May 3, 2023 (with additions on July 26, 2023)
In reading the chapter on the Landry Family in Volume 1 of Becoming the Frenchified State of Maryland, all should agree that Eliza M. C. Landry was a unique and energetic woman in nineteenth-century Baltimore. She is covered extensively on pages 349-86.
Eliza was quite loyal to her siblings and to her religious beliefs. After the deaths of her sisters, Rose White and Harriet Gold, she kept a good eye on Harriet’s survivors until her own passing in February 1870, at the age of 77.
As stated previously, many Marylanders were supportive of the Confederate cause. For that reason and because Baltimore was just 40-some miles from the national capital, the state’s most populous city was under federal martial law from the very beginning of the war. John B. Piet III, a Catholic, was threatened in his position as a publisher and bookseller with strong Southern sympathies (1:503-4).
In the fall of 1864, Eliza’s nephew, Charles W. Gold, was being detained at Fort Warren, a P.O.W. camp on Georges Island, at the entrance to Boston harbor. Having heard that he was ill, Aunt Eliza took it upon herself to write the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners in Washington on 23 October to make sure that his spiritual needs were being attended to. The following is the reply from “W. Hoffman, Com’y Gen’l Pris:”
Madam:
Your note of the 23rd inst, requesting that Charles W. Gold a Prisoner at Fort Warren may enjoy the sacraments of the Church in his last moments has been referred to this office and in reply I beg to say that such privileges have not been refused to prisoners, and when a request is made to the Commanding Officer to permit a clergyman to visit Mr. Gold under the circumstances you mention he will be admitted.
The good news is that Gold survived his confinement and was freed by an order from Major H. A. Allen to an official at the fort, dated 15 January 1865:
Sir,
I have the honor to report that Charles W. Gold, late master of the prize Schooner Swallow, was released yesterday the 14th inst upon his taking the oath of allegiance in pursuance of instructions received from the Hon. Sec’y of the Navy.
The signed oath, with the countersignature of William Ray, can still be viewed today. As an extra benefit for researchers, it is known from this document that the seaman and Georgia volunteer measured 5’7¼” and possessed a dark complexion, black hair, and hazel eyes.
Charles remained active after the Civil War, then was lost at sea on a mini-schooner that the forty-two-year-old was commanding as he sailed to France in the summer of 1867 (see 1:385 for a description of this ill-fated venture).
1https://www.fold3.com/image/251631131.
Francophones in Maryland 