William Henry Wildes.
by Terry Foenander.
When Barry Crompton, past president and
current secretary of the American Civil War Round Table of Australia, based in
Melbourne, first conducted research on Henry Wildes, buried at Lang Lang,
Victoria, Australia, some sixteen or seventeen years ago, he became aware that
there was going to be no confirming factor about whether Wildes had indeed
served in the Civil War, as first claimed, as there was insufficient evidence
to even accept such a claim as fact.
Since there was no direct or documentary evidence, it was practically
impossible to accept Wildes as even being a confirmed veteran of the Civil
War. Thus the matter was placed in the
“impossible to confirm” basket, with very good reason. To accept Wildes as being a veteran, without
any proper evidence whatsoever, was a foolish decision, and anyone doing so was
obviously living in a land of complete fantasy, and like a dog lost in a
strange land. If claims had been made
that Wildes was a veteran of the Civil War, and there was absolutely no
documentary proof, there could have been any number of reasons for the lack of
such proof. The most obvious would have
been that he may not even have served, and that the claims were just based on
oral history passed down through the family, which gets distorted as time goes
by. This is a very common factor, and
which is well known to those who have been heavily involved in research on
family history, as privates tend to become generals, seamen tend to become
admirals, and common criminals tend to become war heroes. Other reasons could have been that the
person in question may have been in America during the war, but never served in
any capacity at all, and may have avoided service, but, because he happened to
be there during the Civil War, descendants just assume that he had served. Then there are the other factors, such as
the fact that he may indeed have served, but had done so under an assumed name,
for some reason. Another factor could
have been that, instead of serving in the Army during the war, he may actually
have been in the Navy, which is a little studied aspect of the war. Thus it can be seen, by any researcher with
even a small amount of common sense that, without any of the required evidence
available at all, Henry Wildes could not be accepted as having served in the
Civil War, based solely on oral history.
To do so, without the documentary evidence, was to show utter
incompetence, and a total lack of knowledge of the responsibilities of a
researcher. Thus Mr. Crompton had
correctly placed the file on Henry Wildes aside, and refused to accept Wildes
as being confirmed as a veteran of the Civil War. Yet a member of the American Civil War Round Table of
Queensland, James Mason Gray, who is well known for his incompetence and total
lack of proper research techniques or even the basic ability to conduct
research, went ahead, anyway, and decided to accept Henry Wildes as being a
true veteran of the war, without even an aorta of evidence.
In doing so, Gray altered several facts about
Henry Wildes, to ensure that the negative evidence of his unconfirmed service
were instead shown in a positive light.
One such factor that Gray altered, was to place the first name of
William in Wildes name, so that it was now shown as William Henry Wildes. Yet all the documents previously available
showed that the person buried at Lang Lang was only known as Henry Wildes, and
nothing more. Then Mr. Gray tries to
alter further facts by claiming that the records were wrong, which he always does,
when the records do not agree with what he has on file. Further along Gray tries to claim, at
first, that Henry Wildes, and a colonel Asa W. Wildes of the 16th
Maine Infantry were one and the same person, before changing his mind after
having found out that Asa Wildes died in Maine in 1894.
At a later stage in Gray’s biography of Henry
Wildes, he makes the statement that, “There was a William H. Wildes,
however, who enlisted in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry as a private
and was discharged as a corporal; serving in companies A and B. Some think that may in fact be our William
Henry Wildes. In any case, his story
is presented here to present what has and has not been found on him on the long
shot that someday someone may uncover additional evidence to validate the
family “Oral History” and further confirm Henry served in the ‘2nd
Massachusetts Infantry’ or some other Civil War unit.” Unfortunately for Mr. Gray, his lack of
competency in any form of research reveals itself in all its glory, in that
particular paragraph, because every decent researcher is well aware of the fact
that one does not go on “long shots” or any shot at all, but on true and proper
research. And a true researcher does
not add the name of William to the true name of Henry Wildes, just so it can
fit into an assumption that is false and incorrect in every way. Mr. Gray has been involved in this sort of
deceptive research since he started, and shows how incompetent he is in such
functions. The only thing that needs
to be validated in this case is the thorough incompetence of James Mason Gray,
and this is proven by his not having the common sense to acquire the documents
that show the William H. Wildes who had served in the 2nd
Massachusetts Infantry, had in fact lived and died in the United States. It was just a simple matter of searching
the United States census records, especially the 1890 Veterans’ Schedules, as
well as locating the pension application records for Wildes of the 2nd
Massachusetts. Both these sources, by themselves
prove, beyond a doubt, that William H. Wildes had resided in the United States,
after the war, and was never in Australia.
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In one particular paragraph of his biography
of William Henry Wildes (actually Henry Wildes, as he never ever had the first
name of William), Gray states, “When the War Between the States broke out in
1861,it seems records of Henry in Australia disappear; reappearing only with
the birth of his first child in 1866.
It has been suggested that Henry returned to the U.S. after his
marriage, being a U.S. citizen and from a patriotic family dating back to the
Revolutionary War, and served during the war; returning to Australia
afterwards.” No such records
disappeared, if Mr. Gray had taken the trouble to do some searching at the
Victorian Archives and other sources in Melbourne. If he had done so, he would have found the marriage record of
Henry Wildes to Annie. Mr. Gray,
whenever he is unable to make any progress on the biography of a person, often
uses the words, “It is said” thus showing his incredible incompetence in
such research. Wildes had only
recently been married, in the last year of the Civil War, so his wife would
most certainly have not permitted him to leave her, to return to the U.S., as
his duties to his family were of supreme importance. Any married person knows this.
No doubt his wife would have divorced him if he left her. Additionally, the Victorian Archives
records of passengers leaving from that state do not show either a Henry Wildes
or a William Henry Wildes leaving on board a vessel for an overseas
destination, so Mr. Gray has obviously put his foot in his mouth, once
again. It is also highly unlikely that
anyone would have been heading off to the U.S. at that very late stage of the
war, especially since the desertion rates had increased, the war had become
unpopular for the high death tolls, and enlistments were now reliant on the
draft. In other words, most persons,
both north and south, were trying to avoid enlisting in Army service.
In his final paragraph of the biography of
Wildes, Gray states that, “William Henry Wildes died of ‘heart disease’ on
November 4, 1904, No. 12923, at Lang Lang, Victoria.” The true facts of the matter are that the
person who died at Koo Wee Rup (not Lang Lang) was named just plain Henry
Wildes (no first name of William shown in any of the records of this person;
the ‘William’ only appears in the fertile imagination of James Mason Gray), and
Wildes was buried in nearby Lang Lang cemetery.
Some data and oral history
was provided to Mr. Barry Crompton by a descendant of Henry Wildes, Mrs. Audrey
C. Barry, in a letter dated August 23, 1991, many years before the so called
‘researcher’ James Mason Gray ever settled in Australia. The research on Henry Wildes was done all
those years ago, and nothing was ever found to confirm any Civil War
service. The fact that he was already
in Victoria during the war (having jumped ship during the gold rush, which was
prior to the Civil War) years almost definitely precludes such a possibility,
and, like John Henry Graydon, James Coffee, William Yeatman and others whom
Gray previously claimed as veterans, there is absolutely nothing to suggest
that Wildes was ever a veteran. Once
again, as on many similar occasions before, Mr. Gray is clutching at straws,
and making totally wild (or should we say Wildes) guesses, and coming up with a
whole lot of fiction.
Page Created September, 2008.