In the summer of 1862, the 6th New Hampshire Infantry was camped at Newport News, Virginia, waiting for its next assignment. The 6th had recently seen action at the battles of Elizabeth City and Camden, North Carolina. Among its officers was Major Obed Gilman Dort, a 34-year-old druggist from Keene, New Hampshire.
Hoping to use the opportunity to see his family, Dort asked his wife and oldest child to visit him in camp. However, shortly after they arrived, Dort’s regiment received its marching orders. The story picks up in this excerpt written by Capt. Lyman Jackman in History of the Sixth New Hampshire Regiment in the War for the Union (1891):
When the Ninth Army Corps left Newport News to go to the help of the Army of Virginia, all its sick were sent to the hospitals. It was soon decided to send them by boat up the Potomac to Alexandria and Washington. So on the 13th of August, [164 years ago today,] all the sick and convalescent, about 250, were put upon the steamer West Point. Some members of the Sixth New Hampshire Regiment were of the number, among whom were Lieutenant-Colonel Scott and Sergeant C. L. Parker. The wives of Lieutenant-Colonel Scott, Major O. G. Dort [Julia Nancy (Wakefield) Dort], and Captain John A. Cummings, with the major’s little son, [Arthur Wakefield Dort], age four or five years old [he was six], were also of the party. Sergeant (afterwards Lieutenant) Parker gives the following account of the disaster which befell the West Point:
“We left Newport News on that beautiful morning of August 13, 1862, and had a fine passage down the bay past Fortress Monroe and up into the Potomac, and were all anticipating a safe and pleasant trip. Many of the sick had retired early, and nearly all were in their state-rooms, when, all of a sudden, about nine o’clock in the evening, we were startled by a fearful crash and shock. The men rushed from their state-rooms, and all was confusion. We had collided with the steamer George Peabody, a larger boat than ours, which was coming down the river with scarcely any lading, having been up with troops and supplies. Our boat had struck her just in front of her wheel-house, damaging her wheel so that she could not move; she therefore floated helplessly down the river, with a large hole in her side, but above the water-line, thanks to the light lading.
The scene which followed cannot be described. We found that our boat was fast filling with water, as the bow had been split quite open by the force of the collision. We supposed at first that the West Point was not so badly damaged as the George Peabody; but is proved otherwise, and we expected the captain of our boat would run her ashore, which was about half a mile distant, or at least ground her as near the shore as possible. But our feelings can hardly be imagined when we saw the captain, pilot, and crew pulling from the steamer, safely seated in one of her two small boats! Had this happened a little later in the war, there would have been a dead captain and pilot in that boat before they had got far from the steamer.
As we were now left wholly to our fate, we got the ladies and children upon the upper deck, and then tried to lower the remaining boat, in which to put them; but in the haste and confusion the boat was lost, and escape seemed hopeless. Mrs. Dort, in great distress, had called me from the lower cabin to her berth, to help dress her little boy. I rendered the requested aid, and helped her and the child upon the hurricane deck. We were all the time floating down the river, and as the forward part of the boat was now under water, we all tried to get upon the hurricane deck. This broke down under such a weight, and nearly all were plunged into the water. Many floated off and sank; others secured broken boards and pieces of the wreck, and floated as long as they could hold on. Some, however, drifted ashore, or were picked up by passing boats. When the deck broke down, Lieutenant-Colonel Scott was separated from the ladies, but before morning he was taken from the wreck, having held to the iron rods connecting with the tops of the smoke-stack, which remained out of water after the boat, sank.
A surgeon of a Michigan regiment and myself got the ladies to the highest point of the broken deck, which was fast sinking. I heard the surgeon tell the ladies he would do his best to save them, and I think he did, for as he was drowned and was found two days later far down the river with one of the ladies holding fast to him, it is evident that he kept his promise. While trying to reach a higher point and assist the ladies to it, I was seized by a drowning comrade, and went down into the deep water. When I got clear of him, I was at some distance from the boat and never saw the ladies or children again. I commenced swimming for the nearest shore, but as I was very weak from recent sickness, my strength soon failed, and I turned back in hopes of finding something to cling to, as the boat had made its last plunge and gone to the bottom. The water was full of struggling humanity, and such cries for help may I never hear again! Those who could not swim, or who did not get something on which to float, soon disappeared beneath the water.
When I came up to the wreck, I found a few clinging to the smoke-stack and connecting rods. Having succeeded in grasping one of the rods with one hand, I held on with the rest till late in the night, when a schooner came along and took us all off. We were afterwards transferred to the George Peabody. Some escaped by the simplest means. One soldier, and a colored woman belonging to the boat, was saved by a water-pail turned bottom up, which they held to between them, thus keeping their heads above water. George Smith and Hiram Pool, of the Sixth, escaped by clinging to a door. . . .
One hundred and twenty were drowned, including all the ladies and the major’s little boy. And it is sad to be compelled to say that all this loss of life might have been saved, had the captain and pilot stayed by the boat and run her ashore, as they had ample time to do before she went down on that calm, clear night. It was the opinion of the boys that the captain and pilot were full-fledged Rebels and that they ran against the other boat on purpose, for it was a perfectly clear evening, and any one on deck could not have failed to see the other boat approaching, even if it had had no lights out; while the fact that they deserted at once the sinking boat not only proves criminal delinquency, but strongly tends to prove the basest disloyalty. A court of inquiry [was] held, but it was managed like most of such courts, and I am sorry to say that both the captain and pilot escaped punishment. Had Lieutenant-Colonel Scott, or somebody else, shot them on the instant they were seen deserting the disabled steamer, he would have served them right, and his country well.”
Obed Dort’s military record does not indicate where he was in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s and son’s deaths, but his obituary stated that he remained with the 6th New Hampshire through the battles of Groveton (Aug. 29, 1862), Second Bull Run (Aug. 30), Chantilly (Sept. 1), South Mountain (Sept. 14), and Antietam (Sept. 16–17). But six weeks after the tragedy, at the end of September, he was in Washington, DC, where he wrote the following letter:
Washington, D.C.
Sept. 24th, 1862
To
G[eneral] Thomas Adjt Gen’l
Dear Sir
Having lost my Wife and Boy by a collision of the steamers West Point and Geo. Peabody on the 13th of August last and being engaged in business which was superintended by my wife—and also having one small child to care for—with this loss and hard service my health being somewhat impaired. I must respectfully tender a resignation of my commission & ask [for] an honorable discharge from the service.
Obed G. Dort
Major 6th Reg’t
New Hampshire Volunteers
The request was immediately approved:
War Department
Adjutant General’s Office
Washington, Sept. 24th, 1862
Special Orders
No. 258
Extract
13. Major Obed G. Dort 6th New Hampshire Vols. having rendered his resignation is hereby honorably discharged [from] the service of the United States.
By order of the Secretary of War
E. D. Townsend
Capt. Adjutant General
As Dort stated in his letter, he had one child still living in New Hampshire, 5-year-old Frank Gilman Dort, who had been left with family or friends.
Fourteen months after returning to Keene, on December 13, 1863, Obed Dort married Sarah Jane Haile, our 3rd cousin 4x removed on the Dudley/Stewart/Green branch. Haile came from a prominent political family; her father William Haile was governor of New Hampshire from 1857 to 1859—its first Republican governor and an antislavery advocate—and her brother William H. Haile would serve as the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1890 to 1893.
Obed Dort returned to his work as a druggist, and built up a commercial line under the name Dort & Chandler. They specialized in patent medicines—Clark’s Extract of Jamaica Ginger “A certain and speedy cure for Dysentery, Cholera Morbus, Colic, Diarrhea, Cramps . . . Sea-Sickness . . . Coughs, Colds, Flatulency, Biliousness. . .”; Ayer’s Sarsaparilla “With Iodide of Potassium and Iron, forming by far the most economical and reliable blood-purifying medicine that can be used”; Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound “A positive cure for All Female Complaints”; and Anderson Bourbon “for Medicinal Purposes.”
Obed & Sarah (Haile) Dort did not have any children of their own. Obed died in Keene on September 4, 1904, at the age of 76; Sarah passed away on August 14, 1911, at 74. Obed’s son Frank followed him into the drug business and lived to age 68. All are buried at the Woodland Cemetery in Keene, alongside Julia and Arthur, who had been moved north from their first, hasty graves in Virginia.
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