At the age of 56, Mira Collins writes of her early marriage that had brought her to the Collins household in 1862 and her welcome reception into the committee by virtue of her well- known family. She writes with astonishment at Turin’s gaiety while its young men fought in the horrific Civil War. Her own brisk account of women’s war efforts that included collecting lint- scraping for bandages and cooking huge meals to send to the battling troops emphasizes how those sons sent away were never far from the community’s thoughts. To provide a larger context, she places these efforts alongside other cultural changes the war years brought. She takes note of the burgeoning photography industry that was fed by the desire to photograph new recruits and those who returned from battle. Describing the sudden prosperity that spread into local business and agriculture, she details the upside of a wartime economy. Social life also went through a boom phase, as she remarks on the proliferation of singing and the popularity of dancing parties. These sunny activities sometimes overshadow the suffering, even as Mrs. Collins reports the nation’s profound mourning after Lincoln’s assassination. Turin sent seventy-three men to do battle in Union armies. There is no mention of how many returned. Mira reminds us that “war is terrible on battlefields and in the hearts of mothers” but elsewhere a “trumpet blare… something like hysteria.”

Article from the pen of Mrs. Mira J. Collins

In January, 1862, a little more than six years after I left the Holden school, I returned to Turin and went to live in the Collins house on South State Street. With my added years (I was then eighteen), the required dignity of matrimony, and the fact that I had become a member of a then well-known family, I was cordially received by the townspeople, many of whom had naturally overlooked the little schoolgirl who was with them in 1855- I believe I soon came to know almost everyone in the village.

The Civil War was then eight months old, and while outwardly Turin seemed little changed since my first visit, the spirit of the people—the “atmosphere” of the place–was so different that it was like another town. Probably I did not then try to analyze or understand the difference in the temper of the citizens; and it will be difficult to define the social and psychological changes wrought by the war.

In retrospect, the Civil War seems impossible. Nevertheless, despite reason, the great Rebellion was a fact. It was a four years’ tragedy of bitterest realism. Thousands of graves give silent testimony; the pathetic, ever shortening line of old men marching on Decoration Day proves the reality of that fratricidal horror.

But the unreason of it appears in every phase of the war—even in the social life of the little village of which I am writing. For during the monstrous tragedy, with her sons facing death on Southern battlefields, Turin was gay. That the village should thus react to the somber fact of war seemed so unlikely that at first, I doubted the accuracy of my memory, but there is abundant historical evidence to prove that a like condition was found everywhere in the North, except in the border region where invasion was threatened (Gettysburg is about ten miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line). Some of the causes are easily discovered. There was great and general prosperity. The “war brides” of this day augment a comparatively few very large fortunes; in the Civil War army contracts were given to thousands of small establishments, creating many considerable fortunes and swelling the pay-envelopes of workers everywhere. The enormous sums paid in bounties to volunteers were distributed among the families of soldiers or invested in government securities bearing high rates of interest. All farm produce brought record prices. Unprecedented extravagance was general. Life everywhere was attuned to a higher key. War is terrible on battlefields and in the hearts of mothers; elsewhere it is a trumpet-blare quickening the pulse of youth and moving all mankind: to high endeavor and—often to something very like
hysteria.

In Turin there were war meetings. oratory and roll of drums. And everywhere and always, singing. For those who lived thru the years of the Civil War the most insistent memories are of song. The whole nation sang. Many songs were as irrelevant as the British “Tipperary” of two years ago, but in general they voiced the aspirations or passions of the time. “When This Cruel War Is Over” was the most popular song of the period, Others were “Captain Jinks,” “Tenting To- Night,” “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.” “The Vacant Chair,” “Marching Through Georgia,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “John Brown’s Body,” “Just Before the Battle,” “Rally ’Round the Flag,” “We Are Coming, Father Abraham,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Wake Nicodemus,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “Babylon Is Fallen.” Turin’s best remembered singers were John 0. Davis, Hugh Lewis, Thomas J. Lewis, George C. Newman, Levi B. Noulton, Arthur Pond. David Pritchard, Evan E. Pritchard, John E. Stuber, Ordelia Higby, Mary E. House and Helen and Lottie Williston. There were many others, but I think these sang most frequently at public gatherings, My personal recollections of the Civil War began with an April evening in 1861 when my brother James came to bring me home from the Ava schoolhouse, where I was teaching, and told me of Fort Sumter’s surrender to the Confederates. He said, “This means war!” I caught my breath and wondered — wondered what–?

After fifty-six years, with age enough to philosophize many situations, I am still wondering— at the incredible folly of it all. My last memory is of an April morning four years later. We were then living in the old family house at Collinsville. I was standing with my baby in my arms before an open window when Abram Miller came out of his father’s house across the street and told me that President Lincoln had been assassinated. Abram Miller was a humorist and hispranks had been so many that I went over to Mrs. George Woolworth’s to see if she believed the terrible story. Mr. Woolworth assured us that it was only another of young Miller’s jokes (certainly not his best) and that the report could not be true. A few hours later the story was confirmed—and all the world knows how the nation mourned.

Between these two memories my recollections are kaleidoscopic in form and color. Many are of scenes common to every village in the North and which have been described in hundreds of volumes. Postbellum literature is full of stories of rallying enlistments, of mothers waiting at post offices for news of their sons; stories that need not be retold here. But other scenes, hardly dramatic enough for literature or history, are quite as vivid. Especially do I remember the lint scraping parties. Nothing of the kind happens in present-day warfare; surgeons use aseptic cotton for dressing wounds, and we know of lint only as the minute and exasperating filaments that cling to our gowns after, say, a visit to the linen-closet. Tons of lint were used by war-time surgeons and the labor of Northern women to provide this material was enormous. Day after day, in every village and town, women scraped the filaments from old tablecloths, sheets and napkins. In country districts scraping-parties were often held in churches and schoolhouses. I think there were several groups of scrapers in Turin, but I know only of those who met at our house or at
Mrs. Kendall’s, usually in our dining-room. There Mrs. Anson Holcomb, Mrs. Lester Holcomb and daughters, Mrs. Selden Ives, Mrs. Kendall and Eliza, Mrs. Harry Ragan, Mrs. A.W. Collins and others scraped lint endlessly; they also knitted stockings and prepared boxes of food for the soldiers. Great hams were boiled whole in a big brass kettle hung on the crane in the fireplace, and cakes, cookies and doughnuts were made. Nellie Collins and I helped more with the cooking than in lint scraping.

Other memories are of many dancing parties and the great and sudden vogue of photography. Already popular when the war began, the dance grew in favor; it seems to me that a ball was given in honor of nearly every enlistment; and one has only to rummage in closets and old trunks to discover proof of the activity of war-time photographers. Of course, each volunteer had to be photographed; and just as surely must he have carried portraits of the home-folks with him on his great adventure. Then when Johnny came marching home, on furlough, he was pictured in uniform. The imitative passion did the rest— the whole population was photographed. Fred Bowdish, a photographer from Boonville, established a “gallery” in Turin, and VanAken at Lowville received large patronage. The photograph album, a war-time novelty introduced from France, was the one book whose sale eclipsed that of the King James Bible. The town of Turin sent seventy-three men to the Northern armies during the Civil War. When writing these recollections, I see again the charming village of the older days; again, morning comes over the far blue line of the Adirondacks; once more I live thru the round of daily duties in the old stone house; neighbors call, bringing village news and gossip; and then there are golden sunset glories on the rugged western hills that Dr. Hough has likened to the Italian mountains of Torino.