Small world

This post highlights links to the American Civil war that I have unknowingly walked by in two European cities at different stages in life.
A few days ago, following a link on Twitter, I somehow came across James Dunwoody Bulloch, who was an officer in the CSN during the American Civil war. He was stationed in Liverpool, where he acted as an agent, engaged in securing a navy for the Confederate States. After, he remained in Liverpool, because, as an agent for the Confederate States, he would have been regarded as a traitor, rather than a combatant, had he returned home. Liverpool, of course, had strong links to the civil war, with the ship owners and the Lancashire mill owners siding with the Confederacy (slaves providing cheap labour for cotton shipped to the mills). A good many of these people provided funds, which contributed to building CSN warships, such as the Alabama. On the other side were the workers, in the emerging labour and socialist movements and various religious groups, who sided with the Union, on the grounds that this was abolitionist. Great Britain was officially “neutral”. However, the collaboration of the ship and mill owners cost the British state substantial reparations. The post war negotiations over the reparations were in Geneva, the first time the city was used as a neutral venue for international affairs.
Fairly quickly I realised that James Dunwoody Bulloch was buried in Toxteth cemetery.
This just happens to be over the back of my garden wall (yes, indeed, it is dead quiet at the back and it is very popular here, with folk really dying to get in….). For fifteen years I have walked through the cemetery to Smithdown Road, to catch a bus or cab into town or work, on occasion walking to a modern US implant, Wal-Mart (aka ASDA), which is adjacent to the cemetery, with no knowledge of the history on my doorstep. So this afternoon I spent a few hours looking for James Bulloch’s grave and, as the sun was setting, I found it.

James Bulloch grave

James Bulloch grave inscription

James Bulloch grave inscription

On the right hand side of the grave (up the hill in the background is the chapel) is his brother, Irvine Stephens Bulloch and family.

Irvine Stephens Bulloch grave

On Google maps (here) the bright white gravestone with a cross is Irvine Stephens Bulloch, James Bulloch’s brother, the latter’s grave is the one to the left, with the tall monument left again a neighbour.

In the 1970s I lived in Geneva and would walk past two churches on the rue des Alpes on my way to school, one is the Anglican Church and its neighbour on the next block the Episcopalian Church. I learned in 1999, when my father died, that these were built after the civil war and used by the respective teams of negotiators. They are sited close, but not adjacent, because the negotiators of the war reparations needed somewhere to worship, though they clearly did not wish to use the same church or any of the Calvinist churches of the Genevans.

To close, I learned this last week that James Bulloch left in his will £30,000 (see comment from Walter E Wilson) that it was James King Gracie, husband of Bulloch’s sister Anna Bulloch Gracie, who left $30,000 to President Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Six months later, “Teddy” Roosevelt became 26th president of the US, following the assassination of president McKinley. Teddy’s niece was Eleanor Roosevelt, who married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a 5th cousin to Teddy and to become the 32nd president of the US. As far as I can see, that makes Eleanor Roosevelt the great niece of James Bulloch, CSN naval officer and buried in the cemetery behind my garden. Small world indeed.

Wikipedia entry here
BBC local history entry here

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