Gen. Ricketts and Wife Suffered Civil War Horrors

Fanny Ricketts an American Battlefield and Prison Nurse

May 2, 2009 Rosemary E. Bachelor

James Ricketts was a Civil War officer. Fanny tended her injured husband in makeshift hospitals and famed Libby Prison, but the flip side is the horror they witnessed.

Civil War buffs recognize Gen. James B. Ricketts, but few know how his wife sacrificed to keep him alive.

Fanny Lawrence was born in Elizabeth, NJ to a wealthy British family with large Jamaica estates and connected to the prominent Livingston family. She married her mother’s distant relative, James B. Ricketts.

West Point graduate Ricketts was on garrison duty during the Canadian border disputes, then saw Mexican-American War action. Intrepid bride Fanny accompanied James to the Rio Grande battlefront.

Ricketts Reported Dead after Battle of Manassas

After the 1861 Civil War Battle of Manassas, a messenger reported Ricketts’death. In shock, Fanny clung to a strand of hope. Lt. E. D. Baker brought the captain's sword and repeated her husband's dying words; a junior lieutenant told how he searched for his captain's body.

Then a telegram reported her badly wounded husband was a prisoner. How Fanny found him is another saga. The house where he was held adjoined a battlefield where swollen corpses stripped naked were decomposing in the July heat.

Under a window was a pile of human limbs, the accumulation of two days of amputations. On the doorstep was a mangled, bloody arm tossed by a surgeon at a hall table where a patient writhed in agony. Blood from severed arteries speckled the walls, had spurted to the ceiling and pooled on the floor.

Fanny Ricketts Found Husband Near Death

Fanny found James barely alive on a bloodied stretcher, packed in a small room with five injured soldiers. During two weeks there Fanny nursed her often unconscious husband and cared for others. One named Prescott remained brave through three amputations in one week. While being transported to Richmond in a box car, an artery opened in his bruised stump and he bled to death.

There were neither cooks nor cooking facilities. They ate raw bacon and hard tack with coffee and sugar. The stench was so bad that even guards left. When patients began getting gangrene, the field hospital was disbanded and wounded prisoners were moved to Richmond. Capt. Ricketts survived the trip, thanks to the kindness of two southern officers, but in Richmond all the wounded were sent to the city poor-house.

Ricketts grew worse. Fanny refused to have his leg amputated, fearing gangrene. Pain-ridden, he often was unconsciousness. Fanny nursed the soldiers. Dozens of stories could be told of men she helped, what she did to get extra food and her continuing endurance against all odds.

Ricketts Sent to Libby Prison

Three months after imprisonment Ricketts was moved to Libby Prison. The horrors there have been chronicled elsewhere. Ricketts was recovering when finally exchanged for a Confederate prisoner, but Fanny's health was deteriorating.

A story that could have ended with both their deaths continues. After easier convalescent duty, Ricketts rallied to fight at Antietam, where two of his horses were shot and his leg injured, and later at Second Bull Run, the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor, Monocacy,

Promotions and bad luck followed him. At Cedar Creek, Gen. Ricketts was injured a third time. Fanny heard that he was mortally wounded. She rushed to his side, nursing him for four months. That wound disabled him the rest of his life.

James and Fanny are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. A son, Basil Norris Ricketts, served in Teddy Roosevelt's “Rough Riders” during the Spanish-American War and is buried near them.

Sources:

Moore, Frank, Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice (1867: Hartford)

Warner, Ezra, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (1964: Louisiana State University Press)

The copyright of the article Gen. Ricketts and Wife Suffered Civil War Horrors in American History is owned by Rosemary E. Bachelor. Permission to republish Gen. Ricketts and Wife Suffered Civil War Horrors in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Civil War Gen. James Ricketts