Lucien A. Witt, Company H (VT) 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters in a signed but undated portrait. Witt was an 18 year old farmer living in Brattleboro, Vermont when he enlisted with the sharpshooters on Oct. 15th 1861. He was present with his company until just after the Gettysburg campaign, however he reportedly had severe trouble with the hot weather and straggled behind. Following the campaign the sharpshooters went into camp at White Sulfur Springs, Virginia, and were eventually re-clothed, equipped, and rigorously drilled in preparation for fall movements. During one drill session Witt collapsed from sunstroke and was “driven mad.” He was treated at a Washington hospital before being sent to the US General Hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont until he recovered. It was there when he likely posed for his portrait.
Witt would return to his company just under a year later when the 2nd USSS was in front of Petersburg. He had a brush with death when a confederate sharpshooter’s bullet passed through his forage cap but was otherwise unharmed. Field service again took it’s toll on Witt. He was for a time given lighter duties as a regimental clerk but in October 1864 he was hospitalized for exhaustion and emaciation and returned to Brattleboro. Due to his poor condition he was kept there beyond when his enlistment term of service had expired on Oct. 15th. Witt recovered enough to be formerly mustered out on New Year’s Eve 1864 and returned home to Brattleboro.
During his 1863 hospitalization in Brattleboro Witt met and married Lucy M. Estey from Dummerston, Vermont, who had been a volunteer nurse at the US General Hospital. Their first child Clinton was born on March 25th 1865, fathered before Witt returned to his regiment in 1864. The couple would go on to have four more children who ended up moving to North Carolina and New York. At some point in their young adult lives the five children would all change their last names to “DeWitt” for unknown reasons. Lucien Witt died at the age of 64 on July 11th, 1908, and is interred at Locust Ridge Cemetery in Brattleboro.
The photograph above may be of Lucian Witt; there are enough facial similarities to suggest as much despite the photograph being unidentified. The image itself is laminated to a unique hollow metal frame made to stand on a table or hang from a wall. It bears a maker mark and early telephone number out of Brattleboro, Vermont, Witt’s home town. The photograph was copied from a circa summer 1862 tintype taken in the field at Falmouth, Virginia, when the 2nd USSS was camped there for several months. The soldier wears a dark green frock coat and forage cap, sky blue pants, “camp shoes” with tall leather leggings, and brandishes a New Model 1859 “Berdan Contract” Sharps rifle.
Brian White Collection.
They Expect Wonders of Us 