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Chapter Nine - Jack Whelan's Civil War Research
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John "Jack" Whelan (R.I.P.) is a great-grandson of Mathew & Catherine O'Keane. His mother, Ellen "Nellie" O'Keane, married Joseph "Joe" Whelan of "The Holy Hill Whelans." Nellie was the daughter of James O'Keane and Anna (Kiley) O'Keane and the granddaughter of Mathew and Catherine. Jack first researched Mathew and Catherine's immigration to America and then learned a great deal about the Civil War and Mathew's "Battle of Prairie Grove" that took place outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas. By coincidence, during this research period, Jack and his wife Mary Louise's daughter, Cindy (Whelan) Shermacher, a registered nurse, worked at the Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas. During family visits to Fayetteville, Jack was able to obtain extensive battle information and view the nearby battle site at Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, nationally known as one of the most intact Civil War battlefields.
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MATHEW O'KEAN'S CIVIL WAR
PVT., COMPANY G, 20TH WISCONSIN VOLUNTEER INFANTRY REGIMENT
by
John "Jack" Whelan
Mathew O'Kean's Civil War experience was short and anything but sweet. He joined the Army in August of 1862 and on December 7, 1862, during the battle of Prairie Gove, was seriously wounded. He was discharged in March of 1863 because the wound, which was on the right shoulder, precluded him from shouldering a gun. The wound never healed, leaving him physically disabled and with the pain of an open, feverish sore until his death in 1878.
Mathew emigrated from Ireland in 1848 at the age of 31 together with his wife, Catherine, whom he had married in the Connaught region of Ireland. They landed at the Port of Ogdensburg, New York, in June of that year and settled in the state of New York where their first [American] child was born. In 1849 the family moved to Wisconsin, took up residency in Waukesha County and lived there until 1858. During those years, Mathew taught the elementary grades in nearby schools.
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On December 11, 1858 Mathew and Catherine purchased six acres of land near the village of Plat in Washington County, Wisconsin and built a home large enough to accommodate the family which had grown to a total of eight. A seventh child was born in 1861 so there were nine in the family when Mathew began his Civil War service.
Few details are known of Mathew's life in Ireland except that his reasons for leaving were the depressive conditions brought on by the failed potato crops of the 1840's, coupled with the oppressive conditions being foisted upon the Irish people by their English rulers. From stories told by his grandchildren, Mathew remained embittered by this treatment and when rumors began circulating that England might join forces with the Confederacy Mathew became determined to serve the Union cause.
In a Proclamation of May 24, 1862, Wisconsin Governor Edward Solomon stated that the President of the United States had called upon Wisconsin for another regiment of soldiers. In response, the Governor advised the President that recruiting officers would be "appointed without delay for the 20th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers." First Lieutenant Albert J. Rockwell of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, was appointed to recruit and form Company G, then merge with other units of the 20th Regiment at Camp Randall on August 18th of 1862. According to the Muster Rolls of the regiment, Mathew was 35 years old on that date; other records, however, such as the 1850 Census and Mathew's notarized "Declaration of Intent to Become a Citizen" indicate that in August of 1862 he would have been at least 40 years old.
After a few days of training at Camp Randall, the regiment reported to Benton Barracks, a base located just north of St. Louis, Missouri. It arrived there on the first day of September and on September fourth traveled by train to Rolla, Missouri, where the railroad ended. The regiment marched to Camp Pickney near Rolla where it joined a brigade of the Army of the Frontier. From Camp Pickney the brigade marched to Springfield and joined the Frontier Army's campaign against the Confederacy that was underway in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas.
Camp Curtis near Springfield was the base camp of the Frontier Army's Second and Third Divisions. The 20th Regiment became a part of the Third Division. The First Division, composed of about four thousand men under command of General Blunt, was in Arkansas near Cane Hill where the First Corp of the Trans-Mississippi Confederate Army, consisting of about twenty thousand men under command of General Hindman, was preparing to march northward into Missouri. Anticipating a major battle, the Frontier's Second and Third Divisions totaling about seven thousand were ordered to proceed post-haste to Cane Hill and reinforce the First Division. The date of the order was December 3, 1862.
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Thus began the historic march of "three days and a hundred miles." The Morning Reports of Wisconsin's 20th Volunteer Infantry Regiment show that on December third, the day the order arrived, the two divisions, commanded by General Herron, began the march, traveling 18 miles before stopping at Crane Creek for the night. On December fourth, 28 miles were covered ending at Cassville, Missouri. The December fifth march covered 24 miles to Elkhorn, Arkansas. By midnight of December sixth, after traveling another 34 miles, the two divisions had reached Fayetteville. At 5:00 A.M. on the seventh, they left Fayetteville and at Prairie Grove, ten miles distant, met the Confederate Trans-Mississippi First Corp, which was on its way to Missouri, having outflanked the Frontier's First Division by taking a circuitous route out of Cane Hill.
A bitter and bloody battle ensued. By early afternoon the Confederate forces were gaining the upper hand but by then Blunt's First Division had arrived on the scene and turned the tide. At nightfall a truce was arranged to take care of the dead and wounded with the expectation the battle would continue the next morning. However, the Confederates withdrew to the south under cover of darkness because their casualties were too heavy and their supplies too limited to continue the battle. The North was able to claim a major victory because the Confederate march to Missouri was thwarted.
The casualties of the Confederate and Union forces reached a total of well into the thousands, including the dead, missing and wounded. Interestingly, there were reports of finding men dead on the battlefield without a wound or other injury, confirming that some had died from sheer exhaustion. Because of Mathew's age in relation to that of the normal recruit, he could easily have been one of those. Instead, Mathew and his regiment played a major role in the engagement. In an official report dated December 9th, two days following the battle, Colonel Bertram of General Herron's staff stated that officers and men of the Twentieth, with Major H.A. Starr (of Watertown, Wisconsin) leading, "behaved nobly, and stood fire like veterans. I regret that the loss of the Twentieth Wisconsin is heavy." In a separate document Major Starr reported that in the midst of the battle he was ordered to charge an enemy battery of cannon with his 400-man regiment and that after the charge only 209 were not killed or wounded.
It was in this charge that Mathew was wounded, taking a musket ball to the right shoulder. It passed completely through his body and shattered the shoulder blade on the way out.
Mathew's official records show that he was taken to a Fayetteville Hospital and remained there until February 23, 1863, when he was transported to a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, where he remained until his discharge on March 23, 1863. Mathew's wound was described by Surgeon W. Short of the Springfield Hospital as "Right Shoulder-Severe," and his official record shows his discharge to have been "on account of wound received at Prairie Grove."
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The accompanying Certificate of Disability stated that Mathew sustained "a gunshot fracture wound of the right shoulder so impairing the motion of joint as to render him unfit for using firearms."
Following his discharge Mathew returned to his home and family in Wisconsin. He was awarded an "Invalid Pension" based on total disability. Total disability, at that time, meant an inability to do manual labor. The amount of the pension was initially $8.00 per month. In 1866 it increased to $15.00 and to $18.00 per month in 1873. In August 1875, the Surgeon General's Office in Washington D.C. authorized an "apparatus," believed to have been some kind of mechanical device designed to make Mathew's right arm more functional.
The pension entitlement was based on periodic examinations to determine if the disablement was continuing, the last being in May of 1876, over thirteen years after Mathew was wounded. In his report, Dr. Reis (John A. Reis of Waukesha, Wisconsin) certified that Mathew "in consequence of said wound is totally incapacitated for performance of any manual labor whatsoever."
The injury was described as follows in a Surgeon's Certificate following a periodic examination on September ninth of 1873: "Ball entered anterior aspect of right shoulder near acromial end of clavicle and emerged from upper third of right scapula after fracturing it. There is a fistulous opening just above acromial end of clavicle. The shoulder joint is 3/4 ankylosed.
The significance of this statement is that it confirms that the wound would not heal---that Mathew continued to live with an open infection. His children often spoke of "the fever" that haunted him throughout his lifetime. In spite of this and his physical limitations, Mathew did resume his teaching career and was able to support his family, many of whom raised large families of their own.
Mathew died November 2, 1878 and is buried in St. Columba's cemetery located in the Town of Richfield, Washington County, Wisconsin. His tombstone shows the spelling of his name to be O'KEANE, the spelling used by all of Mathew's descendants. O'KEAN is used throughout this paper because it is spelled that way in the permanent military records.
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John "Jack" Whelan with his wife,
Mary Louise, at the 2008 Whelan
Family Picnic held at the Whelan family farm
on Emerald Drive in the Town of Erin.
Jack and Mary were also celebrating their
50th Wedding Anniversary.
"The Holy Hill Whelan" Clan saw military service as well.
John "Jack" Whelan (R.I.P.), his brother James "Jimmy" Whelan (R.I.P.) and their sister, Joan Whelan (R.I.P.), all served in the military during World War II as described on the memorial records on the next page.
In addition, another sister, Florence Whelan Beach, married Howard "Howie" Beach (R.I.P.) who is also described on these memorial records. Howie wrote a book about his frontline World War II experiences entitled "The Private War of Howie Beach."
The four World War II records can be found at the "National World War II Memorial," opened in 2004 in Washington, D.C. More information about the memorial can be found on the internet at http://www.wwiimemorial.com/ .
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Epilogue
A copy of Great-grandfather Mathew's "Declaration of Intent to Become a Citizen" (naturalization paper) that was referred to by Cousin Jack in his research paper entitled: "Mathew O'Kean's Civil War" is shown below. The document is dated March 6, 1851, and gives the surname of "Keane," which is the more typical form of the name in Ireland, instead of "O'Keane." It gives Mathew's arrival in America as June of 1848 and year of birth as "1821."
The question of Mathew's date of birth is further complicated by his being listed as "age 33" on the 1850 US Census. On the 1860 US Census, he is listed as "age 35." On the 1870 US Census, he is listed as "age 50." Regardless, "1817" is probably a reasonably accurate date of birth.
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Cousin Jack also thoughtfully nominated Great-grandfather Mathew for induction into the Erin Township's Veteran's Memorial located in front of the Erin Town Hall at 1846 State Highway 83 South, Hartford, Wisconsin in the unincorporated town of Thompson. Because Mathew boarded in Erin Township for a number of years in the 1850's while he taught at area schools, he was considered eligible for induction.
On Saturday, November 13, 2004, the induction ceremony took place. Mathew and 21 other veterans were inducted into the Town of Erin's Veteran Memorial as shown in the photos below.
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