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On the Road to Atlanta The Wartime Sketches of Horace Rawdon By Robert Hancock When war broke out, Horace Rawdon was living in Warren, Ohio, with his wife, Ann, and their two children, Ralph and Emma. Horace was a painter by profession or, more specifically, an embellisher of carriages and buggies. According to the Western Reserve Chronicle which ran a human interest article on three local artists, Rawdon “indulges his taste for the higher branches of his art only during the short intervals he can snatch from the time necessary to support a family by his labor. One of his paintings, The Storm in Harvest, has been in Adam’s Book Store for the last two weeks, until it was purchased a day or two since, by a gentleman from Cleveland.” In August 1862, Rawdon was just shy of his 40 th birthday when he decided to enlist in the army as a musician. The 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was mustered into service for three years at Camp Taylor in Cleveland. It was not long before the 105th Ohio had its first opportunity to “see the elephant.” As a drummer in the regimental band, Rawdon was technically a non-combatant. Though he was not required to carry a rifle, he faced the same dangers as the other men in his regiment. We do not know if Rawdon kept a diary. No letters from him are known to exist. However, he did chronicle some of his travels with the 105th Ohio Volunteers by picking up his pencils and brushes and painting watercolor sketches of select areas along the way.
A detail of one of Rawdon’s watercolor sketches titled “Green River.”
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ACWM MAGAZINE: SUMMER 2022
