When “Our Suffering Brave: Waitsfield Boys and Men in the Civil War” was honored by the Vermont Historical Society with its 2024 Richard O. Hathaway Award, the presenter stated, “This year’s winner proves that we always have more to learn about our nation’s Civil War.” That’s been demonstrated twice since the book’s publication: first, when a reader in Florida shared R. Dutton Silsby’s story (which became the core of a play presented locally in November 2024) and recently, by a Valley resident whose genealogical research revealed another young person’s Civil War service.
When Mary Murphy (Moretown) read of the wartime deaths of two Thayer brothers as reported in The Valley Reporter on November 6, she shared materials she has amassed about a third sibling, Alfred C. Thayer.
The Thayer family was linked to Waitsfield’s founder, Benjamin Wait, through their mother Susan Wait(e) whose paternal grandfather Jeduthan Wait(e) was Benjamin’s half-brother. Jeduthan had arrived in Vermont with Benjamin shortly after the Revolutionary War. Susan had married Plina [or Pliny] Thayer and the couple had seven children between1837 and1852. Alfred was among the younger children, possibly born in 1846. Murphy’s research shows that town and even army records disagree on birth and death dates for Alfred, usually by a year in both instances. I’ve chosen to employ here dates from the “Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers” (Peck, 1892).
Alfred’s brothers James M. and Cyron already had died in the war before Alfred enlisted as a private in Vermont’s 17th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the last unit raised in the state, recruited from Lamoille and Washington counties. It’s likely Alfred was working on an older married brother’s farm in Morrisville when he enlisted from Wolcott in February of 1864. He was mustered into service March 2 as part of Company C of the 17th Regiment.
The 17th was unique in that it included a large number of Vermonters who enlisted as substitutes for drafted persons from other communities in the state.
Alfred’s regiment departed for Alexandria, Virginia, in April but had little time to train there before the Overland Campaign opened. It headed into the Virginia Wilderness, followed immediately by battles throughout May and June that stretched from Spotsylvania, North Anna, Totopotomoy and Cold Harbor. The Seventeenth Infantry served in Burnside’s IX Army Corps (under U.S. Grant’s command) in the advance on Petersburg, Virginia, and during the long siege there that included the “Mine” explosion of July 1864 in which another Waitsfield soldier, Lathrop Thompson Stoddard, was wounded, captured by Confederates and delivered to a prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia, where he died. It’s possible Alfred knew L. T. Stoddard prior to the “Mine” disaster. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to learn when it was that Alfred Thayer was disabled by illness: that may have happened in camp before the May-June period, or during those months of hard marching and almost constant fighting, or even later, during the siege. For this reason, I’m unable to cite which battles of the Overland Campaign Alfred participated in, if any.
What is recorded is that Alfred was stricken by disease. I do know that his regiment was hit hard by measles at the beginning of the Overland Campaign. Whether Alfred contracted measles or some other of the many diseases that raged throughout the army, when he became disabled, he would have been cared for in a Virginia field hospital before being transported to a Union General Hospital in Vermont. Alfred is thought to have succumbed to pneumonia on March 25, 1865, but whether he died at the Brattleboro or the Montpelier general hospital is in dispute, as well as whether, in fact, he may have died at home in Waitsfield. His remains lie in Waitsfield’s Irasville Cemetery.
Murphy writes that a cousin of these Thayer brothers, Aretus Thayer, and two more distant relatives, Willard and Nelson Thayer, also served in the Civil War. But those stories are for another time.
Evans is an historian and author who lives in Waitsfield.
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