The Sisters were the witnesses of some very pathetic incidents. The battlefield of Bull Run supplied its full share of these. One of the brave Union men who was killed in that disastrous engagement was Lieutenant Colonel Haggerty, of the Sixty-ninth New York Regiment. It appears that Haggerty had interred the remains of a child on the field and had enclosed it with an improvised railing. At the head of the little mound was a narrow bit of board, upon which was inscribed with small capitals in ink the following:
Strangers
please do not
injure this
inclosure. Here lies the remains of
Harriet Osborn,
aged 8 years.
Beneath this is written in pencil the following lines:
When the storm clouds around us gather,
And this world seems dark and drear,
Let us look beyond the darkness
Which hovers o’er our pathway here;
Look beyond this world of sorrow
To the regions of the blest,
Where the wicked cease from troubling
And the weary are at rest.
—Haggerty, Co. B, 69th Reg’t.
Haggerty must have been killed soon after performing this touching act, for beneath the inscription is appended this brief mortuary record:
Haggerty was killed at Bull Run
July 21, 1861.
A correspondent of one of the Northern newspapers, writing to his journal at the time said:
“This little memorial of one of the most conspicuous men of the Union cause among the New York troops—over whose fall one of his brother officers, Thomas Francis Meagher, delivered at Jones’ Wood so heart-rending a eulogy—will be read with interest by hundreds of those who remember him, proving, as it does, that the stern, fierce, devoted soldier found time in the very moment of danger to consider the fate of others.”
At a meeting of the Board of Officers of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, held at their armory on April 3, 1862, Captain Theodore Kelly, Lieutenant T. M. Canton and Lieutenant Fahy were appointed a committee to proceed to the battlefield of Bull Run and bring back to New York the remains of their lamented brother officer, who had fallen while gallantly leading a charge of the regiment in the memorable conflict of July 21. The officers indicated performed their mission and the body was re-interred near the brave Haggerty’s home, in New York City.
A letter received by the Sisters from Huntsville, Ala., dated May 26, 1862, contains the following touching passage: