslee wrote Oct. 22. “He will be executed tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.”

Most officers witnessed the hanging at 10:10 a.m., he said.

Blakeslee wrote letters frequently, read books and played chess in his tent. On Nov. 9, he and his company witnessed the execution of two deserters — Francis Wales, Co. D, and Mitchell Vandel, Co K.

“After a few religious ceremonies were gone through with they were blindfolded and shot dead,” Blakeslee wrote. “The Brigade then marched by them, each soldier taking a look at the severe punishment for Deserting.”

Blakeslee diligently recorded his expenditures each month — 10 cents for a shave, 20 for washing, 30 for postage stamps, 40 for butter, 50 for tooth powder and eight cents for toothpicks.

He noted the deaths of brave men and described others as sick with dysentery. He wrote about the weather, inspections, battalion and brigade drills, pay rolls, his faith, and his Thanksgiving furlough. He jotted down wise sayings.

A Winter 2016 Military Images article by Scott Valentine, “Dark Memories After Antietam: Lt. Bernard Blakeslee’s Desperate Fight Against ‘Soldier’s Heart,’” discusses the soldier’s battle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

After the war, Blakeslee worked as a stockbroker in Hartford and later in the Postmaster General’s office under President Benjamin Harrison. In 1882, he served as president of the National Union of Survivors of Andersonville and other Southern Military Prisons. In 1891, Blakeslee entered the Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, where he died April 25, 1895, at 51.

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com