DOB/DOD: February 14, 1841 (Ithaca, NY) – October 12, 1898 (Havana, Cuba); 57 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Sophi Sparks (1846-1914) on December 17, 1868.
CHILDREN: Three daughters, Jessie L. (1873-1875), Frances (1878-1942), and Hannah C. (1882-1883).
ENLISTEMENT: April 23, 1864, in Thompson, Connecticut.
FAMILY: Born to Jeremiah S. (1790-1861) and Jessie Casey Beebe (1819-1875).
* Brevet promotion to Major. In many of the world’s military establishments, a brevet was given to a commissioned officer with a higher rank title as a reward for gallantry or meritorious conduct but may not confer the authority, precedence, or pay of real rank.
OTHER: Graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1863 during the Civil War and was commissioned as a Regular Army First Lieutenant in the Ordnance Department. He remained in the Ordnance Department after the conclusion of the War, rising to Major. He died of yellow fever he contracted while serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION
AWARDED FOR ACTIONS DURING: Civil War
BRANCH OF SERVICE: Army
UNIT: U.S. Army Ordnance
AGE ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT: 23
DATE OF ISSUE: June 30, 1897 (33 years later)
CITATION:
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to First Lieutenant William Sully Beebe, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 23 April 1864, while serving with U.S. Army Ordinance, in action at Cane River Crossing, Louisiana. First Lieutenant Beebe voluntarily led a successful assault on a fortified position. The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to First Lieutenant William Sully Beebe, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 23 April 1864, while serving with U.S. Army Ordinance, in action at Cane River Crossing, Louisiana. First Lieutenant Beebe voluntarily led a successful assault on a fortified position.
From Beyer, W. F., & Keydel, O. F. (2000). Deeds of valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes won The Congressional Medal of Honor. Smithmark Publishers.
A BATTLE BRIEF BUT BLOODY
Two hundred Union men were killed and wounded within a few minutes! This is the record of the engagement at Cane River Crossing, Louisiana, then which, considering its brief duration, there was no fiercer or more bloody struggle during the entire war. The Confederates were in a strongly fortified position; the Union forces had orders to drive them out. The two hostile bodies clashed on April 24, 1864.
First Lieutenant William S. Beebe of the Ordnance Department of the Army was the officer whose leadership won a brilliant victory for the Federals on that memorable occasion. He led the one hundred and seventy-third New York Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Conrady, and so conspicuously distinguished himself that he was brevetted a Captain and awarded the Medal of Honor.
The details of the assault are told by Lieutenant Beebe himself as follows: “I was ordered by the Chief of Staff to join the assaulting column, to urge the necessity of an instant attack, as I knew our rear guard was then engaged and we had to lay a pontoon bridge to cross Cane River. The division was deployed for an attack on Monett’s Bluff; I stated the necessity of instant assault and offered to lead it. The offer was declined, but on its renewal, promptly accepted. I was the first man on the bluff. The color guard immediately behind me lost five men out of eight, and the killed and wounded in an affair of ten minutes were about two hundred.”
From The St. John’s (Arizona) Herald July 18, 1895
INTERESTING RUINS
An American’s Discoveries in Peru and Bolivia
Thought to Be the Most Ancient Remains of Lower Civilization to Be Found Upon the Western Hemisphere
Major William Sully Beebe, a retired Army officer living in Thompson, Connecticut, is about to send to the leading archeologists of this country and Europe what he considers proofs of some very remarkable discoveries that he has made during research that have cost him twenty years of study and a large sum of money expended in novel lines of investigation. He believes, says the New York Sun that his findings will convince scientists that America is the seat of an older source of occidental civilization than either Assyria or Egypt. Major Beebe claims that the races that flourished around the Mediterranean – the Accadian, the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Roman, and the Greek – prove themselves to have been the borrowers from an earlier people on this continent because, in the parallels that occur in the early traces of both civilizations, the greater purity is found in the American examples. Myths, symbols, and folklore tales that European students have not been able to make clear are simplified when read by the light of his American discoveries. In the journey to distant lands, they have been altered, copied blindly, or repeated ignorantly, he thinks, so that they have obtained altered or modified meanings on the other side. To give only one example, Major Beebe asserts that the zodiac sign of Sagittarius was at first an armadillo, the name of which in Peru meant an armored hare or rabbit. The sign and the name remained the same wherever the armadillo was known, but by the time the symbol reached northern Mexico and the region of our states, it became changed to an “armed rabbit” – a rabbit carrying a bow and arrow. It is the same sign, Major Beebe says and stands for the same constellation in the heavens as the European symbol of a man with a bow and arrow, Sagittarius.
Major Beebe declares the most ancient remains of former civilizations on this continent to be those ruins of temples and cities that are found in the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca on the Bolivia-Peru border. These relics are scattered over a great extent of the country and reveal remarkable skill in stone cutting, in architecture, and in ornament. This region is fourteen thousand feet above sea level and too cold to provide sustenance for more than a sparse population, but there is little doubt that its climate and its population were once very different. It once supported thousands of stonecutters who could neither live nor work there now. The Aymara tribe of Indians, the present inhabitants, have retained in great purity the language they spoke when the Spaniards conquered the country, and at that time, the Spaniards took down their fables and legends in great numbers. Major Beebe sent a capable man there to verify the old observations and make new ones, and after a study of eight other American tongues and people to the north of the Aymaras, he is convinced that they are the relics of the oldest American semi-civilization and that their influence spread over North America. Proofs of this he claims to have found as far away as Iowa and New Jersey. He asserts that there are in Egypt, and, for that matter, all around the Mediterranean, the most evident duplications of the work of these Aymaras in dials like that at Stonehenge, in Assyrian and Egyptian buildings, in the folklore and in the languages of many peoples.
Of almost equal interest to Americans is Major Beebe’s discovery with regard to the pictographic tablet found at Davenport, Iowa, and declared by Smithsonian experts to be spurious and worse than valueless. Major Beebe declares that he is able to read it. He says that it reproduces the symbols and myths of Aymara Indians and tells the same stories that are conveyed by means of the great dial temple at Tia Huanacu in their country – the same that Mr. Inwards, of London, found to correspond so nearly in appearance with a miniature temple left in Assyria. Major Beebe has reduced all his proofs to writing and arranged the vast number of analogies that he claims to have discovered between old and new world beginnings in such a manner that when all are collected and presented in print and sent out, the scholars of the world may, with the least possible trouble, examine his work and judge his claims. He is a man of leisure and of means, who, in taking up the study of Hebrew, had his attention directed to those similarities between the Israelites and our North American Indians, which have been often and generally discussed.
From The Hartford Courant October 13, 1898
DEATH OF MAJOR BEEBE
Member of Military Commission Dies of Yellow Fever at Havana
Major William S. Beebe, a member of the United States military commission to Cuba, died in Havana at 9 o’clock yesterday morning of yellow fever. A dispatch announcing his death was received by the war department from General Wade yesterday.
Major Beebe was well known in the eastern part of the state, having been a resident of Thompson for about twelve years. He leaves a wife, Mrs. Susan Beebe, who was a Philadelphia woman, and a daughter, Miss Dorothy Beebe, both living in Thompson. Maior Beebe was a graduate of West Point and served during the War of the Rebellion in General Banks’s expedition from New Orleans up the Red River. He was made a major in the ordnance bureau early in the war with Spain and was last at his home in Thompson early in September. He went to Havana with the military commission. Major Beebe was formerly the commander of H.E. Warner Post, No. 4, G. A. R., of Putnam. He was about 50 years old. Among all who knew him, especially Army officers with whom he enjoyed an extensive acquaintance, he was very highly spoken of.
Havana, Oct. 12. —General Wade has cabled to Washington, asking if the health authorities would permit Major Beebe’s body to be taken to New York, enclosed in a metallic casket, by the first steamer available. He is waiting for an answer. If it is in the negative, the funeral may take place this afternoon, and the remains may be subsequently removed to the United States. The death of Major Beebe has been a great shock to all the members of the United States military commission, as his condition yesterday evening offered no reason to believe his death was approaching.
Buried in the National Cemetery at West Point, 329 Washington Road, West Point, New York; Section 20, Row A, Grave 11. Photos by Jeff DeWitt.
| The inscription on the large stone reads: William Sullivan Beebe Born in Ithica, NY February 14, 1841 U.S.M.A. 1863 Brevet Captain For intrepidity, daring and skill in leading men in the face of the enemy. Brevet Major Apr 23, 1864 at the Siege of Fort Morgan, Ala. Medal of Honor For most distinguished gallantry in action Cane River Crossing, Louisiana Major, Chief Ordnance Officer U.S.V. June 27, 1898. Died at Havana, Cuba. October 12, 1898. Sophia Sparks Born in Philadelphia, Pa., February 4, 1846 Daughter of Thomas and Ann Eliza Sparks Married William Sullivan Beebe on Dec. 17, 1868 Died at Thompson, Ct., July 19, 1914 |
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