MAJOR ALEXANDER DOULL

 

“Some men are more missed than lamented, when they die, others are deeply mourned but scarcely missed.” – La Rochefoucauld

“Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the spring of life and the fruits of it autumn.” – Thomas Macaulay

After reading his epitath, as written in stone on his memorial cross, I become curious who such a man was. There’s not much i could find, but there is some things that are pretty interesting. And, considering his life and actions ended in the time of the American Civil War, these things were impressive enough to survive today, handed down and cared for, and now accessed online.

Some photographer, 160 years after his death, becoming curious about him, through his grave site, in a place that has a pure reflection of what the city was really like during certain times.

My curiosity began with this shot below, which, when i first shot it 11 years ago, was encrusted with black fungus. You can see the lichen that has grown all over the cross. The flip side are the facts of Doull’s life, but can’t be read through the black fungus and lichen.

This guy must have been one bad-ass, i think, on the level of competence and responsibilities and execution. And there are a few pictures of him. I would wager he’s got character, and, perhaps, ambition, to have come all this way and earn it all through wars in Europe and America, only to die at the age of 29 from scarlet fever. Mr. Doull immigrated from England where he was a major in the Royal Artillery, and, in the American Civil War became an officer in command of an artillery regiment attached to the Army of the Potomac, that saw a lot of action.

Mr. Doull had a wife Elizabeth who died in 1899. They had three children in England where he had lived most of his life, before coming to America in 1861, and, upon enlisting, became an officer in the Union Army artillery where he saw combat and was discharged in 1863. He died March 25, 1865 in Pennsylvania of scarlet fever, which, in those days had a twenty per cent fatality rate.

He definitely earned the four years he got to be in America, and, then, ended up buried there, in Cleveland, most likely because this cemetery had sold graves under contract to the United States government. Although up until the 1950s there was a reason to move here, for the living, but the city would become, by the 1960s, a place of departure, and this cemetery would deteriorate along with the city, until recently, when people have been trying to mitigate thirty years of gross vandalism and little vandalismi. It was one of America’s first garden cemeteries, and was a bit rural when built.

165 years after his burial in Cleveland, there’s some photographer creeping around his gravestone, that is now bent to the west, the cross is loose at the base and the stone is encrusted with lichen and fungus, in a cemetery that has taken numerous vandalism hits since 1980. 152 markers turned over in one night, soon after that 87 markers hit in one night, and the ongoing yearly, one at a time, hits that the place suffered. Along with only basic maintenance for fifty years, and you have an extremely historic, old, much abused cemetery that happens to be one of the most interesting cemeteries I have encountered. Most everyone truly feared going into that cemetery at any time of day for a very long time, except me, and the perps.

So maybe I’m doing his legacy a favor and also fulfilling his dying prophecy at the age of twenty-nine, when he sounded more like someone twice his age, with the widom of Homer – ” how quickly they forget…”

Just from what we know of him and the bare facts of his life provides enough information, in light of the epitaph he left, why Major Doull was so far advanced on an experience level. It’s the military, where, in a relatively short time, he did a lot in far away places, and was highly praised and recognized enough, as to still be accessible today on various military and cultural archives available on the internet.

Of course back then everyone had to write, and he wrote precise reports, was obviously educated and articulate, and not, some beast of war, but an expert at the movement, placement, supplying and firing of heavy artillery units in multiple wars and battles on two continents.

It’s said that the choice of inscription reflects the fact that Mr. Doull and many hundreds of those like him, immigrated from Europe, particularly Ireland and England, prior to mass immigrations from Europe, and, upon getting here, joined in the Union against slavery and the south. It’s said that a quarter of all Union soldiers were immigrants. But states like New York, which immigrant Irish were streaming into in large numbers since 1852, all of them new arrivals, were conscripted by the thousands, since they didn’t have the hundred and fifty bucks it took to buy yourself out of the army, and did their duty. The gravestones in Union cemeteries attest to that enormous sacrifice by dirt poor Irish immigrants escaping a famine.

CEMETERY AS MAP TO A CITY

In the case of Alexander Doull, I would speculate that he wanted American citizenship, and his military service would begin at the level of an officer, obviously based on his tremendous experience with artillery in the field. He ended up in Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland in 1865.

Some have made a great deal over statues going back to “Fearless Girl” and reaching a fever pitch by 2020. Performance and show is the way folks protest today, but there are monuments, forgotten, some on the brink of collapse, that get no attention, but gives the clearest picture of any given time. In this case, it’s one of many American cities that were going to explode with population growth in 25 years. Immigration was in its infancy, compared to 1880-1929, and everything was kind of new in a new country, in the early 1800s, especially out west in Ohio, and things were just getting started, meaning everywhere in the newer Northern cities, everyone was from somewhere else, and early on that meant England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany, as well as, Pennsylvania and New York where Rockefeller came from with his father, as well as, southern slaves, moving to Cleveland for a fresh and possibly a rich life.

In the same cemetery that Major Doull is buried, were two state governors, three mayors, the wealthiest black man in the state, and host of other black firsts and achievements, as well. It has a paupers section and a lot of military veterans and dead beginning with the War of 1812 and many from the Civil War including black veterans from all-black units that died and fought in the Civil War. These cities were frontier towns that were quickly turning into cities, before they exploded 25 years later. You’ve still got some Indians, and many freed slaves joining the early mix of settlers and citizens, with the heavy Eastern and Southern European migrations in the future.

There are veterans of the War of 1812

1,400 Civil War veterans were buried at Woodland. Of these, 86 were African Americans.

The notables were not just the Protestant elite, but a truly eclectic bunch where more than money, made you notable. Honor, ethics, ideology, politics, sports, engineering, architecture are equally distributed, and rank above wealth here, unlike the great cemeteries of the future like Lakeview Cemetery or Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. And, preceding Lakeview and Woodlawn by quite a few years, the cemetery has an experimental quality about it, in its mix of architectural styles for its tombs and interesting old grave markers.

These were the original citizens of the city who had staked a claim here and were in it for the long run of a city about to explode in development and population. These were the citizens before the multitudes of Europeans immigrated in the late 1800s.

It’s a pristine view on the years, from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to massive modern industries that would dominate American economics until the late 1970s.

Woodland Cemetery has always been a public cemetery and documents a time with the Civil War at its center, and there is nothing discriminatory, racist or provincial about it. Blacks are well-represented and can provide the entryway into the more interesting history of the city as manifested in so many people from different backgrounds. Abolitionists, sports figures, particularly baseball, and Henry Ebenezer Henderson (1837–1918), the only Confederate soldier buried at Woodland. An example of some history that could be tapped here, is Joseph Tomlinson III. He designed a railroad bridge over the Ashtabula River,  but was fired from the project after he refused to make supervisor-ordered changes to the design with he considered unsafe. The bridge failed on December 29, 1876, killing 92 people in a train derailment.

There was John Greene who many say made Labor Day happen.

Woodland loves sections, or, lots of graves. For 40 years, Woodland served as the city’s potter’s field,  fireman’s lot and Grand Army of the Republic lot.

Alexander Doull, The Man

Alexander Doull seems like he knew a thing or two, he was in different countries, had been thoroughly tested on the highest levels, and certainly had some insights, having fought in Europe and the American Civil War, gotten married and had three children. After he retired from service, he got less than two years as a civilian United States citizen, ending up in Cleveland, of all places, he had never been. But he came here dead, not necessarily willing, like all his other moves.

His NY Times Obituary:

DOULL. — On Sunday, March 26, at the residence of Rev. Dr. Reynolds, Meadeville, Penn., of malignant scarlet fever, ALEXANDER DOULL, Esq., late Colonel of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac, and formerly Lieutenant in the Royal British Artillery, aged 29 years.

Sacred to the memory of Alexander Doull, Colonel of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac, previously lieutenant in the Royal British Artillery

Saw a lot in his short life, and, in a time when scarlet fever killed around 17% who got it, it got him. Half the Civil War dead died of this sort of thing, however Mr. Doull had already left service and was in Meadeville Pennsylvania at the time of his death. I assume he ended up at the Cleveland cemetery because it had many Civil war dead and veterans, was contracted out to the government, and was the closest to Meadeville. It happened to be one of the first, beautiful “rural” or garden cemeteries between New York and Chicago, so, when he landed there, in its initial years, he was in a very classy place, that would remain so, even as it became engulfed in huge factories and rail lines. The National Screw Plant formed the eastern boundary of the cemetery, especially the plant’s foundry. On the west and south sides were small enclaves  of worker cottages, apartments and homes and on the north side was the Morgan Seaver Plant, where Huletts were constructed, the Cleveland Stove Works and smaller manufacturing plants. All this exploded in growth, from the moment the cemetery was built out in the boonies that became the center city.

Between 1865 and 1872 there were recurring smallpox, typhus, typhoid, scarlet fever, and yellow fever epidemics in America and the northeast, and Major Doull died before that.

Colonel Doull’s tombstone reminds us of a fact about the United States Civil War – the important role that immigrants played in the armies. About 25% of the Union army was estimated to be foreign-born immigrants. With the rate of immigration in the 19th century, we also have to assume that there was a significant slice of the United States-born soldiers who had parents or grandparents who were immigrants.

This is written in a time when statues have taken on an unusual new life. Long before George Floyd, the statues were falling, and even the fearless girl was endowed with unusual meaning.

Putting on a show is a big part of modern activism and protest, and tearing down memorial statues is yet another show and a part of that demonstrating.

Meanwhile, forgotten, interesting folks who put their money where they speak and act, lie scattered and memorialized across the country, where, answers to how we got here might be found. Very little of it was symbolic of anything but hard work and forging a life until it ends, and effecting the cities from which they settled.

Major Alexander Doull’s monument is that of military service and wars. His gravestone, his only memorial ain’t goin anywhere, particularly since he had fought on the right side. People feel like justification motivates the destruction of, ultimately, inconsequential statues.

Mount Rushmore is one of the least visited national parks in America, and one of the most well-known. I visited South Dakota a dozen times, and almost got close to going to Rushmore, but, of course, never did. The geologic monuments were there, and are there, to be seen, if anyone cares to do so, but like many i was more interested in natural sculptures of the Badlands.

Look at what little is known of the man, which, for a soldier, of that era, is quite a bit. He must have been completely professional, disciplined and smart.

But it’s the forgotten memorial to a long dead soldier in a beat-up, once grand, cemetery in the ghetto that i see and listen to. If you think statues are dictating outmoded ways or largely influencing things than you are all show. It got to the point where statues were built and placed to have a dialogue with and confront other statues.

He was impressive, considering he died in 1865 at the age of twenty-nine. That was because he actually did something that wasn’t a show, performance or a demonstration of feelings, ideology or justified outrage, but, like most of the other interred, here, had accomplished something in life, and his, just starting out, and paying the price for citizenship, in a country on the verge of exploding economically, could have been successful, happy and even prosperous, if he would have survived.

But stupid-ass scarlet fever got him, and he was brought here.

Many who fought on the side of the Union and against slavery were immigrants and complete newcomers to America. At the time of the Civil War the dominant immigrants in the northern cities were poor Irish fleeing the Famine and filling the poor sections of American cities in the north. Many, who had recently came off a boat from Ireland, were drafted and fought the bloodiest American war. And, of course, being new, they were, at times, considered lower than the black Americans who they would fight for whether they liked it or not. In Irish neighborhoods in New York City like Hell’s Kitchen on the west side, a real hellhole 150 years ago, was comprised of blacks and Irish. In fact the move by blacks out of Hell’s Kitchen to Harlem was brought on by brutal riots after the Civil War, that began during the Civil War.

His resignation from the service was interesting, he had risen to Major and Colonel, the war was still going strong and it seemed like his career was as well. This somehow might be behind the choice of last words to the world. But, of course, that may not have been a choice that he made, but someone else, and I’m going to assume that would be someone close who knew him. But he could have been injured, got fed up on any number of things, or, just plain retired, perhaps finding work in Pennsylvania and bringing his wife and children over when the Cvil War ended. Did his family show up at his burial? Were they there in Pennsylvania with him when he got sick?

Here’s a snip of what is available online, beginning with his picture shot by Alexander Gardner:

Colonel Alexander James Colonel Alexander Gardner, Washington D.C (photographer)

Written on the front: Colonel Doull, an Englishman, formerly of the artillery now an Inspector Gen. of Artillery in Army of Potomac.

Alexander James Doull was born in England on January 28, 1836. He married Elizabeth Maria King on August 29, 1857. Following his enlistment on October 26, 1861, Doull was commissioned as an officer in Company S of the New York 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment; he would later become an inspector general in the Army of the Potomac, serving directly under General Henry Jackson Hunt. Doull was naturalized as a United States citizen in September of 1863, and died on March 29, 1865.

A snip about his performance in war:

Major Doull, charged with the direction of the operations when the middle bridge was successfully thrown, and in command of Kusserow’s and Waterman’s batteries on the 13th instant, is entitled to special commendation for the energy, conduct, and gallantry displayed on these occasions, and I respectfully call your attention to those services.

Below are excerpts from an eight page briefing Major Doull gave his commanding officer concerning battles in Virginia in 1862. By the last page he is comparing siege gun placement and strategy with European battles that he was in:

142 CAMPAIGNS AGAINST RICHMOND.

2.-Report of Major Alex.Doull, ordnance officer for train of 1862.

NEAR YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA,

May -, 1862.

COLONEL: The siege of Yorktown being terminated by the evacuation of that place by the rebel forces just when nearly the whole of the siege batteries were ready tQ open fire, I have the honor to submit for your consideration the following report of the work which has been performed by the officers and men of your regiment in arming the siege batteries at that place. During the seven days that elapsed from the 26th of April to the evacuation of Yorktown, all the batteries have been fired at more or less continuously; and though the regiment had never been under fire, and is, like the rest of this army, composed of troops who have not been twelve months in the service, and who would therefore be considered in any regular artillery in the world merely as recruits, and the officers have not had the advantage of that scientific military training which is usually considered necessary for this branch of military service, and although a large part of the material employed has been of a weight hitherto unknown in sieges, and has therefore necessitated the employment of carriages and platforms usually confined to permanent works on account of the labor, care, and accuracy required in their construction, yet the condition of the batteries, and the accuracy with which all the platforms have been laid and the magazines arranged, give no indications whatever of these disadvantages.

The siege train at present in battery and under my charge consists ofTwo 200-pounder Parrotts, five 100-pounder Parrotts, at battery Nd. 1

manned by battery B, commanded by Major E. S. Kellogg.

Five 4A-inch guns, five 30-pounder Parrotts, at battery No. 2, manned by

batteries A and H, commanded by Major L. G. Hemingway.

Ten 13-inch sea service mortars, (1861,) at battery No. 4, manned by batteries F and G, commanded by Major E. S. Kellogg.

Six 10-inch sea service mortars, (1841,) at battery No. 6, manned by battery

C, commanded by Captain R. S.Burbank…

48 CAMPAIGNS AGAINST RICHMOND.

The estimate of transportation is exclusive of that between the depot and the batteries, for which purpose twenty-five wagons were kept constantly employed from the 21st of April. In all six hundred and thirteen wagon loads were conveyed. In the three weeks during which these siege operations were conducted, your regiment worked, with very little relief, night and day. As soon as any battery was completed the companies to which it was assigned moved into camp near it, constructing such shelter from the enemy’s fire as they could, and remained with their guns; differing in this respect from all other troops employed in the trenches, who returned to camp out of fire as soon as their duty was finished. When it is considered that the first siege train placed in battery by the English before Sevastopol consisted of seventy-two pieces; that they marched into Balaklava on the 25th of September, and opened fire on the 17th of October, twenty-three days afterward, and that they employed to accomplish this end all the resources of a powerful navy, and a large regular artillery skilled by constant practice in the large maritime fortresses of Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu, in all the manoeuvres of heavy artillery, and that only the same time (twenty-three days) was occupied (from the 12th of April to the 3d of May) in placing seventy-one guns in battery, many of them much exceeding in weight any that have before been used in a siege, it is evident that the labors of the 1st regiment Connecticut artillery will compare favorably with anything of the kind that has been done before.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient

servant,

ALEXANDER DOULL,

Major 2d N. Y. Artillery, and Ordnance

Officer to Siege Train, 1st Connecticut Artillery.

Col. ROBERT 0. TYLER,

Commanding 1st Connecticut Artillery.

Three nice shots (wet collodian negative) of the 2nd New York Artillery –

• [Photograph: Arlington, VA, Aug. 1865] [Photograph: Officers at Arlington, VA, Aug. 1865]
• Co. “K” [Photograph: gun crew, Arlington, VA, Aug. 1865]
• Co. “L” [Photograph: gun crew, Arlington, VA, Aug. 1865]

The cemetery has four mounted parrot guns 100 feet to the south of the grave, and are the cannons that Doull handled like a master.

There is nothing about the last year and half before he died, in Meadeville Pennsylvania, of scarlet fever at the age of twenty-nine. He resigned from the army, became a naturalized American citizen and got to live less than two years as an American citizen and a military retiree. This time in his life became a blank on the internet, and the how and why he was in Meadevillle, as well as, the reasons for quitting the military are a mystery. We do know how the Major ended up further west at Woodland Cemetery after his death, because the cemetery had contracted out gravesites to the government to bury veterans who participated in the wars from 1812 to the Spanish-American conflict.

When the country is eighty years old, and still defining itself, nearly everyone was an immigrant or their parents were, and the actual huge waves of European immigrants, that populated America were thirty years off, and should be kept in perspective of what was actually going on at a given time.

Was it even Major Doull that wanted that inscription and epitath? He was 29 when he died and no one at that age would be thinking of their burial, but then again he was in wars.

His personal inscription is on the back of the cross, which is in terrible shape, and canot be read. The original sandstone trim and slab over the grave has been buried in dirt and grass.

1800 until 1880 were, obviously, the formative years for this country that had already seen a brutal Civil War, Indian Wars, the Mexican War and an invasion by the British in 1812, when they burned Washington D, C. By the 1880s the country, and its cities would become hyper-industrialized and world class cities, many, maybe like this one, began to fall in the 1950s and continue to do so. The idea of what this country is and will turn out to be was in its infancy when the dead citizens of the Forest City were beginning to be buried at Woodland cemetery, and, by the 1880’s this era would be absorbed in mass immigrations, especially from Italy, and the Eastern European countries of Hungary, Poland Croatia, Slovenia, Russia, Ukraine, Chechzlovakia, Romania, etc. that would make the industrial cities of the Northeast boom with large amounts of fresh, willing labor to staff the millions of new jobs, and define city neighborhoods by both class and ethnicity. But the urban America of crime, pollution, marvelous architecture and infrastructure and unprecedented growth, unseen, until the China boom of the last thirty years, is, itself undergoing another transformation with the gentrification of the former working-class neighborhoods. The good-paying factory jobs are gone, replaced by the working-broke while almost all well-paid blue-collar residents left long ago.

From the war of 1812, until the Spanish American war, and international conflict, the foundation for the modern urban center was formed. Places like Woodland cemetery are a clear pristine window on this time, and particularly, the people of that time.

In closing as state by his commander in the Battle of Fredericksburg, “Alexander Doull, Second New York Artillery, inspectors of artillery, performed the duties devolving upon them with alacrity and intelligence. Major Doull, charged with the direction of the operations when the middle bridge was successfully thrown, and in command of Kusserow’s and Waterman’s batteries on the 13th instant, is entitled to special commendation for the energy, conduct, and gallantry displayed on these occasions, and I respectfully call your attention to those services.”

Third, fourth and previous generations of Americans – top that.

Hard core, dedicated, respected and the man of action, dies before he hits thirty years of age, but has already lived a lifetime of experiences. Experience is the difference. Enough of wich leads to an epitath by Horace, that sparked the same sort of experiential quest that led a photographer to his grave.

The same [hated] man will be loved after he’s dead. How quickly we forget. (Horace), or, Though hated in life, the same man will be loved after his death. – Horace.

                                                 

            

It’s funny how people 160 years later can be drawn to something, like a lichen covered memorial stone, previously unseen and taken for granted. With all the statue action in the last couple of years, particularly after George Floyd, it might be nice to remember that there are philosopher stones that have a lot to say. We cannot change history, we can learn it. History has a definite impact on life by telling us how we got here and exactly who came before, what went wrong and what went right. Bustin up statues is easy, emotional and mostly just polarizing.

It would be a shame for someone to tear down or vandalize Mr. Doull’s legacy because of ideology, hatred or simple dumb ass vandalism. I learned a lot in history from both the good and bad, that i can’t change. In this case I think it’s all good, but that’s up for subjective emotional grabs. What if somebody had a bug up their ass about Horace, the Civil War or the military and decided that the Memorial cross had to go? Sneaking into a cemetery at night to screw things up, is just a game, at least, compared to people of action, and, might jeopardize the role of brave or selfless deeds in the world, by destroying, and thus, forgetting who we are and how we got here, clear of emotions and ideology, with only a window on the theatre of past events.

Perhaps somene can search further than the internet, and find out more about Mr. Doull, but for the time being, Eddie and I have another aphorism for such an occasion – “Ombra! Principito e fine.”