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My Great-great grandfather, Sullivan Church

By Scott Wheeler

Believed to be Mary Church
in her later years.

My Great-great grandfather, Sullivan Church, marched off to fight in the Civil War when he was 15 years old. He came home three years later a troubled young man.

Sullivan was born in Coventry in July 1847 to Calvin and Clementine Church.

Sometime in his youth he moved to the Town of Salem, which has since been incorporated into the Town of Derby.

I know little about Sullivan’s youth before the war. At 14 years old he was listed in Salem’s census as a farmer. On July 12, 1862, at age 15, Sullivan made a decision that would change his life forever – he enlisted as a private in Company E of the Ninth Vermont Regiment, with which he remained until he was discharged from the Army in June 13, 1865.

Records from the United States War Department say that Sullivan was stationed in Virginia; Newport Barracks, North Carolina; Canadys Mills, North Carolina; and Gales Creek, North Carolina. No mention is made about whether he was captured at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in September 1862, by General Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate troops. But it would seem likely he was, since the entire 920 man Ninth Vermont regiment was supposed to have been captured there.

Following the war, Sullivan came back to Orleans County. I have been unable to find any records of Sullivan again until he married Mary Belville dit Provencher, a French/Indian woman, in Barton Landing (now Orleans), on February 12, 1869. M. R. Chase officiated at the wedding.

Sullivan’s bride, christened Marie Loise Belville dit Provencher, was born to Jean Baptiste and Rosa (Boisvert) Belville dit Provencher in 1850 or 1851. Her place of birth is listed as Stanstead, Quebec, on the couple’s marriage certificate. Other documents suggest she was born in Vermont. However, it is certain that Mary was baptized at the Sacred Heart Church in Stanstead. Records show that her godparents were Paul Brouillet and Loise Langlois.

As with Sullivan’s family, I am now able to trace Mary’s ancestry back several generations, yet I know very little about Mary. In contrast, Sullivan’s war records are quite revealing. His records clearly show Mary as a woman frustrated by having to care for the couple’s six children while at the same time caring for Sullivan. He was a husband who was apparently unable to care for himself, to say nothing about his family.

Mary was almost continually pregnant between 1870 and 1880. The couple’s first son, Arthur Church, was born on March 8, 1870. His life was cut short on January 8, 1882. He is buried in Stanstead. Lilla Bell Church was born on September 25, 1871; Cora Church on August 14, 1873; Fred Church on April 11, 1876; Annie Church, my great-grandmother, who later married my great-grandfather, John Simino, of Irasburg, and finally, Gertrude Church, who was born on May 11, 1880. Records clearly show that Sullivan was not a well man. He suffered from a multitude of physical ailments as well as a progressive mental disability. He died at what was referred to as the Brattleboro Insane Asylum in Brattleboro on September 2, 1881, when his oldest child was a few days away from his twelfth birthday and his youngest was a little more than a year old. From the records I have located, it doesn’t appear that Mary applied for a widow’s pension from the United States government until 1889, seven-and-a-half years after her husband’s death. On November 11, 1881, Mary married John Provencher, her first cousin.

Annie Church Simino, Daughter of Sullivan and Mary Church, seated with her children.

In a notarized letter to the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Pensions, Mary, who was living in Irasburg at the time, pleads for money to help feed her family. In the letter she says Sullivan died “from the effects of his Army disability, leaving me a poor widow with six minor children with no means of support but my hands.”
She goes on to say that her husband was never right following the war. “For some three years after his return from the war in 1865 he was unable to do but little labor of any kind.” She said while in the Army and in the following years, Sullivan suffered from the effects of malaria and sunstroke. According to Mary’s letter, her husband was plagued by recurring ailments including chills, fever, and diarrhea. But his mental disabilities, which she said were brought on by his service, appeared even more debilitating. She said he would become quite deranged at times. She wrote that Sullivan was almost always under medical care.

Life for Sullivan and the family took a turn for the worse in 1876. “In the summer and early in the fall of 1876 he became very insane from the effects of his Army trouble,” Mary wrote. He was sent to the asylum in September of that year and remained there for seven months. She wrote that when he came home he had “somewhat recovered,” but “in a few weeks he began to be out again by spells, more in hot weather.” His condition slowly began to deteriorate. “He had to wear leaves in his hat to keep the sun from striking his head,” she wrote. “He would get up in the morning and go in the woods bareheaded and barefooted but travel all day.” His feet would become bloodied all the while he wore his boots over his back.” “He would also have spells that he would not speak nor eat nor dress himself,” she wrote. By 1880, Mary could no longer care for Sullivan. He was sent back to the asylum where he died on September 2, 1880. His cause of death on the application is listed as “diseases of brain”.

Two of Sullivan’s former neighbors and “comrades in arms,” Marion T. Clark and George T. Clark, who were living in Yankee Hill, California, in the county of Butte, at the time, also wrote letters to the Pension Bureau in an attempt to convince the bureau that Sullivan’s illness and subsequent death was brought on by his duty during the war.

“Sullivan R. Church was a neighbor of my father and me,” Marion Clark wrote. “Prior to his enlistment he lived in an adjoining town nearby. We knew him well, which caused us to look after him when we joined the company and regiment in December 1863.”

The Clarks wrote in a joint letter that while stationed at the Newport Barracks in Newport, North Carolina, Sullivan became ill on December 31, 1863, or January 1, 1864, from malaria, chills, and diarrhea. “This disability and its results followed him all the time more or less until he was discharged on June 1865 and he was quite often excused from duty and treated in his quarters by Surgeon Farmon,” they wrote. Marion Clark wrote that he visited Sullivan almost every night and spoke with Surgeon Farmon. He also said he was an “eye-witness” when in July 1864 Sullivan suffered a case of sunstroke.

On April 1892, Mary was notified that she was eligible to receive eight dollars a month and two dollars a month additional for each child. She apparently was paid retroactive to the day of Sullivan’s death. Mary and her second husband, John, made their way to Franklin, New Hampshire, where they lived, raised Mary’s children, and had more children of their own. Mary died in Franklin on September 21, 1934, at 84 years old and John died on December 16, 1941 in Quechee, Vermont, also at 84 years old. Both are buried in Barton.

The Church children and their descendants dispersed across the country. Some of Sullivan’s and Mary’s ancestors still live in Orleans County and probably southern Quebec. Thanks to the Internet, I have found others living in such states as New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Texas, and Colorado.