As a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in the 1970s, Jim Morrill lived along West Africa's Slave Coast among people whose ancestors had been sold off in chains



As a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in the 1970s, Jim Morrill lived along West Africa's Slave Coast among people whose ancestors had been sold off in chains

Secrets of the Sword

My journey into my family's past began 25 years ago. My mom said: You need to know, your great-grandmother was black.

JIM MORRILL

Staff Writer

Caption: Jim Morrill holds the sword that his great-grandfather, an officer in the Union Army, wore at his side during the Civil War. Photo: TODD SUMLIN, Staff

[Excerpt]

I held the sword for the first time last month.

The brass hilt has darkened with age. A filigree of twisted wire wraps the sharkskin grip. The steel blade curves gently to a point, etched with vine leaves and grape clusters and the letters "USC," for U.S. Cavalry.

At the bottom of its scabbard is a brass fitting. On each side is engraved a name: E.D. Morrill.

My great-grandfather.

It was the sword he carried through the Civil War, and it was finally coming back to his family. Until five years ago, I didn't know it existed.

The sword stayed with E.D. and his son for years, a silent witness to their public and private trials. It disappeared almost a century ago, about the time my grandfather did. Recovering it is a story of lost and found history, played out over three generations and shrouded in racial taboos and family secrets.

Searching for that history became a small obsession. Over the years I combed through genealogies and courthouses, pored over census records and microfilm. There have been discoveries and dead ends and moments of pure serendipity.

Finding the sword was one.

Last month I drove up to the snowy Appalachian town of Princeton, W.Va., to buy it from a collector. The trip took three hours.

Getting there had taken years.

An unexpected ancestor

When I was about 30, my mother confided a secret: My great-grandmother -- the mother of my dad's father -- was black.Growing up with blond hair and blue eyes in a Midwestern family of Germans and Swedes, it was not something I'd suspected. I thought it was interesting, but to mom it was serious business. She thought I should know before I got married, lest some stray gene pop out of the family pool and surprise us.

My dad refused to talk about it, and I knew not to press. He died three years later, before I was curious enough to ask again.

By then there were no other relatives to ask. So I set off to find out myself.

Around that time, my uncle had given me a copy of E.D. Morrill's regimental history. A typewritten sheet inside gave a brief sketch of his life and the story of his Civil War unit, the 15th Battery of Massachusetts Light Artillery.

Edward Danforth Morrill was born on the Illinois prairie on July 29, 1837. His family had migrated from New England but soon moved back. He was a 25-year-old mechanic in Lowell, Mass., when he enlisted in 1862. E.D. stood 5 feet 7 with brown hair and a beard that framed his gray eyes and broad forehead.

He was the quartermaster sergeant in the 122-man unit commanded by a Lowell attorney who also happened to be his brother-in-law. In March 1863, they left Boston by steamer for New Orleans, captured by Union forces under Admiral Farragut the year before.

To Northern eyes, the Crescent City was exotic but trying.

"This is the land of loose morals and easy virtue, hot weather, mosquitoes, alligators, secessionists and other such vermin," wrote an officer named Lorin Dame.

The 15th Battery saw 25 desertions the first month. Some blamed the captain, described by Dame as a man of "ignorance, mulishness, vanity and folly." E.D. was arrested after a dispute with an officer. Still, he was promoted to second lieutenant that September, a commission that allowed him to buy a shiny new officer's sword with a sharkskin grip.

The battery spent the rest of 1863 and most of 1864 in and around New Orleans. For the last six months of the war, E.D.'s unit crisscrossed the South from Little Rock to Memphis to Pensacola. In April 1865, it took part in the siege of Fort Blakely outside Mobile. The fort fell April 9, six hours after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Then the 15th Battery sailed up the Alabama River and helped capture Selma.

Their war was over. The men returned to Boston and were mustered out.

Six months later, in January 1866, E.D. joined a new army of Northern carpetbaggers who rushed to the conquered South in search of riches and adventure. He took his wife back to Alabama and settled near the town of Camden, in a bend of the Alabama River.

When this story was posted in February 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:

February 5, 2005: This Week's Top Stories Peace Corps swears in 12 new Country Directors 4 Feb Kenneth Hawkinson studies oral traditions of Mali 4 Feb Tony Hall urges politicians to bring religious faith to office 4 Feb Dodd opposes Gonzales nomination 3 Feb Dr. Robert Zeigler to head Rice Research Institute 3 Feb Taylor Hackford going into television with "E-Ring" 2 Feb President Bush's past promises in State of the Union 1 Feb Moreigh Wolf says gays cannot volunteer with partners 1 Feb Coleman to chair Peace Corps Subcommittee 1 Feb Vasquez assesses need in Southeast Asia 31 Jan James Bullington says Bush Inaugural speaks to PC 31 Jan Allen Andersson creates foundation to promote libraries 31 Jan Joseph Opala to film "Priscilla's Homecoming" 31 Jan Donna Shalala embarks on aggressive UM expansion 31 Jan Thomas Dichter says Poor Countries Need Smarter Aid 30 Jan Alberto Ibargüen to head Knight Foundation 28 Jan Helen Sheehy organizes "Endangered Peoples" exhibit 28 Jan

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