Page 317 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

short, fat man of 50-60 years of age when I, as a small boy, saw him. ....He served one firm [as a black-dyer] – increased their trade from little to day-and-night work, and then gave it up feeling, no doubt, overworked. He went to America, took pay in the Northern Army in the Civil War, crossed the border to Canada, worked his way about by selling blacking and ink, and finally came back to England”.
There is evidence of Thomas Soothill being resident in Woodbury, Connecticut, when he enlisted as a private on 30 July 1862. This evidence is displayed in the U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles. The state he served is shown as Connecticut. His service record indicates that he was enlisted in Company1, Connecticut 2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment on 11 September 1862 and ‘mustered out’ on 20 October 1862, so he does not seem to have played a prolonged part in the US Civil War. However, cryptically, it is mentioned that he survived the War.
It is not clear when Thomas (1812-1873) went to America, but he did not seem to have taken his wife, Ellen. In fact, Walter states that “he deserted and neglected his wife”. Ellen was in an institution at the time of the 1861 census and Walter talks of her being “a good gentle soul who lived with us when I was very young ... and was occasionally subject to fits (possibly epilepsy) and this may have had something to do with his [Thomas’s] restlessness.” Anyway, while Thomas went to America, it does not seem that he had any children while over there and so, prima facie, Thomas is not the founder of an American Soothill dynasty.
There is one small footnote to the story of the Soothill contribution to the Civil War, Eric Soothill thought he heard the name of Soothill among the recital of names being listed at the start of a film on television about the American Civil War. I wrote in 1995 to the Department of the Army, United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and received a very full and helpful reply from the Assistant Archivist:
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