True Son James Fitzpatrick Sullivan passed away on January 31, 2002. He was 100 years old, and a member of Henry Harnden Camp #2, Dept. of Wisconsin, SUVCW.

His father, James Patrick Sullivan, had immigrated from Ireland to the Wisconsin Territory sometime between 1842 and 1845, with his parents, Dennis and Catherine (nee Flynn) and a sister and two brothers. He was born June 21, 1843. The Sullivan family migrated to southwestern Wisconsin into Bad Ax (later Vernon) county. The family was one of less than two dozen Irish immigrant families in Greenwood Township.

James Patrick Sullivan

Young James grew to manhood beside his father and brothers in the fields of western Wisconsin. He was a slight, fresh-faced youngster of 5'5 1/2", light complexion, with brown hair and intent blue eyes. The extent of his education is not known, but he likely attended common school through the 6th or 7th grade, and he picked up, formally or otherwise, a sharp and bright writing style that was to characterize him in his middle years. Sometime prior to 1860, he left home to work as a hired man on a farm near Wonewoc in neighboring Juneau County.

James Patrick enlisted from Wonewoc in Co. K, 6th Wisconsin Infantry on June 21, 1861 and was quickly appointed sergeant...among the first to answer President Lincoln's call for volunteers. In the most celebrated organization in the Army of the Potomac, the Iron Brigade of the West, he fought in a score of major battles.

The Confederates shot off a toe at South Mountain, left him shell-shocked at Second Bull Run, wounded him in the shoulder at Gettysburg, and knocked him out cold with an artillery burst at Weldon Railroad. But the most unlikely injury of his war days came at the hands of a 7th Wisconsin soldier in his own brigade; a whack from a musket ramrod accidently fired during a ceremonial volley of blanks. He was the only man in his regiment to formally enlist on three separate occasions.

One old comrade recalled the boy soldier "never lost a fight, never neglected a duty." However, his first captain, Rufus Dawes, who took a more sober view of life, recalled Sullivan's "unconquerable good humor and genuine wit."

In his volunteer days sullivan was remembered as "full of mischief." Official records indicate that while on sentry duty, Pvt. Sullivan was caught "conversing with Rebel Pickets and attempting to cross over the river." He was fined $13--a month's pay.

In 1865, Sullivan returned to civilian life with a new wife, Angeline (met in Philadelphia while recovering from his Gettysburg wound), and an infant son, George. Three other youngsters--Anna, John and James (not James F.)--were born in subsequent years. He took them to the Dakota Territory to look for opportunity, but the dry Plains country was not to his liking, so he returned to Wisconsin. By 1880, he had moved to southcentral Wisconsin and was again farming.

He began writing of his soldier days in the 1880s, complaining that the accomplishments of his famous brigade were being overlooked and forgotten. His first piece, published in 1883, was an account of Gettysburg. It was and is one of the best recollections of that epic battle by a soldier in the ranks. In it, Sullivan detailed the charge of his 6th Wisconsin at the railroad cut, told of his hours as a wounded soldier behind Confederate lines, and wrote how he climbed the cupola of the town's railroad station to watch the final charge of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Later that year, Sullivan complained of his current life "working forty acres of land" in Forest Township, a Vernon County community of less than 900. In the winter of 1884, he wrote again, taking issue with pension examining boards, which accused wounded veterans, such as himself, of malingering--of their failure "to do a full day's work in a harvest field." He fumed at the "red tape, spies and disgraceful methods" which sought to portray "every soldier to be a perjured, lying rascal..."

It was not until 1886 that he wrote of the raising of his company in the early days of the war; only in 1888 did he describe his wounding at South Mountain.

In mid-September 1883, he journeyed to LaCrosse to attend the Iron Brigade Association reunion. There, he renewed acquaintenace with Jerome A. Watrous, who was running the Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph and was tapping into the rising tide of the veterans' movement. He wrote and solicited recollections and "letters" from the old soldiers, and Sullivan was a contributor for the next six years.

He became a practicing attorney and justice of the piece in Ontario, Vernon County.

Divorced from his first wife, James Patrick married Bessie Gorham and was now the step-father of three little ones, all under ten years of age. The second marriage produced a son, James Fitz, born March 24, 1901.

James P. Sullivan died October 22, 1906 of inflamation to the stomach, resulting in ulceration. He was 66. Also contributing to his demise was a piece of metal lodged near the base of his skull for 40 years--a rebel shell fragment that had caught him at Weldon Railroad on August 21, 1864. The Irishman was buried by the Grand Army of the Republic in the hillside Ontario Cemetery near the brooding eminence of Wildcat Mountain.

Within a year, the Kickapoo River, Brush Creek and Moore's Creek, fed by heavy rains, sent surging muddy water onto the streets of Ontario. The two-story frame building housing Sullivan's old law office and home was inundated and most of his war correspondence, diaries, notes, and other writings were swept away or destroyed. A few items were slavaged: a typed copy of Sullivan's story of Company K's mule, a GAR badge, and the small metal cross, struck for the 1885 Madison reunion of the Iron Brigade Assoication.

from An Irishman in the Iron Brigade, The Civil War Memoirs of James P. Sullivan, Sergeant, Co. K, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers by William J. Beaudot and Lance J. Herdegan