Post Falls last home for Civil War hero
A hero lies among us.
John Wesley Conaway is in Post Falls’ Evergreen Cemetery, the only Medal of Honor recipient buried in Kootenai County.
He was presented the nation’s highest award for valor for his actions during a Union assault on Confederate fortifications at Vicksburg, Miss.
Conaway was just 19 when he joined Company C, 83rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry, in August 1862 at Dearborn, Ind.
On May 22 of the following year, the private was part of a force attacking a portion of the Confederates’ Vicksburg defenses known as the Stockade Redan Complex. He and his unit were then a part of the Union Army’s Second Division, 15th Corps.
The stockade was a large triangular earthwork, the apex of which pointed toward the Union lines. Fronting it was a 12-foot deep and 8-foot wide ditch, the last obstacle that had to be crossed before the federal troops could scale the walls and capture the fort.
Conaway’s great-great granddaughter, Bridget Pulley of Post Falls, has a copy of an undated letter he wrote to a friend, Sinclair Mulholland, after the war.
In it, he recalls, “(I was) one of a party of volunteers selected to carry lumber and laders (sic) in advance of the main column in the second assault on a certain fort in our front, our part of the program was a success. But the main column failed to make good.”
The Vicksburg National Military Park historian, Terrence Winschel, recounts what happened: “At 10 a.m. the guns fell silent and the ‘volunteer storming party,’ which was dubbed ‘The Forlorn Hope,’ raced forward with their bridging materials in hand. As they neared the Confederate line, the smoke from the artillery bombardment began to dissipate and exposed the troops to enemy view.
“Scores of the volunteers were shot down, but those who were unhurt, true to their mission, reached the ditch, which was bridged and the scaling ladders thrown against the fort.
“Unfortunately, the infantry was not ordered to follow the storming party until after it reached its destination. Consequently, when the infantry was finally ordered forward, it was easily checked long before it reached the bridges at Stockade Redan.
“Despite the bravery of the men in the volunteer storming party, the attack failed.”
According to Conaway’s account, “Out of the nine men that volunteered from my Regt., I believe there was only one left unharmed.”
Following the failed assault, Union forces besieged Vicksburg for 47 days, until the Confederates finally surrendered on July 4.
In 1894, the War Department reviewed all applications for the Medal of Honor that had been made during the Civil War. Several medals were recalled while others were issued to those still alive, including Conaway and 80 other men in the “Forlorn Hope” party.
In his undated letter, Conaway says he was “wounded just at the ditch around the fort. I have been a cripple since. And drawing the enormous sum of Six Dollars per mo. as a pension.”
Despite his “crippled” state, Conaway soldiered on. According to his letter, he “Was under Grant at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge. Under Sherman through Georgia and the Carolinas. I participated in 13 battles and a good many skirmishes. I was promoted to be a corporal for gallantry and have had the big head ever since.
“Was discharged at Washington June 1st 1865.”
Following the war, Conaway wrote, “I started west to grow up with the country. The country has grown all right, but I failed to keep up with it. I have drove (sic) a logging team, run a sawmill, kept a country store and 4th Class Post Office (that there was no money in.)
Strangely enough, Conaway’s great-great granddaughter wasn’t drawn here because it was her ancestor’s final resting place.
“I didn’t know we had any connection when we drove through here eight years ago,” she explains. “My husband, Tracy, was a long-distance trucker and we were living in Blackfoot. I was with him when we passed through Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls, and I said to him, ‘I want to live here.’ “
After the Pulleys moved here, Bridget learned from her mother, Janet Adams Brannon of Enumclaw, Wash., – Conaway’s great-grandaughter – that she had ties to the area.
The Civil War vet had done a bit of wandering about the Northwest after his discharge. His descendants don’t know the sequence of his moves, but he married Sarah Shanks of Crawfordsville, Ore., in 1871. They lived for a time in St. John, Wash., where, in 1894, he was the proprietor of the J.W. Conaway Merchandise Co. The Conaways also once had a home in Centralia, Wash.
They had two daughters, Hettie and Mary Elsie. Hettie, the eldest, married Fred Miller, an Oakesdale, Wash., postmaster, and Mary Elsie married Ritzville attorney J. Oscar Adams.
Bridget, who is descended from Mary Elsie, relates that Hettie had no children, but lived to be 105, and was the family historian.
John Conaway died at the age of 70 on Nov. 21, 1913, and, according to family records, he died in his home 2.5 miles west of Post Falls. His wife, who is buried next to him, was 82 when she died in 1936.
Military service has remained a tradition in the family. Bridget’s grandfather, father, brother and husband all have served in uniform.
And she retains some tangible mementos of her heroic ancestor: a Legion of the Medal of Honor lapel pin, several family photographs with John Conaway, and the citation that accompanied his Medal of Honor, still in its original frame, with the now-fading signature of Gen. Nelson Miles of Indian Wars fame.
The medal itself remains with Bridget’s mother in Enumclaw. Would she relinquish it briefly, just for a photograph?
“Not on your life,” says Janet Adams Brannon. “I wouldn’t let that go for anything.”