Four Young Men Who Did Not Come Home

Wars have a way of stringing together events that leave in their wake both the fortunate and unfortunate. This week I identify four Sams who died on the eve of, or during, the Civil War. They range in age from 16 to 36. There were many Sams who served and came home to live another day. These four did not.

Hugh Toland Sams (1840 – 1860)

Hugh Toland Sams, seen above, was the grandson of BB Sams and the second child of Melvin Melius Sams and his wife, Eliza Black. He was born Dec 31, 1840. As a child, he went to school, as most wealthy planters’ children did, in schools in Beaufort funded by the planters themselves. Toland’s teacher in school was his uncle, Horace Hann Sams. This was in Horace’s pre-plantation days, after college and before he inherited the BB Sams plantation on Datha. At the age of 17, Toland entered the South Carolina Military Academy, now The Citadel.

He died on July 29, 1860, while fighting a fire at The Citadel. His gravesite in Saint Helena’s Episcopal Churchyard, Beaufort, SC, is unique. His gravestone shows a palmetto tree with the top cut off, signifying a life cut short. So moved was his commanding officer by the cadet’s courageous act, that he paid to have a personal inscription carved on Cadet Hugh Toland Sams’ grave.

“A youthful son of S.C. He sought to serve her even while preparing for her better future service & entered her state military academy in his 17th year carrying with him the impressions of his childhood training. He exhibited to his alma mater a respectful devotion akin to that which animated him as a son. His courteous bearing, high toned sentiments, and exemplary conduct for nearly four years, secured for him the highest esteem of his professors and won the affectionate regard of his fellow cadets. All grieve for their loss. This tribute is paid for by his commanding officer.”

Cadet Hugh Toland Sams died on the eve of the Civil War. He was 19.

Joseph Edings Sams (1848 – 1865)

Joseph Edings Sams was the grandson of Lewis Reeve Sams and the ninth child of Lewis Reeve Sams, Jr. and his wife, Sarah Graham. Born at a terrible time, 1848, he was not yet a man when the Confederacy desperately needed young men to continue the fight. He left school at the South Carolina Military Academy in his first year to meet the Confederate call.

You can see an etched tablet in the south wall of Saint Helena’s Episcopal Churchyard, which reads,

In Memory of our Honored Dead of St. Helena Parrish Who wore the Gray and fell in the service of THE CONFEDERATE STATES 1861-1865… J. Edings Sams. Died Smithfield. March 22, 1865.

I believe this is referring to the Battle of Smithfield Crossing in West Virginia. The Confederate forces suffered about 200 casualties over several days in August 1864. J. Edings Sams died a few months later from his wounds. His family was distraught over his death. You saw his mother Sarah Graham Sams holding his picture in the article about the Lewis Reeve Sams, Jr. family. His burial location is unknown.

Joseph Edings Sams was only 16.

Charles Clement Sams (1837 – 1865)

Charles Clement Sams was born to Berners Barnwell Sams and his second wife, Martha Edwards, on February 16, 1837. He was BB Sams’ fourteenth child!

We don’t know too much about him. BB left his ‘Datha Inlet’ plantation to three sons upon his death in 1855; Horace Hann, Bonham Barnwell, and Charles Clement. Bonham sold his share to brother J. Julius Sams, and C. Clement sold his share to Horace & Julius. These last two brothers verbally partitioned Dataw property between themselves. Before the Civil War started, Julius had moved away from Beaufort District and left the plantation operations to Horace. Just before the war, Clement appears to be the owner of his father’s Laurel Hill plantation on Lady’s Island. This was the state of affairs in November 1861 when the Civil War reached the Beaufort area.

At that point, Julius was a practicing minister, and both Horace and Clement, having lost all their property, went into the Confederate States Army. They both nearly survived that long struggle. Charles Clement Sams died in May of 1865, just a few days after his half-brother Horace Hann Sams, both from disease.

We know little else about Clement except that he suffered from poor health much of his life, was discharged and reenlisted during the war a few times, and never married. He suffered alone in a military hospital from cholera before dying at his step-brother Julius’ home in Chester, SC. He’s buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Chester County, S.C.

Charles Clement Sams was 28.

Horace Hann Sams (1829 – 1865)

Horace Hann Sams was born to Berners Barnwell Sams and his first wife, Elizabeth Fripp, on March 5, 1829. His father BB owned and managed plantations, both on Datha Island and elsewhere, for about 20 years before Horace was born. Sea island cotton and his family afforded Horace the luxury of a good childhood and a good education. After graduating from South Carolina College in Columbia, he eventually followed his father’s footsteps and became a planter. Unfortunately, he entered the war right after he and his wife Grace Whittle had their first child, a daughter named Fannie Fortescue, born in 1861. I’ll let their second child, Conway Whittle Sams tell you the rest of the story. 

In Conway Whittle Sams’ unpublished family history, he recounts the events of 1864 – 1865 as he pieced them together and wrote them down in about 1905.

“In the Summer of 1864, the forces with which he [Major Horace Hann Sams] was connected were stationed at McPhersonville, about twenty-six miles West of Beaufort, about six miles from the Rail Road Station of Yemassee. My father and his brother Randolph [ Robert Randolph Sams] took a house together in this little forest village, and here on August 25, I was born.

Ten months after this event [i.e. his birth], when the Army had been ordered to North Carolina, and while at Greensboro, separated from his wife and children, he died [referring to Major Horace Hann Sams; his father] on May 6, 1865, of Typhoid fever, in a Church being used as a Confederate Hospital. My Mother [Grace Latimer (Whittle) Sams] was then in Camden, not having seen nor heard from him for some time. [Camden, SC is about 160 miles south of Greensboro, NC.]

He was attended by Uncle Randolph. His brother then went to Chester to tell Uncle Julius, who took a carriage and went to Camden to tell my Mother and took her and her children to his house in Chester. While on his way back, he met a gentleman who told him his other brother was dead. He did not know whether this was Clement or Franklin, both of whom he had left ill at his house. It was Clement who had died.

Our father was first buried at Greensboro before my Mother even knew of his sickness. She returned with her two children to her father in Norfolk, where she spent the rest of her life. 

During the Fall of 1865, his body was removed to Norfolk and interred in my grandfather’s lot in Cedar Grove.”

 

Major Horace Hann Sams served in General Joseph Johnston’s Army (Benjamin Huger’s Division, William Hardee’s Corp, Burnett Rhett’s Brigade). Horace Hann Sams (1829 – 1865) and his wife Grace (Whittle) Sams (1831 – 1897) are buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Norfolk, the traditional Whittle family resting place.

Major Horace Hann Sams was 36.

As you can see, BB Sams lost two sons and a grandson; Lewis Reeve Sams lost a grandson. Fortunately, by the time the Civil War arrived, none of these parents/grandparents were still alive.

Sources

Holden, Joel and Riski, Bill – Family Tree for Sams of Dataw Island, accessed March 16, 2020.

Sams, Conway Whittle – History of the Sams and Whittle Families, circa 1905, unpublished. Includes the remembrances of Elizabeth E. Sams, March 18, 1905 and Rev James Julius Sams.

The Sacred Ground Cemetery, Beaufort, South Carolina. Accessed March 16, 2020.

 

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