A Strangely Roving and Adventurous Life

A Strangely Roving Adventurous Life:

The Story of Philip Sidney Coolidge

“I have seen much of men, but never another who was as curiously interesting as this son of an ancient and staid Boston family. He had roamed about afoot in various terrestrial wilds and was seeking celestial realms.” -Nathaniel Shaler

“This gentleman writes that it is not certain that Major Coolidge of the regulars, was killed in the recent fight, but his brigade lost 1000 of the 1400 men of which it was composed. In the midst of the fight, Major Coolidge was seen to shoot three rebel officers with his revolver. He then rushed forward to use his sword, and was either shot or pulled from his horse.”Boston Daily Advertiser, 12 Oct. 1863

some stood

some fled

he rushed to the fray

Almost fifty years after the American War for Independence the Marquis de Lafayette returned for a grand tour of the country he had helped birth and during this tour he visited and stayed briefly at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Virginian hilltop home. Many notables and dignitaries were in attendance to witness the emotional reunion of the two old compatriots and aged friends on a golden November day. Among these was a gentleman of wealth and learning who had recently returned to the United States after his own grand tour of Europe, Joseph Coolidge. Coolidge belonged to a well established Boston upper class family, one of the Boston Brahman, descendants of the earliest English colonists. During his time at Jefferson's home, Coolidge met Jefferson's granddaughter Eleonora, a relationship ensued and Coolidge asked Jefferson for her hand and the two were married at Monticello the following year.

The couple then returned to Boston where Eleonora birthed 6 children, two daughters and four sons including twin boys Algernon Sidney and Philip Sidney on August 22, 1830. Shortly after the birth of his children, Joseph Coolidge went to China as part of the so-called Boston Concern and parlayed his wealth into a considerable fortune trading opium, tea, porcelain and silk in China.

One of their twin sons Phillip Sidney Coolidge was named after the Elizabethan poet and courtier-soldier Sir Philip Sidney but he preferred to be known simply as Sidney Coolidge. Like his brothers he was sent to Europe as a boy and he studied abroad from 1839 till 1850, first in Geneva and Vevay, and afterward in the Royal military college in Dresden. He was witness to the Revolutions of 1848 that swept across Europe when he "first encountered the stirring scenes of actual warfare. They served only to kindle into enthusiasm his passion for the military profession." As a result of his European schooling, he spoke English with a French accent.

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, a noted Harvard geologist and friend of Coolidge later observed that Sidney “was a rather small, delicate person, with a soldierly courage, with a gentle pale face, and a large nose adorned with eye-glasses.” and

“I have seen much of men, but never another who was as curiously interesting as this son of an ancient and staid Boston family. He had roamed about afoot in various terrestrial wilds and was seeking celestial realms.”

Upon completion of his studies in Europe and of a martial mind, Sidney took efforts to procure a suitable position in the United States Army and not being successful in this regard, he applied in turn to enter the service of France, of England, and of Sardinia but he was not able to secure a suitable military posting, and returned to the United States.

After his return to his country, he assisted in the survey and construction of the Richmond and Danville railroad under CaptainTalcott, built to compete with the existing mule-powered Chesterfield Railroad. A dozen years later this same railroad would prove to be vital to the logistics of the Confederacy during the American Civil and would ultimately become the means of escape for the Confederate President Jefferson Davis after the fall of Richmond.

Sidney Coolidge then became connected with the Harvard College Observatory in 1853 and was working in the nautical-almanac office and in the Cambridge observatory,when he joined the U.S. Expedition for the survey of the North Pacific Ocean and China Sea as both an engineer and assistant astronomer to Commodore Perry's Pacific exploration and diplomatic expedition to Japan and the Orient.

During this expedition, he traveled in China and as the aforementioned Shaler recounted later, after reading a book on the Far East:

"was airing my knowledge in the talk that went round at our boarding-house table. I had spoken of the northern Chinaman as a well-developed man, saying he would average a certain height - whatever it was in the book. Someone questioned my statement. Knowing Coolidge had been in China, I asked his opinion. He assumed I was right. Another man present questioned him, 'I should like to know, sir, what foundation you have for your opinion."

Coolidge replied:

'I saw a hundred of them beheaded, and I measured them afterwards.'"

In 1855, he led the chronometric Expedition of the U.S. Coast Survey between Cambridge, MA and Liverpool, England “having for its object to ascertain the relation of the European and American systems of longitude.” His work was instrumental in the determination of the zero longitudes of the western continent and.determining the difference of longitude between Cambridge and Greenwich,

For the ocean survey, Coolidge crossed the Atlantic six times transporting on each voyage some 40 to 50 chronometers from station to station traveling a total distance of about 18,000 miles. Later, he also helped determine the longitudes of Fredericton, New Brunswick, and Quebec City.

In 1854 he assisted Professor George P. Bond in his observations of the planet Saturn, and contributed drawings and notes to the published annals of the observatory. In addition to his observations of Saturn and its rings he discovered 9 NGC-objects, using the 15" Merz refractor of Harvard College Observatory, which had been installed in 1847.Some of Coolidge's observations and drawings were published in the observatory's yearbooks and his association with the Observatory lasted some seven years, although he never received a formal paycheck

The first large scale astronomical observation device in the western hemisphere, the 15" Merz refractor of Harvard College Observatory, used by the Bonds and Coolidge

Coolidge gained the respect and esteem of George Philips Bond. The pair worked together under the tutelage of Bond’s father William Cranch Bond, the founding Director of the Harvard College Observatory. Coolidge then served as an assistant when the younger Bond assumed the Directorship until he left his post to accept a position with the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War.

Sidney Coolidge's Drawings of the rings of Saturn

In 1856 and1857 he surveyed the boundary-line of Minnesota, traveled to Hudson Bay and on the return studied the dialects and astronomical superstitions of the First Nations People near the Saguenay river and Lake Mistassinnie in Quebec.

He then traveled to Mexico in 1858, as assistant astronomer to Colonel Talcott's Engineer Corps surveying a rail line between Veracruz and the interior through the pass of Cortez.

While in Orizaba the Mexican War of the Reform began and he joined the liberals and took part in the battles of Cruz Blanca and Orizaba where he was placed in charge of engineering the fortifications at Orizaba and the pass of Chiquihuite but was taken prisoner when the defenses were overrun by a superior attacking force. Knowing that if his identity were to be revealed to his captors his life would be in peril, he gave a false name and was held in squalid Puebla prison for a number of months surviving mainly on a diet of oranges. Eventually his identity was revealed and he was sentenced to be executed by firing squad but was saved by the fortuitous intervention of an English diplomat and he was paroled to Mexico City on house arrest for another few months and after being released he considered traveling to Europe to fight in the brief Franco-Italian-Austrian War but instead went on a surveying expedition in the Arizona territory before returning to Boston and in May, 1861 to became a major in the 16th U.S. infantry.

He was superintendent of the regimental recruiting service in 1862, commanded regiments at different posts and camps, and was engaged at the battles of Hoover's Gap and Chickamauga, where he was last seen in battle with Confederate forces along with his men defending a battery of Ohio cannon on the morning of September 19, 1863.when Confederate forces smashed into the union position before noon on the first day of three in the battle.

". . .the point where the tide of the enemy's success was ultimately stayed by that heroic resistance, which alone saved the army from destruction. His position shortly became one of extreme peril. An officer, despatched with orders to retire, found it impossible to reach him. The line on the right having been forced back, the enemy advanced in front and flank for the possession of the battery, which was taken, and the remains of the three regiments in support were swept away. Of the 16th, but twenty-three men and five officers left the field. Its gallant commander, at the moment of imminent danger, pressed forward into the thickest of the fight, and fell, as he would have chosen, at the post of danger and of duty, among the brave men, whom he had himself trained for the conflict."

-George Philips Bond

The battlefield in 2022

Shortly after this battle, his twin brother Algernon Coolidge, a surgeon working with the U.S. Sanitary Commission,received three telegrams in one day. One said his brother had been killed, another said he had been wounded, and a third said he had been captured. Trying to find out his brother’s status, Algernon made inquiries through Union channels without success. He then asked his uncle, a previous Confederate Secretary of War, George Wyeth Randolph, to intervene.and he was given permission to cross enemy lines to ascertain the fate of his twin but his brother's status remained uncertain and in January 1864 the Coolidge family declared Philip Sidney dead.

Confederate Colonel Daniel C. Govan had picked up Coolidge's sword during the battle. and he wore it at his side until the surrender of the Confederates at Jonesboro on September 1, 1864. Following the surrender process, the sword ended up in the hands of Union Lieutenant Colonel James W. Forsyth. It was then passed to General Benjamin Butler who eventually returned the sword to the Coolidge family.

The sword had been a gift from his youngest brother Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, an early American industrialist,and future ambassador to France and was inscribed:

Major Sidney Coolidge

16. Infantry U. S. A.

From T. J. C.

Sept. 5. 1862

Govan added his own inscription after it's capture at Chickamauga:

Captured at the

battle of Chickamauga

by Col. D. C. Gowan

2. Arks Reg

Sept. 19. 1863.

Beneath this is inscribed:

Recaptured from Brig. Gen. Govan

at the battle of Jonesboro

Sept. 1864.

Nathaniel Shaler and Leslie Waggener, both friends of Sidney Coolidge from Havard, who had fought for the Confederacy and each believed the other had been killed during the war, happened upon a chance reunion In 1874 and as a result the Coolidge family found out what had happened to Sidney. According to Shaler’s account of the meeting:

“Waggener was the first to recover his balance enough to start conversation. He began by asking me something about Coolidge, who was killed at Chickamauga. Then he told me the reason for his question. The story ran as follows. Waggener was with the force that broke the Federal line where the Sixteenth Infantry was stationed; as the shattered remnant went back, he saw Coolidge standing in his place with the point of his sword up, making what the soldiers called a “defy.” Waggener recognized him, knew that his signal of no surrender would quickly lead to his being shot, and ran toward him. When he was a few score feet away, he was himself shot, and did not recover consciousness for some days thereafter.”

Following his death on the Chickamauga battlefield, Philp Sidney Coolidge received the brevet of lieutenant-colonel.

He was less than one month shy of his 33rd birthday at the time of his death.

Fly, fly, my friends, I have my death wound; fly!

See there that boy, that murthering boy I say,

Who like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie,

Till bloody bullet get him wrongful prey

.-Sir Philip Sidney

Near Here He Fell, photo by author

Sidney Coolidge's Drawing of William Cranch Bond and George Phillips Bond

Coolidge's whimsical sketch or Saturn, to which he added a number of characters and animals: a polar bear in Saturn’s polar region; a bridge connecting Saturn’s B-Ring with A-Ring, with a small house with chimney and a flag on the A-Ring; a wild boar chasing a man across the rings; Native Americans; a dinosaur, and other animals.

Govan's account of Coolidge's sword (note that Govan's inscription differs from the account of Thomas Jefferson Coolidges)

Monument to the 16th US Infantry at Chickamauga , photo by author

Plaque at the position of Coolidge's 16th US Infantry on 19 September, 10 AM, photo by author