Oliver Perry Manlove
Miner, Soldier, Poet and Survivor

Introduction

The SS Central America sank in 1857, four years before the outbreak of the Civil War.  My second great aunt, Mary Swan Cook (1839-1924), and her baby girl, together with all 60 women and children, were rescued before the ship went down.  435 men lost their lives including Mary’s husband, Samuel Swan. Mary and her daughter Lizzie were living in Eastern Ohio when the Civil War started.  She trained as a field nurse for the Union Army and treated Union soldiers wounded in battle in Ohio and Pennsylvania.   I was curious: Did any of the other survivors of the shipwreck also fight in the Civil War?  There was at least one: Steerage passenger, Oliver Perry Manlove from Wisconsin.  Manlove survived both historic and horrific events.  It’s fair to say his story is miraculous.

Early Family History

Oliver Perry Manlove was born September 12, 1831, in Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois.  He was the eldest of the seven children of Moses Manlove and Elizabeth “Betsey” Huff.   Moses and his kin were Quakers who settled in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.  The clan was originally from Kinnerly Parish in Shropshire, England. Moses and his brother, David, had a milling business in Rushville. Oliver’s mother, Betsey, died in 1845 when he was 14 years old. The following year Moses moved Oliver and his six siblings to a farm in Muscoda, Grant County, Wisconsin.

In the spring of 1853, at the age of 21, Oliver and a few friends were bit by the Gold Rush bug and decided to make their way to the gold fields of Northern California and claim the fortune awaiting them.   Oliver described the journey 50 years later. “There were four of us in the party. We started from our home in Wisconsin early in April, and with an ox team we sauntered across the prairies of Iowa and Nebraska, up into Wyoming and across to Salt Lake City that summer and finally reached our destination in Northern California about the middle of September.  Did I enjoy the trip?  Well, I guess I did.  The road was lined with teams and parties like us, going to the land of gold.  We had no trouble to speak of with the Indians during the trip.”

Manlove toiled almost four years digging and panning for the precious metal.  He made some money which he sent home to his father.  How much is unknown. By the end of the summer in 1857 he decided to return to his home in Wisconsin.  On August 20, Manlove boarded the steamship SS Sonora in San Francisco and settled in with the other passengers.  He was among those in steerage—today’s “economy” class.   On September 2, after a rather pleasant voyage, the Sonora anchored off of Panama City. Early the next morning, small steamers carried the passengers, their baggage and the precious cargo of tons of gold to shore. There they boarded small railcars for the four-hour journey across the isthmus to Aspinwall on the Caribbean. That afternoon, the passengers boarded the SS Central America captained by Wm. Lewis Herndon.  Bound for New York City, the ship was struck and disabled by a massive hurricane off the southeast coast of Florida on September 10. 

SS Central America Disaster

The trials and tribulations of the next three days have been shared in the gripping firsthand accounts of George Dawson and Alexander Grant who, together with John Tice, were the last three to be rescued after nine exhausting days of floating on a piece of wreckage.

Ansel Easton was among the 49 men rescued by the bark Ellen, and his wife Adeline was rescued by Captain Hiram Burt and the brig Marine.

And steerage passenger Mary Swan who was also rescued by the brig Marine together with her 22-month-old daughter, Lizzie.

Mary was 18 years old when the Central America went down.  Forty-four years later in 1901, and only a few months after her second husband, George Cook, succumbed from severe burns suffered during the wildfire that destroyed most of the town of Willits in Mendocino County, California, Mary sat for an extensive interview with the Sacramento Bee.   She relived the final days aboard the disabled Central America, the courageous rescue of the women and children by the Marine, and the week of suffering aboard the Marine bursting at the seams with the rescued and scarce supplies of food and fresh water before finally reaching New York City.

An acquaintance gave Mary’s story to Oliver Manlove who was living in Park Rapids, Minnesota.  Manlove sent to the Bee his own account of surviving the Central America tragedy that appeared in the February 1, 1902, edition of the paper under the heading “Women and Children Saved, But Many Brave Men Perished-Another Survivor of Wreck of Central America Recounts Thrilling Scenes and Incidents, After Lapse of Many Years.”

These are excerpts from Manlove’s story picking up with Saturday, September 12, the day the Central America sank:

Vessel to the Rescue

Rockets were sent up and signal guns were fired, and when Saturday morning came it was dismal enough.  The wind was still blowing very hard.  Nowhere in sight could a sail be seen.  Nothing but the black piles of waves that rose above each other and tumbled over in chasms of foam. The vessel was gradually settling in the waves, and the time was not far away when we would meet our destinies. 

About noon a vessel came in sight.  It was the brig Marine of Boston.  Three cheers were given with shouting voices.  The reaction of feeling was so sudden that tears were glistening in many eyes.  ‘Oh, we shall be saved! was passed from lip to lip, as the brig came up and laid to, not more than a hundred yards away.

Our vessel carried five lifeboats, but in lowering them three were broken to pieces by the waves, so only two were left for use. The women and children were to be taken to the brig first.  Straps were fastened around their waists and when the boats were brought up on a wave to the side of the vessel they were filled and started for the brig, which was now several hundred yards away.  It being lighter than the steamer, it drifted faster and could not get back.  Anxiously the lifeboats were watched in their perilous journey, which was over the crests and through dark valleys of spray and foam.  Sometimes they were gone from our sight so long that we cried out, ‘Lost, lost!’ Then they would come upon the crests again, and we would cheer with our shouts.  At last the brig was reached and the precious freight taken on board.  The lifeboats returned and were soon filling up.  There was room for a few besides the women and children, and the Captain was asked to go with them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot.’  Then, giving his watch to a lady, he said to her ‘If you ever reach New York, this is for my wife, and tell her that I shall not leave my vessel while there is a man on board.‘

A few of the ship’s crew got into the boats, which were soon on their way again to the brig, which was now several miles away, and as we watched them among the dark waves we knew that they would never return.

Prepared for the Worst

Not long after this a schooner passed by, but offered no assistance.  They said they had no boats that could live in such a sea.  With heavy hearts we prepared for the worst. Bailing had been abandoned—the water was nearly up to the floors.  The vessel would soon go down.

Death was very near us, for it did not seem possible that any one could live more than a few moments in the dark masses of water; and night was coming on. How many of us, if any, would see the morning, and where would it find us?

The floors were bursting up—the water was at our feet. We were driven to the hurricane deck Some had wrenched off doors and other things that would float, and stood with them in their hands.  About 8 o’clock Captain Herndon sent a rocket into the sky.  It ominously flamed up through the gloom and died away.  A moment after this the vessel went down. The stern sank first, and the waves were seething and hissing as they swept over us.  We were carried down in a whirlpool of destruction.  The suction of the vessel was so great, I thought I should never get to the surface again.  When I did, my life buoys were gone. They had been torn off in the wreck. What could I do without them?  How could I keep up? 

All around were human faces peering from the dark water. Human hands that beat the waves or clung to fragments that had floated up from the vessel. It was a scene of wild confusion. We were jammed together—clinging to each other, shouting, and some swearing as the drowning ones would drag them down with their death grasps.  The waves were merciless—they pounded us—they tossed us about like bubbles, and covered us up in their dark valleys with spray and foam.  At one time I was without anything to which I could cling. It was all I could do to keep my head above water long enough for breathing spells. 

One poor fellow close to me was clinging to a board.  I reached his side after a hard struggle.  He begged me not to take his board.  I told him I did not want to take it from him, but only to hold on to it until I could get something that would be floating by.  I saw that he had a pair of life buoys, thrown over his shoulder, that he had picked up.  He gave them to me and I put them on, one under each arm, with the strap across my breast. This was a new lease upon life, and gave me hope of keeping up awhile longer.  Presently something came floating by which I grasped and found to be the cover of a box.  It would not bear my weight, but I could keep it before me and cling to it with a hand on either side.

Drifting With the Waves

We were drifting with the waves wherever they would take us.  It was a trackless voyage that would soon end in eternity with the most of us, if not with all.  We were broken up into small parties, and scattered among the waves. There was no moon but sometimes a star or patch of blue sky shown through some rift in the dark clouds.  Fainter became the cries of those who were drifting from me.

At last I was entirely alone.  I had but little hope of being saved, yet I could not fully realize that I should be lost.  I cannot tell why, for it was a desperate trial—a continuous struggle among the waves that greatly taxed my strength.  After a long time, it seemed to me, I saw a light gleaming out from the waves, like a bright star. It sent a thrill through my heart that made me shout with joy.  I looked again and it was gone.  There was nothing but black gloom where it had been.  But soon I saw the light again.  It was shining brightly and coming toward me, and not far away.

I called loudly for help.  The light came from the Norwegian bark Ellen. I had been heard and was to be saved. 

I have a vivid recollection of how I got alongside the vessel, when a rope was thrown me, and I was dragged on board.  It was 4 o’clock in the morning, and I had been in the water eight hours. Several had been rescued before I was. By 10 o’clock forty-nine had been saved. And 400 were lost.  Captain Herndon was never seen after the vessel went down.

We were taken by Captain Johnsen to Norfolk, Virginia, that being the nearest port. We were very thankful for our rescue, but we sadly thought of our fellow passengers who had found watery graves. 

The SS Central America went down on September 12, 1857, which just so happened to be Oliver Manlove’s 26th birthday..

Manlove’s account was exceptionally well- written.   He was 70 years old when he submitted his article to the Bee. Manlove began writing as a teenager in Muscoda.  While working in the minefields in Northern California, he wrote over three hundred pages of poems.  Those poems went down with the SS Central America. Manlove continued to write prolifically for the rest of his life and his works were published nationwide. We will come back to this. 

After his harrowing rescue, Manlove returned to his family’s home in Muscoda.  The next few years were quietly spent working on the farm with his father and two younger brothers, William and Henry.  

And then the Civil War broke out.

At the age of 32, Manlove enlisted with the 37^th Wisconsin Regiment of the Union Army in November of 1863, and was assigned to Company H of the 9^th Corp.

The Civil War: Siege of Petersburg and Battle of the Crater

As the Civil War ground into its 4^th year, it had become a war of attrition.  The casualties suffered by the Union and Confederate Armies were staggering and the war took an enormous toll on the economies of the Yankee and Rebel States.  Supplies of arms, uniforms, food, medicines as well as able-bodied men were at critically low levels for both the North and South.   The side who could gain and maintain an edge in numbers of troops and supplies would win the War. 

After basic training at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin, Private Manlove and his Company H were sent to Eastern Virginia to join the Army of the Potomac. They were quickly engaged in the action known as the Siege of Petersburg.   The Siege was a series of battles fought over ten months between June 1864 and April 1865.  It was a bloody slugfest between the warring sides’ two top generals:  Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army and Robert E. Lee of the Confederates.   Grant’s objective was control of Petersburg, Virginia, a major supply hub for the Confederates.  He figured if he could knock out this lifeline the War would quickly end.

Grant was right, but it came at a horrible cost.  Over 70,000 soldiers were killed during the Siege: 42,000 Yanks and 28,000 Rebels.   The number of men wounded or taken prisoner was triple that.

One of the most daring and audacious of the battles was the Battle of the Crater; it was also one of the most disastrous and costliest for the Union Army.  Manlove and his Company were in the thick of it. 

The Siege of Petersburg was dominated by trench warfare whose tactics were the precursor to those deployed in France and Belgium during World War I.   Grant’s soldiers were bogged down in trenches, their progress stilted by the Confederate First Corps line of troops and artillery entrenched in a long line 150 yards away below a hill known as Cemetery Ridge.   Both sides traded musket and cannon fire for weeks, but Grant’s army could not advance.

Union Army Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants came up with a novel plan to solve Grant’s problem.  Pleasants, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania, proposed digging an underground tunnel and placing explosive charges directly underneath the Confederate line.  If successful, Union troops would be able to drive through the gap in the line, attack the Confederate’s rear flank, and take Petersburg.

Grant signed off and digging commenced in late June.   Over the course of the next four weeks, Pleasants’ men dug a tunnel 500 feet long, five feet in width and 20 feet deep.   When the tunnel was beneath the Confederate line, side tunnels of 40 feet in length were dug perpendicular to the main tunnel.   These side tunnels were packed with 10,000 pounds of gun powder.   A fuse was attached and unreeled back to the Yankee side of the tunnel. 

Everything was ready in the wee hours of July 30.  Private Manlove recreated the scene in his 1915 book, “The Hospital Cap.”

At the given hour, half-past three in the morning, the fuse was fired and went hissing on its mission of death.  But the mine did not explode. The fuse had been spliced half-way in the tunnel and the fire went out at that place.  Two brave men went in and relighted it.   This was ten minutes before five…The hissing flash was speeding to its goal.  There was a tremor of the earth, and then a mountain of fire rose in the air, streaked and seamed with flames and flashes, as it hung for a moment, revealing its terrible nature with earth, and timer, and men commingled there, wrapped in the smoke and the flames of the blast.  As it settled down, it was like a holocaust dropping from the sky. Aside from the guard the Confederate garrison was asleep.   It was a terrible awakening for them, to a crashing death.   At once a tremendous cannonade was opened on them from Grant’s guns.  The din was rarely exceeded in battle.  A great chasm was opened up to Cemetery Ridge, and beyond to Petersburg.

A crater, still visible today, was created 170 feet long, by 60 to 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep.   The explosion instantly killed or maimed hundreds of Confederate soldiers.   Grant’s plan was to have thousands of his troops, divided into separate battalions, rush the crater and go around its flanks. Some of the battalions were to set up defensive lines to allow the others to proceed with the attack on the heart of Petersburg.   The plan was sound; the execution was a colossal failure.  

One battalion stayed put and failed to rush forward.  Its commander was found drunk well behind the lines and later dismissed.   Thousands of other Yanks rushed into instead of around the crater.  Since this was unplanned, there were no ladders provided for the men to use to exit the crater. They became trapped.  Manlove’s personal account of the resulting turkey shoot is haunting.

There was no opening but the crater and that became packed full of men…It was a dreadful place, with the dead and the buried alive, and thousands of soldiers without competent officers.  Half-buried Rebels cried out: ‘Yanks, for God’s sake, help me out! I’ll do as much for you sometime.’   Their cries were desperate.

Some of the troops got out [of the crater] but the Rebels had roused up and strengthened their lines.  The guns of Cemetery Ridge had a direct fire on them; they swept the crater with shot and shell.  Batteries [of Rebel soldiers] to the right and left poured in a cross and enfilading fire, withering and destructive with every blast.  Cannon to the right –to the left—and in front, sweeping the intervening space.  It was a veritable hell on earth—death to remain in the crater, with an impossibility of advance, while it was death to retreat.  The carnage was frightful.

The Union troops that weren’t trapped in the crater engaged the Confederates in heavy hand to hand fighting for several hours with little ground achieved.  By midafternoon, General Grant ordered the withdrawal and retreat of his remaining troops.

The Battle of the Crater resulted in 1,500 Confederate casualties (200 killed, 900 wounded, and 400 missing or captured).  Union casualties were triple that (500 killed, 1,900 wounded, and 1,600 hundred missing or captured). 

General Grant later wrote, “It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.”

Private Oliver P. Manlove was among those Union soldiers taken prisoner.  In retrospect, he may have wished he were among those comrades-in-arms who fell.  His “veritable hell” had only just begun. 

Danville Prison- Houses of Horror

In late 1863, six empty tobacco warehouses in Danville, Virginia were converted into prisons to hold captured Union soldiers.   The prisons in the capital of Richmond were overcrowded and Danville was, on paper, a logical choice given it was connected to Richmond by railroad. 

Manlove and the other 1,400 Yanks captured during the Battle of the Crater were loaded into boxcars for the 140-mile journey to Danville, in south central Virginia, just a few miles from the border with North Carolina.   It took two days to reach Danville, and the prisoners were provided with a meager ration of bread to sustain them.  James Robertson, Jr. in his article Houses of Horrors (1961) wrote “… the track was dangerously bad and the locomotives, wheezing steam and burning twice their normal amount of wood, could make barley twelve miles per hour.  Each boxcar contained seventy prisoners and four guards, and the weight of the cars and their occupants often proved too much of a strain on the engines which would have to stop and rest.  The tracks themselves would sometimes spread apart under the strain and have to be re-spiked before the train could continue.”

It was the middle of summer and stifling hot.  The men literally baked in the crammed boxcars.

Danville was woefully ill-equipped to handle the influx of prisoners which at its peak reached 7,000.  Food, clothing, and other basic necessities were severely depleted.   All able-bodied men had been thrown into the war.  There were few left to work the farms, man the factories, or provide medical care.  The Union blockade of the southern states’ coastline stopped the delivery of medicines to the Confederacy. Shortly after the prisons began to fill with inmates, Danville was hit with an outbreak of smallpox. “More than any other event, the smallpox epidemic revealed how closely intertwined were the prisoners’ and townspeople’s lives.  Those townspeople who had been universally empathetic to the plight of the prisoners in Danville, and who had turned out in large numbers to share what little they had…were quickly driven into an attitude of panic and self-preservation.”

Vast numbers of men contracted the virus so fast that many died in the prisons before they could receive medical attention. Sometimes two or three days passed before the dead were removed.

When Manlove and his fellow inmates entered their prison building, they were stunned by the hollow eyes and emaciated faces and bodies of the prisoners who stared back at them. There were no beds nor any other furnishings. The men had to arrange themselves on floors caked in dirt mixed in with tobacco juice and the waste of rats and the human occupants.  Each man barely had four square feet of space to himself.  The filth became a breeding paradise for vermin and disease.

Only a few men at a time could be let out into the yard to use the privies. Since most were afflicted with diarrhea and other gastrointestinal issues, they couldn’t wait for their turn to go outside. The men slept in rows of four, two rows with their heads to the walls and the other two with their heads to the center of the building. The men preferred their heads against the walls since the half-boarded windows let in some air to lessen the stench; but it also let in the cold. The men slept so close together that cries of “spoon left” and “spoon right” were called out through the night to synchronize the turning of their bodies.

They arrived in rags. Anything they brought with them was confiscated by the guards whose deprivations were nearly as bleak. There was death by starvation. And death by cold in the winter months.  Each floor was equipped with one stove, but supplies of coal ran out and wood was scarce. Inmates resorted to ripping out boards from walls and ceilings to feed the stoves.  But a vast majority of the inmates died from disease.

Even though the smallpox outbreak was largely quelled by the time Private Manlove was imprisoned, conditions deteriorated. “Extreme cold, dwindling rations, higher disease rates, and increased psychological suffering distinguished the compound’s final period of operation. Those who occupied the compound during this period endured the most lethal living conditions in the prisons’ history.”

The death rate at Danville as well all Civil War prisons, North and South, was dramatically exacerbated in 1864 and 1865 because of General Grant’s decision to end prisoner exchanges.  As already noted, Grant was convinced the way to win the War was to cut off the head of its enemy— the supply of Confederate soldiers.  Released Rebels could be redeployed as fighting Rebels.  Since the North had more men, Grant chose in April of 1864 to let Union and Confederate inmates die in prison.

By January,1865, the situation was dire. Rations of food were nearly exhausted. Manlove recalled, “I waited from day to day for my small piece of cornbread, with pea soup once in a while, just enough to whet my appetite and keep blood in my veins.”

While overcrowding had been a major issue when Manlove arrived, disease and starvation took over and thinned out the prison population considerably. Between August and December of 1864, Danville’s prison ranks shrank from 7,000 men to a mere 2,400. Only a handful had escaped.

Conditions were at an all-time low.  Union and Confederate prison inspectors brought the deplorable conditions to the attention of Generals Grant and Lee and implored them to take action “in the interests of humanity.”   Grant relented and agreed to a man for man exchange.

On February 17 and 18, 1865, Danville’s prisoners were released.  Private Manlove and others were sent to a hospital in Annapolis, MD for treatment and convalescence.  He described the reactions of the city folk who observed the soldiers walking from carriages into the hospital.

“Such an emaciated lot of human beings as came to Annapolis was enough to set the angels of Heaven a-weeping.   ‘Poor fellows!’ was the universal cry. ‘What a living hell they must have come from!  It is a shame to use men so.’ 

Manlove staggered as he walked, he was so weak.  He weighed no more than 80 pounds—half his usual weight.  For the first few days he couldn’t eat. “My stomach has lived upon itself till it is nearly gone.  I have no appetite for food.”

Manlove later wrote extensively about his near-death incarceration at Danville.   This is from his poem titled “Memorial Day,” published in 1913.

And thousands in the prisons lay,
With sunken cheeks and hollow eyes,
And starving souls from day to day
No more to see their Northern skies.One poor boy for his mother cried
But there could be no mother there:
When morning came he, too, had died
With mother in his dying prayer.
It was enough to make one weep,
To see his starved and pallid face:
And all these memories we must keep
For only death can them displace.
And yet—and yet we can forgive
For in a Christian world we live.

 And this from his poem first published for Memorial Day in 1916.

At Gettysburg, the Wilderness
With Sherman to the sea;
The prison pen with its distress,
A horrid place to be.
The hardest thing that we had tried
In all our disparate strife,
Where thousands upon thousands died,
Mere skeletons of life—
Died for the want of food to eat
And pure water to drink—
Died with the dead-line at their feet
Just on the water’s brink.

On April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered his Army at the Court House in Appomattox, Virginia. 

The Civil War was over. 

The Return Home and A Quieter Life

Oliver returned home to his family’s farm in Muscoda where he continued to convalesce after his seven horrific months in the Danville prison. According to his service records, he suffered partial paralysis in one of his hands either during the Siege of Petersburg or in Danville Prison.   In 1867 he married Caroline “Carrie” Carrel.  Carrie was originally from Wayne, Pennsylvania, and was 14 years younger than Oliver.  They had two sons in Muscoda: Norman Clare born in 1869, and Howard Perry in 1876.

In addition to farming, Oliver devoted a considerable amount of time to writing, particularly poetry. His first published work were several poems he wrote about his Civil War experiences that appeared in the “New York Mercury”.  The Mercury was an extremely popular Sunday paper with a nationwide circulation who boasted well-known writers such as Mark Twain. Manlove continued to contribute poems and stories to the Mercury over a number of years.  His work also appeared in “Waverly Magazine,” “New York Weekly,” and other newspapers of the day.

He was also active in community affairs.  Manlove was a member of the first board of directors of Muscoda High School founded in 1877 and served for two years as the County assessor.

Oliver’s wife Carrie died in 1883 at the young age of 38.  Shortly after her death, Oliver, his two sons, and his father, Moses, who had been living with them, moved to Park Rapids in Hubbard County, Minnesota.  In 1886, Oliver married Mary J. Billings.  His father, Moses, died the following year at the age of 82.

Manlove was much beloved by the folks in Park Rapids and the entire state of Minnesota for his poems and stories.  The owner of the Park Rapids Enterprise wrote this in Oliver’s obituary:

For quite a number of years past it has been the privilege of the publisher of this paper to publish, on the occasion of national memorial days, something from the pen of this venerable man.  Since the years of his more active life, Mr. Manlove has given much time to study and to writing, and much of the verse that he has written has found its way into the homes of the residents of this community and to homes generally over the state, for his writings have been copied quite generously by other papers, and he has been a regular contributor to The Progress, a state paper published  in the cities, and also other papers and magazines.

In 1900, Manlove compiled several of his poems into a book, Wadena and Other Poems, published by Scroll Publishing Co. in Chicago, IL.  In 1906, at the age of 75, he wrote “The Hospital Cap.”  It was both a novel and a love story, and is largely based on his experiences during the Civil War including the Battle of the Crater and his time in Danville Prison.  It was published by Broadway Publishing Co. out of New York City and is considered his most popular and successful work.

Manlove was very active in the Grand Army of the Republic.   The G.A.R. was a large fraternal organization of veterans who fought for the Union forces during the Civil War.  It was comprised of thousands of posts spread across the North and West.  At its peak there were over four hundred thousand members.  As the largest of all Union veterans’ organizations, it was one of the most powerful political lobbies of the late nineteenth century. G.A.R. secured massive pensions for veterans and helped to elect five postwar presidents from its own membership. G.A.R. also advocated for voting rights for black veterans and helped make Memorial Day a national holiday.

Manlove continued to write about the Civil War in his later years.  The pain had grown softer, but his memories and the nightmares remained crystal clear. The War and his confinement wounded him deeply.  Writing about it must have been therapeutic for him.

In June of 1916, a year before his death, Manlove wrote a poem to commemorate that year’s Memorial Day and remember those who lost their lives fighting for the Union during the Civil War.   The poem titled “Our Dead” was published in the Hubbard County Journal with this introduction:

Mr. Manlove is one of the oldest living members of the E.S. Frazier G.A.R. post [in Hubbard County] and is well known throughout the state and nation because of his ability as an author.  Last year, Mr. Manlove received an invitation to attend the national preparedness congress in recognition of his place in the ranks of the G.A.R.

These are excerpts from “Our Dead.”

We’re met again this hallowed day
In memory of our Patriot dead,
If resting here or far away
In many a lonely, sodden bed,
Or down among the ocean’s waves—
Down in the under depths below
Where some of them were given graves
Where God’s sunlight can never go.

Our steps are slow, our heads are gray,
Our eyes are dim and failing fast—
But while we’re marching on our way
We still shall see the bloody past.
We still shall see the battle fields
Where our brave comrades fought and fell
We still shall see the cold white shields
That death had given them as well.

We feel the grasp of loving hands
Of wife or mother in good-by,
And if a sweetheart by us stands
She says, “I’ll wait with weeping eye.
But if you die—Oh if you die!”
God knows they waited, some how long?
Whose lovers never to them came,
While death was gathering its great throng
Of heroes for the hall of fame.

We marched through swamps of mud and snow
And slept upon the cold, wet ground
While everywhere that we could go
We heard the booming battle sound.
Sherman was marching to the sea
And Grant was closing up on Lee.
The wilderness was red with blood
While higher climbed the crimson flood.

From dawn to dusk the great guns roared,
And shot and shell upon us poured;
But we sent back as good as they
But oh! The toll we had to pay
With ten thousand men, or more,
As we had so oft before.

And so all through those desperate days
With blood and death we forced our ways;
While in the prison pens we stayed
And starved and died by thousands there
And in the lowly trench were laid
Without a blessing or a prayer.
But God who sees the sparrow fall
Was waiting, watching over all.

A rift had opened in the sky
And let the gleam of sunlight by
While Grant had made his terms with Lee,
And opened up the prison doors,
And Sherman had made good the sea
Swept the coasts of the Southern shores.
The thundering guns had ceased to roar
And Peace was to be evermore.

Oliver Perry Manlove passed away on May 2, 1917, in the Hubbard prairie home of his son Howard who had been caring for him for several months. He was 85 years old.   Oliver was survived by his two sons, 10 grandchildren and his second wife, Mary.  Howard’s son, Clinton, recalled his grandfather as a “very kind sort of guy who liked kids.  I’ll always remember him sitting in his rocking chair.  He was a good singer.  He had this song we kids loved to hear about every state in the U.S. and the main river that runs through each one.”

Although his physical condition deteriorated over his last few years, his mind was bright and clear and he continued to study, reflect, and write until the Almighty laid his pen to rest.  The publisher of the Park Rapids Enterprise wrote this about his friend:

The writings of Mr. Manlove reflected the patriotic spirit and deep faith of the man. He was possessed of a kind, considerate character, and was known as a man worthy of confidence and faithful in all his obligations. His life’s work is now complete.

Mr. Manlove could have been shown a watery grave when the SS Central America went down off the coast of South Carolina in 1857; or joined the hundreds of his comrades who fell during the Battle of the Crater in 1864; or tossed in an unmarked trench with the thousands who perished at Danville Prison.   Whether it was God’s will, destiny, or luck of the draw, one thing is clear:    Oliver Perry Manlove was a survivor, and he made the most of the additional 52 years he was given on this earthly plain. 

He was laid to rest in Hubbard Cemetery next to his first wife Connie and his father, Moses. 

About the Author

Vernon Case “Casey” Gauntt retired in 2018 from 43 years of practicing corporate and real estate law in San Diego to pursue his next career as a writer and grief advisor. Casey and Hilary, his wife and best friend of over 54 years, live in Solana Beach, California.  Their daughter Brittany, her husband Ryan, and three grandchildren live close by. 

Please visit Casey’s websites, CaseyGauntt.com and WriteMeSomethingBeautiful.com, and Hilary’s popular food blog, HeronEarth.com.  Casey may be contacted at casey.gauntt1@gmail.com

References

Early Family History

Jody DeCarlo, “Fathers-forefathers-remembered,” Park Rapids Enterprise (Park Rapids, MN), June 17, 1989

“Biographical Sketches of Settlers in the 1880’s, Hubbard Co. MN, Available online at files.usgwarchives.net/mn/hubbard/bios/biosk

“Fifty Years Ago,” Park Rapids Enterprise, May 12, 1904

SS Central America Disaster

“Women and Children First,” The Sacramento Bee, November 23, 1901

The Central America had three functioning lifeboats. Mary Swan Cook told the Sacramento Bee that Capt. Herndon gave his watch to her as she was boarding a lifeboat.

“A Home Poet,” Park Rapids Enterprise, October 20, 1899

The Civil War: Siege of Petersburg and Battle of the Crater

Manlove, “The Hospital Cap,” (Bradbury Publishing Co., New York, 1915), pages 212-223

Danville Prison

James I. Robertson, Jr., “Houses of Horror: Danville’s Civil War Prisons,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 69, No. 3. July 1961

V. R. Christensen, “Danville Civil War Prisons,” April 18, 2023 [Available online at www. Oldwestendva.com/blog/Danville’s Civil War Prisons]

Dale Cox, “Danville’s Civil War Prisons,” 2012 [Available online at www.exploresouthernhistory.com/danvilleprison]

Manlove, “The Hospital Cap,” pages 222-224

Manlove, “Memorial Day,” Hubbard County Journal, June 5, 1913

Manlove, “Memorial Day,” Park Rapids Enterprise, May 24, 1917

Return Home and a Quieter Life

Normand E. Klare, “The Final Voyage of the Central America,” (The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1992)

 “Oliver Perry Manlove Answers Last Call,” Park Rapids Enterprise, May 10, 1917

Hubbard County Journal (Park Rapids, MN), June 8, 1916

Jody DeCarlo, “Fathers-forefathers-remembered”

“A Home Poet,” Park Rapids Enterprise