Rebecca and Her Civil War Sweetheart

My daughter, Louisa, is nearly done performing in Little Women, the Musical (the last shows are tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow at 2), and her character’s part in the show has me thinking about my great-great grandmother, Rebecca Susan McManus Riggs.

Louisa, as Meg, with second cousins Piper and Kali.

Louisa plays Meg, the oldest March sister, who falls in love with a tutor named John Brooke.  In the musical – which is slightly different from the book – there’s a scene where John appears wearing a Union solider uniform, announces that he has enlisted, and proposes to Meg before leaving to serve in the Civil War.  It’s one of my favorite scenes in the show – Louisa and Mickey Morstad, who plays John, are so sweet together, and their song, “More Than I Am,” is lovely.

My great-great grandmother Rebecca lived a real-life variation of this scene.  The daughter of Robert McManus and Louisa Todd McManus (yes, Rebecca’s mother’s name was Louisa – I didn’t learn this until after Steve and I named our daughter Louisa), Rebecca was born Feb. 21, 1846, near New Boston, Illinois.  Her future husband, Jasper Riggs, grew up in nearby Joy, Illinois.  I don’t know how or when they met, or when they started courting.  I do know that Jasper enlisted with the 45th Illinois Infantry in 1861, near the start of the war, and fought at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg, among other places; and that while on leave in 1864, he returned to Illinois and married Rebecca.  They were married April 25 in Aledo by a justice of the peace.  He was 20 and she was 18.

Rebecca’s obituary, written in a poetic style that you just don’t see anymore, explained it this way:

“From a national standpoint, those were stormy days thru which our nation was passing from the birth to early womanhood of this girl. And when she was 17 years of age the Southern states made good their threat to secede from the Union if Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the U.S., organized the confederacy and fired upon the flag.  Pres. Lincoln called for volunteers and among the young men who enlisted was a man by the name of Jasper Riggs, who united in marriage to Rebeccah Susan McManus while home on a furlough in 1864. After the wedding he went back to his regiment and fought with it until the close of the war.”

I would love to know more about what Rebecca did during the war, and how she handled the worry and uncertainty.  Besides Jasper, and her brother Levi, she must have known dozens of other young men who were serving with Illinois regiments.  Many did not return, including her brother-in-law George Sloan, who died of measles in 1863 in a Memphis hospital.

Jasper did return, though, and the newlyweds moved across the Mississippi River to Louisa County, Iowa, where they started a family.  Daughter Loie was born in 1867, and son G. Oliver followed in 1870.  Tragedy struck in 1871 when Loie died (of what cause, I have not yet determined).  Another daughter, Daisy, was born in 1876 when the family lived in Nebraska.  Rebecca and Jasper returned to the Joy area in 1890, where Jasper ran a hardware store.  An accomplished accordionist in her younger years, Rebecca encouraged her children’s interest in music, and she supported son G. Oliver’s pursuit of a musical career.

Jasper’s health had never been great after the war (he injured his wrist at Vicksburg and was shot in the knee near Goldsboro, N.C. in 1865).  He died in 1911 when the couple was living in Missouri.  Rebecca returned to Joy, where she lived as a well-respected member of that small community for many more years. 

Rebecca McManus Riggs, 1846-1930

Rebecca died on Feb. 20, 1930 – the day before her 84th birthday – at her home in Joy.  She’s buried in the New Boston cemetery next to her daughter Loie.

When she died, the United States was in the early years of the Great Depression, and it was a time of severe worldwide economic downturn – if that sounds familiar, it’s worth considering the reflection that concludes her obituary:

“We are constantly reminded of the difficult problems our generation must solve – we somehow feel all these and more to be true.  Yet we are not pessimists.  But we likewise feel that only as we are able to bring over into our own age that same spirit of devotion to duty, of self-denial, loyalty to ideals even when it costs a conviction that we have specific duties to perform, and a willingness to see them thru, as was so characteristic of that generation of which the deceased was a part, will we be able to render a good account of our stewardship for the years of our active life.”