Posted on 04/20/2005 8:55:07 AM PDT by sheltonmac
SUFFOLK — Russell E. Darden’s great-great-uncle Julius first reached out to him about 20 years ago, when a sudden stiff breeze blew through an old house in Southampton County.
Darden, a Civil War buff and a historian, was visiting an elderly friend, a man whose father had served in the war. He remembers looking up, startled, as a bedroom door blew open in the wind. On the back, framed in plastic, were photos of soldiers in Confederate uniforms.
Darden didn’t know it then, but the breeze had pushed open a door to his family’s past.
Several months later, with the faces of the men still haunting him, he returned to his friend’s house and asked permission to examine the pictures again.
On the back of one faded daguerreotype, he found the name of Julius Franklin Howell, a corporal in the 24th Virginia Cavalry.
His great-great-uncle.
It took years for Darden to uncover the full story of Howell, the Civil War veteran who became a college president, addressed the U.S. Congress and lived for more than a century.
The most exciting moment came when he got a telephone call from a man at the University of Texas who had somehow heard of his quest for knowledge about his relative. In the university’s archives was a recording of Howell on a wax cylinder -– made in 1944, Darden believes, when his uncle was 98.
On Sunday at Riddick’s Folly House Museum on North Main Street visitors to Suffolk’s Civil War Weekend can hear Howell’s haunting account of the years between 1861 and 1865.
Displays Saturday and Sunday at Riddick’s Folly, which was occupied at one point by Union forces, are only part of the weekend’s activities. There will also be artists, noted authors, re-enactors in period costumes and tours, including a lantern tour though historic Cedar Hill Cemetery.
As for the authentic voice of a true Civil War veteran, Darden said he believes the audio recording may have been professionally made by Warner Brothers. Uncle Julius was great friends with Mary Pickford, the silent film star, who was part owner in the film company at the time.
Howell, his southeastern Virginia accent strong and clear on the recording, says, “I remember very well when John Brown tried to free the slaves.”
He explains that he considers it a “distinct honor” to be recalling the war years, and he asks the listener to forgive him “if I make little mistakes,” because “time has passed so rapidly.”
Howell, who was born in 1846 near the Holy Neck section of Suffolk, in the Holland area, would likely enjoy being a part of the weekend in his hometown.
He was the youngest of 16 children, the son of a prominent Baptist minister. His daddy wouldn’t allow him to join the army until he was 16½, he says in his account.
He saw action guarding the Blackwater River against Yankees until his regiment was called to help defend Richmond in 1864. By then, he was a corporal and courier for two generals.
In April 1865, Howell was taken prisoner at the battle of Sailor’s Creek and was transported to Point Lookout, Md., a notorious Union prison. He was there when he heard about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
“I arose pretty early,” he says. “There were 20,000 of us there. I saw a flag pole, and a flag stopped halfway.”
The youth, a slightly built man with bright red hair, knew what it meant.
“I stuck my head in a tent and said, 'Boys, there must be some big Yankee dead.’ ”
A guard told the men later that the president had been shot. Howell says he felt no hatred toward Lincoln, only kindness.
“We didn’t fight for the preservation or extension of slavery,” he says. “It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery. We fought for states’ rights, for states’ rights.”
After the war, Howell taught at Reynoldson Institute in Gates County, N.C. He soon left teaching and went to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a history degree. From there, he went on to Harvard and got a doctorate in history.
Howell was a history professor at the University of Arkansas. He eventually headed the department. In 1901, he was named president of Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, where he served for 50 years.
Uncle Julius, said Darden, was forever loyal to the South. He became state commander of the Tennessee Confederate Veterans and, in 1940, was named commander-in-chief of the national United Confederate Veterans.
In 1942, Life magazine did a spread on Howell. Several photos of the old gentleman show him dressed in his Confederate uniform. Because legislators wanted to hear more from the Confederate veteran, Howell addressed the combined Congress of the United States in Washington in 1944, when he was 98, and Darden thinks that’s when the tape was made.
Four years later, in February 1948, on his 102nd birthday, the city of Bristol threw a party. Mary Pickford and her family attended.
Howell, who had never been sick a day in his life, according to his great-great-nephew, died the following June.
"died at Point Lookout"
Do you belong to the Pt Lookout POW org?
Awesome! is there any way to save this on my computer?
Yes, although some types of multimedia are tricky to save and methods vary. In this case the file you want is a Shockwave Flash file located at this address: http://media.hamptonroads.com/flash/Howell.swf
Install an older browser program without the Shockwave plugins so that the older browser does not recognize Shockwave -- I used Opera 5.0. Then paste the address above into the browser's URL address line and press the Enter key. Because the older browser does not recognize Shockwave, it will prompt you to save the file to disk instead of runnng it. After you have saved Howell.swf onto your hard drive, then open that file using your current browser in order to play it. You could of course, plug a tape recorder into the computer's audio jack and make an analog recording.
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