Lately I’ve been thinking about a Salem native, descended from the city’s most-monied maritime family, the Derbys, but still devoted to public service, very well-known in his day but little-known in ours: Frederick William West Lander (1821-1862). Today, you can find hardly a trace of Lander in Salem, a city that has a statue of a fictional television witch in its most public square. Yet he was referred to as “the fearless solder, the bravest of the brave” and “the very beau ideal of an American soldier” in his New York Times obituary. Yesterday, the first truly warm spring day of the year, I wandered past Lander’s rather secretive grave in the Broad Street Cemetery and wondered about him—about all that he came from, all that he did, and what he might have done if not cut down in the prime of his life by pneumonia contracted in a West Virginia encampment towards the end of the first year of the Civil War. Lander was educated in private academies before he went to Norwich University in Vermont to study engineering. After Norwich, he worked at surveying and laying trails, first for the Eastern Railroad in Massachusetts and later the Pacific Railroad way out west, leading five expeditions to map out transcontinental routes between 1853 and 1858. He was a commissioned a Special Agent of the U.S. Department of the Interior that year, giving him superintendent responsibilities over what had become known as the “Lander Trail” through Wyoming and Idaho. In 1860, purportedly after a 12-year acquaintance and 3-year engagement, Lander married the famous British-American stage actress Jean Margaret Davenport in a San Francisco ceremony called the “The Union of Mars and Thespis” by the San Francisco Daily Times. Seventeen months later he was dead, after being commissioned as a Brigadier General and leading charges in several battles. His was the first full-fledged funeral with honors of the war, held in Washington with President Lincoln and members of the Cabinet and Supreme Court in attendance. And then his body was transported in a special train to Salem, for burial in Broad Street.
Matthew Brady daguerreotype of Lander, Smithsonian; Jean Davenport Lander at about the same time, Harvard Theater Collection.
Those are the bare biographical facts, but there is so much more to say about Lander—-and Mrs. Lander: he was not all Mars and by no means was she solely a thespian. Though Lander was obviously a man of action (and I have not even mentioned his dueling), he was also a champion of the arts: he included the Massachusetts artists Albert Bierstadt, Francis Seth Frost and Henry Hitchens on his 1859 expedition team out west–with glorious results–and addressed the “aptitude of the American mind for the cultivation of the fine arts” on the Lyceum circuit back east. He was also a poet, and although at least one publisher told him effectively not to give up his day job, several poems were published before his death, and more after, including Ball’s Bluff, his poetic account of the Union defeat at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, with an opening stanza responding to the purported Confederate claim that fewer Massachusetts soldiers would have been killed in the battle had they not been too proud to surrender. This was the battle that really “brought the war home” for Massachusetts: as soldiers in two Bay State regiments accounted for more than half of the approximately 1000 Union casualties. Lander lived to tell the tale, but not for much longer.
One of Lander’s early road surveys, from Danvers to Georgetown, Massachusetts, State Library of Massachusetts; Albert Bierstadt’s The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Soldiers from the 15th Massachusetts Regiment charge the Confederate line at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Illustrated London Newspaper, November 23, 1861, Library of Congress.
Jean Davenport Lander played several important Civil War roles as well. In the early days of the war, before her husband’s engagement and after they had taken up residence in Washington, Mrs. Lander happened to hear (I can’t fix the details!) whispers of a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Whether by the confidence of her celebrity or the urgency of the times, she made her way to the White House hastily to report the conspiracy. Perhaps this was not as serious a threat as the earlier “Baltimore Plot“, but still, she acted to foil a presidential assassination plot! Her husband’s tragic war-camp death apparently inspired her (as well as his sister, the sculptor Louisa Lander) to start nursing, and she served as the supervisory nurse at the Union hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina for several years. After the war was over, Mrs. Lander resumed her acting career and seems to have been constantly on stage for the next decade or so, playing her last role in 1877: somewhat ironically, Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter.
Jean Margaret Davenport Lander as a bride in 1860 and Hester Prynne in 1877. Below: I’m assuming the friendship of Lander and Albert Bierstadt brought the latter to Salem at some point, because Christie’s has a Bierstadt landscape titled Salem, Massachusetts up for auction on May 22.
Albert Bierstadt, Salem, Massachusetts, 1861.
May 3rd, 2018 at 11:46 am
Marvelous posting! Why was America never able to master a national education curriculum where all would have access? “Lander was educated in private academies before he went to Norwich University in Vermont to study engineering. After Norwich, he worked at surveying and laying trails, first for the Eastern Railroad in Massachusetts and later the Pacific Railroad way out west, leading five expeditions to map out transcontinental routes between 1853 and 1858.” Heros’ work definitely?
Again enjoying every bit of it.
Thank you.
M.P.
May 3rd, 2018 at 12:04 pm
Donna, you’ve done it again! I love these wonderful vignettes showing us all that life then is not much different on a personal level than it is now despite the stunning difference in circumstances
May 3rd, 2018 at 12:29 pm
Thanks, Jack! Not difficult to write about these two.
May 4th, 2018 at 3:51 pm
Hi Donna,
If what’s left of my memory serves, Genl. Lander had been injured (I forget how) and met his fate after being dropped from height.
I heard the full story from Jerry Lennox many years ago at General Lander Post No. 5, Lynn Mass. If you’ve never been, Post 5 is at 14 Andrew Street in downtown Lynn. In its day, it was the single largest Grand Army of the Republic (another of my specialities) in Massachusetts, and perhaps, in the US. It’s a gem, and open to visit.
May 4th, 2018 at 5:12 pm
Hi Glenn,
He was injured at Edward’s Ferry I believe, but still fought on. Several weeks before he died though–he had asked for help. Can’t imagine what those camps were like! I haven’t been to the Lander post and now I really want to go–I assume that Lynn’s post became the Lander post because Mrs. Lander had a summer house there; otherwise why not Salem?
May 13th, 2018 at 8:54 am
I’m enlightened: I’ve only become acquainted with Bierstadt’s work in recent years, and now I have more context around what I think was the very first painting of his I leaned about.
January 4th, 2019 at 5:58 pm
Donna, I am the President of the newly formed Friends of the Lynn Grand Army of the Republic. We are conducting a capital campaign to bring this beautiful building into the 21st century before it completely disintegrates!
In the meantime I am gathering information for displays about the Landers.
Would I be able to get a copy of your wedding image? I have never seen that one!
January 5th, 2019 at 11:17 am
Hello Wendy–congratulations and good luck! Love that building–happy to help in any way. I’m embarrassed to say that I do not know the proper attribution of that photo. I found it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/billinmn/4091075934.
January 5th, 2019 at 3:04 pm
Hi all,
Wendy,
I’m a big fan of Genl. Lander Post No. 5, please contact me so we can get together re: 14 Andrew ST.
Donna, Post No. 5 was formed in Lynn before Salem’s Phil A. Sheridan Post No. 34, and my guess is that it got to choose the name General Lander for Post No. 5 Post 34 was located on the North side of St. Peter Street, two doors down from Essex Street. I’d heard that the old Post No. 34 was torn down just before it was about to fall down. In my day, say 60 years ago, it was an Atlantic Richfield Filling station.
Post No. 34 then relocated to the United Spanish-American War Veterans building on the South side of Beckford Street, between Essex and Federal streets, mostly because its seemingly permanent Commander lived at 2 Lynn ST, (also featured in the series This Old House). When I was last in Salem, 5 years ago, the old Post 34 hall was still there.
January 6th, 2019 at 11:36 am
Donna, Thank you for the link! Glenn, always glad to meet a fan. What is your week like?
January 6th, 2019 at 11:59 am
Hi Wendy,
Well, I live in Maryland, so the best way to find me is at ichibanneko@yahoo.com. I was Born and raises on Salem’s Galows Hill, and have been a big GAR fan since I was 8 or 9 years old. My mother remembered the GAR Comrades coming out to the schools to take part on the Decoration Day activities in the 1920’s. Yeah. I’m that old.
Also, I believe that Genl. Lander was likely a Lynn resident at the time of the War Between the States, as Genl. (and Congressman) William Cogswell was long held out to be Salem’s “only” General Officer in those late unpleasantries.
Cheers,
G.