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The Minister and The General Former Civil War Foes Meet Again in Turn of the Century Corvallis By Randy Fletcher The general passed away on a
summer’s
day in Corvallis, Oregon in 1915. The old soldier’s end The General was Thomas Jones
Thorp, the
once handsome and dashing cavalry commander of Thorp answers the Union call Born in to a prominent family in
upstate New York, the grandson of Revolutionary War soldiers on both
his father and mother’s side of the family, Thorp was a senior at
Union College when the Civil War began. He left school to join the
Union Army and received his diploma while in the field. Thorp was
appointed captain of the 85th New York Volunteer Infantry
Regiment where he “distinguished himself as a company commander and
was considered a master of drill and discipline.” Wounded in the
leg at the Battle of Fair Oaks in May of 1862, Thorp was sent home to
recover from his injuries. While he was home in Granger he was
appointed by the Governor of New York lieutenant colonel of a new
regiment to be recruited from the state. During the months of July
and August of 1862 patriotic rallies were held throughout towns in
New York’s Allegany and Livingston counties to encourage volunteers
to enlist in the new 130th New York Infantry. ] The new regiment’s officers, Col. Alfred Gibbs and Lt. Col. Thorp, would address the crowds, the band would play nationalistic tunes, and the gathering would conclude with Miss Mandana Major, the accomplished and lovely nineteen year-old daughter of Col. John Major, singing Rally ‘round the Flag. Enough volunteers joined to form two regiments.
The officers and men of the 130th New York distinguished themselves at the Siege of Suffolk. When the Union needed more cavalry troops, the men of the 130th Infantry were mounted on horses and re-designated as the 1st Regiment, New York Dragoons. The Dragoons were assigned to the First Cavalry Division of the Army of the Potomac under the command of General Phil Sheridan. By the end of the war the Dragoons had seen as much action and were as glorious in battle as any cavalry regiment in the Union army. Capture and escape from Confederate prison In June of 1864 Thorp was wounded
again
and taken prisoner at the Battle of Trevellian Station.
Theology student joins Confederates John Richard Newton Bell was known
throughout life simply by his initials, J.R.N. When the New Yorkers and Virginians clash at Cedar Creek It was October of 1864 and the
Union
army was raiding the Shenandoah Valley, burning crops and farms and
killing livestock. Their mission was to destroy the Confederate
economy and deprive the enemy of food and supplies. On the eighteenth
of October the Federal soldiers stopped to rest and make camp in the
beautiful autumn weather of the Virginia countryside, along pastoral
Cedar Creek. Believing no hostile action was eminent, General
Sheridan, the Union commander, left his command to confer with War
Department officials in the town of Winchester, twenty miles away.
The thirty thousand troops in blue were completely unaware that a
Confederate army, twenty thousand men strong, under the command of
General Jubal Early was trailing their column. The southerners had
marched through the night and launched one of the most daring
large-scale surprise attacks of the war at dawn. Bell’s regiment of
Virginians was assigned to General Gabriel Wharton’s Division which
attacked the center of the Union line along the Valley Turnpike Road.
Hundreds of Union prisoners were captured, many still in their
underwear. As the Northern troops fled in panic, the exhausted and
hungry rebels halted to pillage the abandoned tents and cooking fires
for food and other supplies.
Twice the Dragoons along with the 6th New York Cavalry charged the Rebels and each time “they were compelled to retire under terrible fire.” On a third attempt the 6th New York stormed and captured the bridge over Cedar Creek and the Dragoons swept down the road and crashed through a “living wall of the enemy.” The mounted counter attack broke the Confederate line and turned the tide of the battle. What had looked to be a significant Confederate victory that morning had turned in to a devastating defeat by sundown. With the defeat of Early’s army, the Shenandoah Valley was left unprotected. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were killed with many more taken prisoner. Among the three hundred fifty-two prisoners captured by the New York Dragoons were men from the 26th Virginia, including Private J.R.N. Bell. Bell’s battalion. It was nearly wiped out at Cedar Creek. Of the original eighty-six members of his company, only four men were still in service at the end of the war. Thorp continued on to fight more battles but Bell was sent to a Union prisoner of war camp. Within six months, the Civil War was over and Bell returned home. He was nineteen years old and penniless.
Marriage and the ministry Upon his return to Virginia, Bell
found
work teaching school at the Oakwood Institute which was eighty miles
west of his hometown of Wytheville. Another instructor at the
Institute was Miss Margaret Kirk whom Bell described as the
“prettiest girl he had ever seen” and he told her so “by
hickory.” Bell’s first kiss was when he kissed his bride at his
own wedding. The newlyweds returned to Wytheville where Bell returned
to his studies while his wife taught school to pay the tuition. Upon
graduation, Bell was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church South
and assigned his first pastorate, in Faulkner County, Arkansas. The
rough and rustic Arkansas life did not suit the couple used to the
genteel society of Old Virginia and in 1874 they headed west. By the
time the couple arrived in Ashland, Oregon, all of the money they had
in the world was a single silver dollar. Bell took work where he
could find it. He cleared ditches, cut firewood and worked in the
fields of southern Oregon, anything to pay for the groceries. He
attended a local revival meeting and was ordained in the Southern
Methodist Church and given charge of the church at Ashland. With that
appointment, the Rev. J.R.N. Bell was called to the ministry in
Oregon in a career that would span more than fifty years. His work
would take him from Ashland to Corvallis, to Douglas County, to He was known as the “marrying
parson”
because he presided at the weddings of more than one Thorp also heads west Following the Union victory at Cedar Creek, Thorp led his men in more battles throughout Virginia and was present at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. During the war, Thorp’s Dragoons took part in more than sixty-five engagements, captured fifteen hundred thirty-three prisoners, nineteen pieces of artillery, and four Confederate battle flags. Not content to sit at home, Mandana Thorp joined her husband in the field where she cared “for the wounded and the sick in camp and in hospital.” At the end of the Civil War in 1865, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Thorp was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General of U.S. Volunteers. He proudly led his Dragoons in the Grand Review of the Union Armies through the streets of Washington D.C. One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers marched in the Grand Review, which took two days to pass in front of the White House where President Johnson and General Grant reviewed the troops. Riding at General Thorp’s side at the head of the column was his wife, Mandana. Of the fourteen hundred Dragoons
that
witnessed the Thorp wedding, six hundred twenty-five were killed,
wounded, died of disease, or died in prisoner of war camps. Thorp
himself was Battle re-fought in words General Thorp was in his sixties
when
he and his wife arrived in Corvallis around 1900. Through While Thorp was proud of the title “General,” Bell was equally as proud to have served as a private and often joked that he was the “only private Confederate soldier who survived the war. All the rest are colonels or majors, or captains.” The passing years had promoted all of his fellow veterans to officers. While the general and the minister had no knowledge of each other in 1864, they forged an enduring friendship fifty years later. In an era when the scars of the Civil War were real and continued to cause conflict throughout the United States, one old Virginian and an aged New Yorker found amity, admiration, and mutual respect from their common bonds. There is a lesson in that respect which resonates today. A different kind of Civil War Rev. Bell became a member of the
Board
Trustees of Oregon Agricultural College in 1874 and later became a
Regent of the school. When intercollegiate athletics began, Bell was
one of the program’s most ardent supporters. He was among the
spectators at the first football game between O.A.C. and their rivals
from the University of Oregon. The rivalry between the two schools
continues today and is the oldest college rivalry on the West Coast.
The annual game between the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers
(formerly O.A.C.) is universally known as the “Civil War.” In the excitement of the first
O.A.C. victory in 1894, Bell marched
from the Corvallis campus to the nearby Marys River and threw his
bowler hat into the water. A new tradition was born and with each
Civil War victory, Bell would repeat his march to the river and throw
another hat into Thorp’s grave gets a headstone after ninety-two years The death of General Thorp was
front-page news in the Corvallis Daily Gazette Times. His
funeral was held at Bell’s Presbyterian Church and he was laid to
rest in a plot owned by the G.A.R. in Corvallis’s Crystal Lake
Cemetery. Following her husband’s death. Mrs. Thorp moved to
Portland to be near her school teacher daughter, Bessie Maybelle.
Thorp was so highly respected that the U.S. Congress passed a bill to
provide his widow a pension of thirty dollars a month. Mrs. Thorp
died in 1916.
-------------------------------------- Photo credits: The
picture of JRN Bell is courtesy of the OSU Alumni Association. The
picture of the crowd gathered to see Bell throw his hat into the Marys
River
following the Civil War football game is from about 1920 and is also
courtesy of the OSU Alumni Association.
The other pictures are of Thorp's new headstone; a portrait of Thomas
and
Mandana Thorp taken at the time of their wedding; and a ribbon from the
1910 Randy's Last piece for OrMag:
http://oregonmag.com/MOHCivilWarOR807.html
Bibliography “The Battle of Cedar Creek”,
Dan Riegel, Cincinnati Civil War Roundtable, “Brigadier General Thomas J.
Thorp”, Officers of the Volunteer Army and “Cedar Creek After Action
Report”,
Brig. Gen. Thomas C. Devin, Commander, “Cedar Creek After Action
Report”,
Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt, Commander, “Dr. J.R.N. Bell Dies Last
Night”, Daily Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon. History of Allegany County,
F.W. Beers & Co., New York. 1879. “In Memory of Bell Field”,
OSU Alumni Association, George Edmonston Jr., “Mrs. Mandana Coleman Thorp”,
American Women, Fifteen Hundred Biographies, “The Original and Only Dr.
J.R.N. Bell of Corvallis”, Fred Lockley, The Statutes at Large of the
United States, Vol. XXXIX, Sixty-fourth Congress, “War Veteran Answers the Call”, Daily Gazette Times, Corvallis, Oregon. Page 1, July 27, 1915. © 2008 Randy Fletcher |
The 130th New York completed their
training in September of 1862. On the day they were to leave for the
war, the entire command, fourteen hundred men strong, formed on the
parade ground to witness the marriage of Lt. Col. Thorp to Mandana
Major. The ceremony was conducted within the hollow square formed by
the regiment and presided over by the Rev. Joel Wakeman, a captain in
the regiment. The newlyweds exited the service under an arch of
crossed sabers.
Civil War
began, J.R.N. Bell was a theology student at tiny Wytheville College
in southern Virginia, not too far from the border with North
Carolina. In the nineteenth century, the curriculum of most southern
schools included military instruction. Just sixteen years old in
1861, Bell and his fellow students were mustered into the Confederate
army where they were known as the “Wytheville Grays.”
Originally entered into service as a cavalry unit, the Grays were
dismounted in 1863and reformed as Company I of the 26th Virginia
Infantry Battalion. Fifty years later, Bell would recall in a
newspaper interview that “lots of the boys were not much taller
than their guns, but they were Virginians. They could fight.” By
Bell’s account, he fought in thirty-two major battles and was
bayoneted through the shoulder when his regiment fought with clubbed
muskets against the Union charge at Cold Harbor. By the time he would
face Thorp’s Dragoons at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Private Bell
was a seasoned veteran. 
Early’s men had been on the march
without food or sleep for twenty-four to thirty-six hours before the
battle began. This break in the action allowed time for the Union
troops to form a defensive line. Sheridan was alerted of the attack
and his mad dash to the battle has been immortalized in the poem “Sheridan’s
Ride” by Thomas Buchanan Read. Sheridan
rallied his cavalry brigades who were under the command of generals
George Custer and Wesley Merritt (whose second brigade included
Thorp’s Dragoons) and at three in the afternoon Merritt’s
horsemen counterattacked down the same Valley Turnpike Road that Bell
had marched up that morning. 
wounded
five times. The Civil War was hard on the Thorp
family. Gen. Thorp’s younger brother, Captain Alexander K. Thorp,
was killed at the Battle of Winchester. Another brother, Simeon
Montgomery Thorp, a state senator in Kansas, was murdered when
Confederate guerillas under 
the water. Bell’s march grew into one of the most
anticipated Corvallis social events of the year and by the 1920s
thousands of football fans would make the victory walk to the river
with him. Fundraisers were held to pay for his hats! In 1921 the
school named the football stadium in his honor and Bell Field was the
home of the Oregon State Beavers until 1953. Dr. Bell passed away in
1928, his wife Margaret died in 1939. They are buried in Crystal Lake
Cemetery in Corvallis, not too far from the Mary’s River where he
would throw his hat. The couple shares a large granite monument,
which includes the square and compass of the Masons above their
names.
Thorp’s son, Montgomery,
was
reported to be in
England working for the British War