Samuel Brackett Wing – A True Survivor

By Cyndy Doherty

With thanks to Raymond Wing

Samuel Brackett Wing (left), born in 1832 at Phillips, Maine, came from a long line of patriots.  His great grandfather, Simeon Wing, too old to fight in the Revolution, served on war committees in Sandwich, Massachusetts.  His grandfather, Moses Wing, lost a leg in the Revolution because he refused to let British doctors treat him, but he went back to war, eventually ending his military service as a surgeon. He continued to practice privately, hobbling around on a wooden leg.  Samuel’s father, also named Samuel, served in the War of 1812.

Samuel Brackett Wing married Mary Lufkin in 1857.  He describes their first meeting in his book “The Soldiers Story: A Personal Narrative of the Life, Army Experiences and Marvelous Sufferings Since the War of Samuel Brackett Wing.” He was smitten from the start and says of their first conversation “…the fact is, for forty years after, we never lacked for subjects for pleasant and helpful conversation.”

Life appeared to be going well for Mary and Samuel in 1860 when they and their two children moved to Aroostook County, Maine.  Samuel liked his neighbors and farming, from his account, was easier in the soil of Aroostook County.  Though the winters were long and the summers short, they managed to raise large crops of wheat, oats and potatoes. 

1861 was a difficult year for the Wing family and their neighbors.  Diptheria was running rampant and it didn’t spare Samuel and his family.  However, with common sense guidance from Samuel, his family recovered from this usually fatal disease.

The following two years were quiet ones for the little family of four.  The Wings were not unlike the young families of today.  When they are first starting out, parents work hard to ensure their families have the necessities of life but have little left over.  Samuel and Mary were at this stage of their married life in 1863 when things changed irrevocably for their family.

Samuel was drafted into the Union Army.

He had no recourse but to go.  It was harvesting time.  His wife and small children were in no position to bring in the crops.  He had no relatives nearby to lean on.  He tried to sell his livestock but he was swindled.  Samuel Brackett Wing and his family had their lives turned upside down in an instant.

Mary Wing and her children went to live with her family in Phillips Maine.  Her husband went to war.

The Battle of the Wilderness, waged in Spotsylvania and Orange Counties, West Virginia lasted two long and bloody days in May, 1864.  There were over 17,000 Union casualties.  Samuel Brackett Wing was one of them.  Samuel describes what today would be categorized as the “fog of war”.  Companies of men scattering under the hail of bullets.  Fortunes changing in a minute.  That’s what happened to Samuel.  As he described it, he was trying to get back to his company.  He turned to find them.  At just that moment he was hit by a bullet that lodged near his shoulder, just above his armpit.

He managed to walk a half mile to the hospital.  The personnel there sent him two miles further to yet another hospital.  They bandaged him up without removing the bullet, telling him he had suffered enough that day.  Samuel told the doctor his shoulder felt fine, but he was feeling pain in his chest and lungs.  The doctor dismissed it as sympathetic pain and moved on to the next in what I imagine was an unending line of patients.

A few days later, Samuel, recuperating from his wound, was told he was to be moved to a hospital in Fredericksburg, 12 miles away.  Being concerned that the bumpy, jolting ride of an ambulance would further worsen the pain in his chest and lungs, Samuel opted to walk.  That decision may have saved his life. He got to Fredericksburg in a day, the journey being long, slow and arduous.  He stayed only a night and the next day began his trek to the boat landing - 15 miles further and the voyage that would take him to Washington.

By the time he reached the boat landing and boarded the boat, his chest was inflamed and as he says, he didn’t know if he was dead or alive.  He reached Washington the next day and was given a bed in Mt Pleasant Hospital.  By this time, he was coughing up blood.

Six weeks later, with the help of family, he was able to make the trip back to Maine to convalesce there.  He seemed to be making progress at getting back to health when, a month after arriving home, Samuel coughed up a bone.  Six months later he coughed up a piece of shirting.  So began years of ill health.  He would have bouts of hemorrhaging, sometimes coughing up bone or shirting.   Samuel was in and out of the hospital, no longer able to farm to make a living for his family.  He took a job as a toll taker as well as postmaster.  These jobs were ones that Mary could fulfill when her husband was in ill health.

Mary died in 1892.  She had been a loyal and stalwart helpmate and nurse to her husband.  She told Samuel she was not afraid to die, just sorry that she couldn’t continue to care for him.

The X-ray having been discovered in November 1895, Samuel Brackett Wing got one of the first X-rays in April 1897.  The results (right) corroborated what Samuel had thought all along.  The bullet was firmly lodged between his 8th and 9th ribs.  The seventh rib appeared to be shattered, which was the cause of the bones he coughed up.  He believed the bullet might have moved down over time as he had been able to breathe easier for the last few years. 

The bullet was never removed.

Samuel Brackett Wing died November 2, 1910.  He was by all accounts a compassionate man.  It’s always hard to know what a person is like just by written accounts.  But a story I read in his obituary gives us an idea of the type of man Samuel Brackett Wing was.  He, later in his life, was in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping the warmer weather might help his health.  He was talking to a local man who served in the Confederate Army years earlier.  This former “Reb” suggested that Samuel would like to meet the man who shot him so he could “return the compliment.”  Samuel thought for a minute and replied that he would surely like to meet the man who shot him doing his duty just as he was doing his so that he could grasp his hand, call him brother, and forgive all.

Lineage: Samuel Brackett Wing; Dr. Samuel; Dr. Moses; Simeon; Ebenezer; Nathaniel; Stephen; Rev. John