Captain Wesley Brainerd

Emerging Civil War

Wesley Brainerd was born in Oneida County, New York in 1832. In 1859, he married Amelia Maria Gage. Before the Civil War, Wesley worked as a railroad engineer. In 1861, he joined the 50th New York Engineers as a captain.

In mid-November of 1862, the 50th New York Engineers transported a pontoon train from Washington, D.C. to Fredericksburg. Once at Fredericksburg, the 50th New York Engineers learned that they were to build two pontoon bridges below Chatham opposite the town, then occupied by Confederate soldiers.

On the night of December 10th Wesley waited inside Chatham and prepared himself for the battle to come. At 1 am on December 11th, the 50th New York Engineers were ordered to lay their bridges. Around 5 am, the engineers’ work was interrupted by Confederate fire from town. Captain Brainerd was wounded in the left arm. His comrades used a handkerchief as a tourniquet. Two men dragged Brainerd, weak from the loss of blood, up the hill while Confederate soldiers continued firing on them. At the top of the hill, Wesley was placed on a stretcher and taken into Chatham by members of the Ambulance Corps.

Wesley was taken “into a large room and sat upon a chair. . . . The room was filled with the wounded, dead and dying. Some were crying, some groaning, and others were too far gone to do either.” He later wrote, “Here in this house which I had left so quiet, so peaceful a few hours before, there now arose the most horrid sounds from the crowd of freshly wounded Soldiers. The windows shook and the solid walls of the old mansion trembled with the reverberations of the cannon which surrounded it and were belching forth upon the town.” Later in the day, Wesley was moved from Chatham, a “horrid place,” to a regimental hospital.

The next day, tragedy struck Wesley when word reached him that his one-year-old daughter, Mary, had died of illness. After the battle, Wesley was given a leave of absence. He returned home on Christmas Day. Wesley Brainerd was promoted to major for his actions at Fredericksburg. He returned to his regiment in February and served for the remainder of the war, rising to the rank of colonel in 1865.

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• Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park

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