him to an academy. He attended the school located on North Main Street, a brick building still standing and converted into an attractive residence. Mr. Ellsworth’s trade seems not to have afforded him a sufficient income, for he adopted various makeshifts in order to provide for his family, such as peddling oysters, netting pigeons, and other like employments. Elmer was sometimes sneered at by his companions on account of his father’s poverty and one day he whipped a boy soundly who had called him, “oyster-keg.”
All this made a deep wound in the proud and sensitive heart of the boy, and throughout his career, in his letters and diary, may still be read the ever-recurring refrain of his desire to remove his parents from lives of grinding toil and carking care. This absorbing thought had been observed by President Lincoln and was mentioned in his letter to Colonel Ellsworth’s bereaved parents as “conclusive of his good heart.” But Elmer had the great privilege while living in Mechanicsville of organizing and having under him a military company: the Black Plumed Riflemen, of Stillwater, an historic village three miles above Mechanicsville. At this time, although but fifteen, short and slight of build, he would go through the manual of arms with the heavy muskets of those days with wonderful ease and rapidity. Throughout his life he was ever of a strong, virile constitution; quick, active, alert, he became in after years an accurate shot and a fine swordsman. Illustrative of his strength and agility and as exhibiting his qualification to lead others in performing startling feats, it is still told in Mechanicsville that one day a clerk in Hatfield’s store (now the Mead Building) having heard a commotion in the second story, upon investigation, found that Ellsworth and the Black Plumed Riflemen had ascended there on a “human ladder”; the last ones were pulled up through the doorway from the sidewalk. Though Mechanicsville has grown to be a place of more than 8,000 population, the older parts of the town remain very much as when Ellsworth paraded the streets
with his riflemen. The old home, a pleasant dwelling on Ellsworth Street in the southern part of the place, still stands amid surroundings practically unchanged. The premises front on the embankment of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad; in the rear flows the now abandoned section of the Champlain Canal. Just south of the home and on the rise of ground is the residence of Robert Sears, deceased, who was an intimate friend of the family and who accompanied the stricken parents to New York to meet the remains of their son. Elmer was a welcome visitor here, where he and his companion, Charles Sears, had many a happy romp in the fields about the homestead. It is needless to say that the remembrance of Colonel Ellsworth is still a sacred one in the Sears family and that his memorials are cherished in the white mansion on the hill where he was gladly entertained and duly appreciated; for even at this early age it was evident that he was a lad of superior parts. Certain of the citizens have suggested changing the name of the place to “Ellsworth” and erecting a fitting monument in the midst of the city, a commendable proposal, though there are already nine villages named Ellsworth in as many states of the country, and notwithstanding that a noble granite memorial to his memory, unveiled with elaborate and impressive ceremonies on May 27, 1874, stands in the Mechanicsville cemetery.
Elmer’s stay in Mechanicsville did not embrace above a year or more, and after having had considerable success in selling papers on the railway trains, he secured the consent of his father to leave home and try to make his own way in the world. He, therefore, in 1852, secured employment as a clerk in the store of Corliss & House, Troy, dealers in linen goods, where he remained about a year. The career of Ellsworth from now on to 1858 is difficult to follow in detail on account of the as yet scarcity of data from which to construct a satisfactory narrative. It is known, however, that from the time he left Mechanicsville to the hour of his death,
his life, though in its last two years astonishingly prominent and in point of honorable fame highly successful, was throughout an experience of almost unremitting hardship and poverty; a beating about from one employment to another; a weary history of uncongenial labor and foiled ambition. It is probable that he was, to use his own words, endeavoring to “make a bold push for fortune,” that he might quickly relieve his parents of that toil and privation, the remembrance of which seems to have burned into his soul to remain smarting there through the long years. Perhaps it would be charity to allow the mantle of forgetfulness to remain upon this period of unrequited effort, though from the glimpses we have in it of Ellsworth he is smiling and cheerful through it all, ever maintaining the most scrupulous honor and unblemished character. But the American people will desire the uncovering of every detail of the life of this remarkable young genius and martyr, whose very gifts of mind and heart, like those of many another, made him the prey of fortune.
On August 2, 1917, there appeared in the Telegraph-Courier of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a letter from Charles H. Goffe, a former resident of the city, and among his reminiscences of Kenosha is the following concerning Ellsworth in the summer of 1853, Elmer being then sixteen years old. I have nothing with which to corroborate Mr. Goffe’s statement, but as it has the impress of truth and corresponds, though in an exaggerated manner, with what I have learned of Ellsworth’s traits of character, I am disposed to give it acceptance. It is my opinion that, having saved a sum of money from his salary as a clerk in Troy, he resolved to “plod along” no further but to “make a bold push for fortune” in the West, and endeavor to find by prospecting a more promising field. Mr. Goffe writes:
“There was also boarding at Mrs. Bell’s at this time, a young man of handsome features and fastidious ways, accentuated by a repelling hauteur and exclusiveness, so often
found peculiar to genius. His associates were few and his disposition was not calculated to make intimates of those he came in contact with. No one seemed able to penetrate the mystery of his personality and yet there was something about the youth which arrested the attention of all. But he was obsessed with a penchant or habit born perhaps of idle vanity of writing (or scribbling) his name in a bold, flowing, and not ungraceful hand, upon every scrap of paper, on the weatherboards of the house, and on gate and fence posts, a name which a few years later was on every tongue, flashed in the headlines of the daily press, and stamped in deathless lines upon the history of his country—the name of Elmer E. Ellsworth…. In the fall of 1853, when the Kenosha High School opened for the winter term under Professor DeWolff, Mr. Ellsworth attended for a while, but was not satisfied with school life, and suddenly dropped out of view and was for a time forgotten.”
Mr. Goffe says that when, two years later, he went to Muskegon, across the lake in Michigan, he learned that Ellsworth had associated with and been adopted by the Ottawa Indians who dwelt in those parts. After describing how he had been created a chief among them, made the recipient of high honors, and adorned with unique and gaudy apparel. Mr. Goffe continues:
“But, alas, when the novelty of barbaric glory and display had become stale, and the craving for other conquests and other scenes, and perhaps dreams of awaiting glories had disturbed his vision, this eccentric child of genius suddenly disappeared from his tribe and had gone no one could tell where. His people waited long, but he returned no more, and the red-skinned maidens of the tamarack swamps waited and sighed in vain for the handsome young chief on whom they had doted, and for whom they had hoped and dreamed. And the seasons came and passed, and the moons had filled