Long-Lost Memoir of a War of 1812 Soldier Discovered
How history comes alive
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This is a riff on an Andrew Paul article in Popular Science
A long-lost second memoir penned by a 19th Century British soldier surfaced in the Western Reserve Historical Society’s library in Cleveland, Ohio. According to the Memorial University of Newfoundland historian Eamonn O’Keeffe’s article in the Journal Of British Studies, “From Amputee to Author: Shadrack Byfield and the Making of a War of 1812 Veteran,” Byfield’s second book depicts a very different war veteran than the one described in his first book written 11 years earlier.
Who was Shadrack Byfield?
Shadrack Byfield (1789-1874) is familiar to many early American history scholars. In 1840, he published A Narrative Of A Light Company Soldier’s Service in the 41st Regiment Of Foot During the Late American War; Together With Some Adventures Amongst The Indian Tribes, From 1812 To 1814 (Bradford, England: John Bubb), a memoir detailing his experiences.
According to Byfield’s book, he started the war in Canada, fighting along the frontier from Quebec to Ohio. On 11 July 1813, during the Black Rock (NY) raid, a musket ball wound forced doctors to amputate Byfield’s left forearm. After learning someone had tossed his limb into a “dung-heap,” a common practice at the time, Byfield retrieved it and buried it in a makeshift coffin. Byfield returned to England in December 1814, but his disability prevented him from going back to his previous job as a weaver. After dreaming of an “instrument” to solve the problem, Byfield asked a nearby blacksmith to build the device he’d seen in his dream.
A New Chapter
For over 200 years, historians believed the 46-page Narrative to be Byfield’s only book until O’Keeffe discovered the only known copy of his 1851 History and Conversion of a British Soldier: Being an Account of God’s Merciful Dealings With His People as Exemplified in the Life of Shadrach Byfield, (formerly of the 41st Regiment of Foot), to which is Appended a Narrative of his Services and Adventures During the Last American War (London: J. Briscoe), which continues and enhances Byfield’s story. Where A Narrative explored the Byfield’s early life, military service, and receiving his prosthetic forearm, History and Conversion describes his chronic pain and everyday difficulties because of that injury.
It now pleased the Lord to afflict me with a violent rheumatic pain in my right shoulder, from which the [musket] ball was cut out…I was in this condition for nearly three years...oftentimes I was not able to lift my hand to my head, nor a teacup to my mouth.
Shadrack Byfield
In the second book, Byfield dwells on periods of indebtedness, illness, and unemployment after returning to England. Other memories were less flattering, such as abandoning his army duties to engage in a plundering excursion with other soldiers.
Resilience
Byfield’s difficulties didn’t end after publishing History and Conversion. In 1853, fellow church parishioners accused him of injuring a rival’s eye and face using his prosthetic. The dispute was part of a larger entanglement over rightful control of the village chapel, which eventually grew to include arson, vandalism, and even a riot. Although never convicted of a crime, Byfield and his supporters eventually lost the fight, and Byfield lost his job. By 1856, Byfield was a widower and returned to his hometown of Wooly. While he married a second wife, he continued to struggle financially. In 1867, he published another personal narrative, The Forlorn Hope, and died at 84 in 1874. Nobody has found any copies of this third book.
Uncovering these new details about his life provides remarkable insight into the suffering and resilience of Britain’s homecoming soldiers…Byfield’s 1851 memoir emphasizes the challenges of post-war reintegration, especially for veterans with disabilities, in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars.
Eamonn O’Keeffe
A Historical-Literary Journey
Eamonn O’Keeffe has done some fine detective work, but how he came to find this book in the Western Reserve Library is a good question for the ages; even he isn’t sure. How the lone surviving copy of History and Conversion got into that library is yet another.
The PDF copy of the Narrative I’ve seen appears to be part of a larger series. The PDF of History and Conversion is a transcription of a text with missing pages. Given the idiomatic place names, spelling, and grammar, both feel as if pre-Dickensian English speakers dictated them; at one point Byfield admits to his lack of education.
As an independent writer and publisher, I have to conclude that Byfield’s first book saw some success, or he wouldn’t have written the second, let alone the third. Probably written under subscription, where interested parties would pay in advance to read the story, the first book probably put down the stories he’d been telling for a quarter-century, and the second was likely the same. Any profits or royalties he got from the book must have kept him at least partly afloat until 1874.
This is this kind of grunt work that’s the drudgery of historical research, but it’s what tells us the material is authentic.
Steele’s Battalion: The Great War Diaries
When Curtis and Maria first started working on Ned Steele’s diaries, notes, and letters, that was all they had to work with. In time, three memoirs surfaced, and a treasure-trove of other material, all needing authentication. The result is Steele’s Battalion, hailed as a gripping and satisfyingly detailed war novel in the vein of Sergeant York: Kirkus Reviews.
And Finally...
On 18 July:
1895: George Kelly Barnes is born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is best known for the kidnapping of oil tycoon and businessman Charles F. Urschel in July 1933, and for his expertise with and preference for the Thompson submachine gun, becoming known as Machine Gun Kelly.
1954: George “Machine Gun” Kelly dies of a heart attack at the US Prison Leavenworth, Leavenworth, Kansas, age 59. Convicted of the Urschel kidnapping in 1933, Kelly spent 21 years behind bars as a model prisoner, telling exaggerated tales of his escapades and earning the sobriquet “Pop-gun Kelly.”
And today is NELSON MANDELA INTERNATIONAL DAY, observing the birth of Nelson Mandela on this day in 1918, in Mvezo, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Mandela spent 24 years in various South African prisons, was elected the first black president of the Republic of South Africa in 1993, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.