Seys, Henry H., 1830-1904
Rank:	Asst. Surgeon; Surgeon; Medical Inspector
Regiment:	3rd Ohio Infantry Regiment (1861) 15th Ohio Infantry Regiment (1861-1865)
Service:	1861 May 2-1864 August 1

Background note:

A white West Indian with an aristocratic pedigree, John Seys disgraced his family by becoming a Methodist minister. Undaunted, he followed his calling into a succession of missionary posts while he and his wife worked to raise a large family. Their first four children died in infancy, but Henry, their fifth, survived after being born in America, where his father was laboring as a missionary to the Mohawk Indians. From 1835 to 1845, John Seys served as a missionary in Africa -- accompanied by Henry for three of these years -- and in 1850, he accepted the directorship of the Maryland Colonization Society, returning to Liberia for a short time in 1862.

Although he later signed letters "Seys Jr.," Henry Seys appears never to have gone by the name of his father, nor did he entirely follow in his father's footsteps. In 1853, Henry graduated from medical school in Baltimore, and moved to Springfield, Ohio, to set up practice. Thus Henry Seys was a doctor with eight years' experience when he answered the call to serve in the Civil War, leaving his wife and children under the care of her parents in Massachusetts. Although he is officially listed on the roll of the 3rd Ohio Infantry through July, 1862, and of the 15th Ohio Infantry from then to the end of his service, he actually spent only a fraction of his time with those regiments. Most of his service was spent in staff appointments of various sorts.

Self-confident to the point of being overbearing, Seys nevertheless harbored deep anxieties about the possibility of failure. Yet despite his fears, he rose steadily through the ranks, from Assistant Surgeon at the beginning of the war to Senior Surgeon in October, 1862, and in March, 1863, to Medical Inspector in the Army of the Cumberland, a post he owed to the support of General William S. Rosecrans. When Rosecrans was relieved of his post later that fall, however, Seys became a casualty of the general reorganization.

Seys and his wife returned to Springfield after the war, following an abortive attempt in 1864 to start a practice in Oil City, Pa. He died on June 17, 1904.

Scope and contents:

Henry Seys' letters are the product of a well educated man: sprinkled with Latin and French phrases, and quotations from poetry, they are written in a lively and engaging style. The strength of the collection lies in Seys' animated accounts of conversations in camp, fatiguing marches, and of day-to-day life during the heat of the critical Tennessee campaigns of 1863. Something of an artist, he left one map of the Tullahoma Campaign, but unfortunately, his pencil sketches of army life and personnel -- done for the benefit of his children -- have been lost.

Seys' surviving letters cluster around the Tullahoma, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga Campaigns. While not a combattant, per se, he records the eerie sensation of living with the possibility, if not probability, of imminent death. As a member of Rosecrans' staff, he became intimate with the general, and his letters provide some penetrating personal glimpses into that man's character and his subordinates' feelings about him. In a different vein, Seys' devotion to his horse, "Dr.," gives a sense of the affection that some soldiers developed for their animal friends during the stress of war. Finally, as might be expected, the collection includes information on medical aspects of the war. Seys treated not only soldiers, but his family (by mail); his recommendation of chloroform to aid his mother-in-law's asthma may or may not have other overtones. The major disappointment of the collection is the fact that it simply evaporates in December, 1863.

Genealogical information:

• John Seys
  • Henry H. Seys (1830-1904)
    (1) m. (Nov. 17, 1853) to Harriet H. Foote (d. Spring, 1876), dau. of Asahel Foote, of Williamstown, Mass.,
    • John Seys (d. before 1897)
    (2) m. (Sept. 18, 1877) to Elizabeth E. Wickham, Racine, Wisc. She survived him
  • DeWint (b. 1832)
  • Maria (b. 1835)
  • Anna (b. 1842)
  • Clement (b. 1844)

Recat. 9/97 rsc

Link to subject index to the Henry H. Seys Papers

Alphabetic index to the Schoff Civil War Collections

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