Historic Saga of South Asians in US Civil War By Francis C. Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen

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Now, on the 150th anniversary of the conclusion of the American Civil War, we are fleshing the bare outline of the life of Conjee Rustumjee Cohoujee Bey from the National Archives, Naval Service Records, San Francisco Call newspaper database, Civil War researchers, and, most importantly, the personal letters and diary of his friend and mentor Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the historic Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the American classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

A contemporary of Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Swami Vivekananda, and Ramakrishna Paramahansa, this Indian American hero’s life stretched across three continents, from Lahore to London to San Francisco. At age 12, his parents sent him to England to be educated. In the year 1860, and at age 24, he arrived in New York, full of the spirit of adventure. And towards the final years of his life he lost all his material possessions when his home was gutted by fire in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the family survived.

But first a background to those times.

To begin with, 1860 was when slavery was alive and well in the land; Abraham Lincoln had just been elected President, even as the nation was hurtling towards Civil War between the Union States in the North and the Confederates in the South. In California, the Gold Rush was tapering off, even as San Francisco was bursting at the seams with adventurers. About 50,000 Chinese and the Japanese had already established a foothold in Calfornia. South Asians had not yet appeared on the scene.

Worldwide, it was also a period when, as a result of the abolition of slavery, Indian indentured laborers were being actively recruited for Fiji, the Caribbean, Mauritius, and South Africa. And with the Sepoy Mutiny in India crushed, the last Mughal Emperor was forced into exile.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the Plymouth Congregational Church, located at the corner of Orange and Hicks Street, was enjoying the most influential pulpit in the land. It was here that the scion of the country's most prominent evangelical family, the Rev Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was bold enough to claim that slavery in America was much worse than the caste system in India. As pastor, Beecher’s preaching was characterized by “originality, logic, pathos, and humor,” in the words of a contemporary. He preached and wrote with conviction that slavery was a sin. From his earliest sermon in Brooklyn, Beecher made it plain that one cornerstone of his ministry at Plymouth would be his opposition to slavery, and, in the early days of the Civil War, Beecher pressed President Lincoln to issue a proclamation of emancipation.

Beecher came from a very long line of religious thinkers and distinguished Americans; he was born with religion in his veins. His father Lyman Beecher was a theologian and head of Lane Theological Seminary. All of his brothers became ministers and three of his sisters enjoyed careers as popular authors. One of his sisters was Harriet Beecher Stowe author of the classic Uncle Tom's Cabin. His articles and sermons were being published both nationally and internationally.

In short, Henry Ward Beecher exercised his influence on many of the major social issues of the mid to late nineteenth century from his pulpit in Brooklyn. Under his leadership, Plymouth Church adopted missions to befriend and help newly arrived immigrants. That's how the Indian prince found himself attending the service at Plymouth and hearing a man who would later be eulogized as the greatest preacher of his time.

For the purpose of our story, Henry Beecher takes on a pivotal role because it was his family that befriended the Indian prince, later converting him to Christianity and renaming him Anthony Frank Gomez. In the course of next two years, the Indian prince not only learned about Christianity from Beecher but went on to become his protégé. He was a regular visitor to the Beecher household. He became an avid reader. He listened as Beecher preached against slavery, for political candidates, women‘s rights, evolution, and his own idea of romantic Christianity that recognized God‘s love for man and the availability of salvation for all. He engaged in intellectual discourse with the Beecher sisters.

Gomez, the scion of an Indian princely family, was at ease in that elite company. His British education, aristocratic bearing, and close links with the Beecher family, endeared him with major New York figures of the day, a group that included abolitionists, writers, and social theorists, as well as national and international personalities.

Nineteenth century Brooklyn was a young and expanding city. Brooklyn had gained prominence as a major port of trade, with docks and storage facilities lining the East River shore, and a busy shipbuilding yard, the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The growing population, coupled with the annexations of the nearby towns made Brooklyn the third largest city in the nation by 1860.

Beecher devoted much of his time to literary pursuits as a regular contributor to a number of newspapers. He edited the New York Independent, and later founded and edited the Christian Union. His many lectures on life, art, literature, moral philosophy, and politics were published.

But it was in the speaker’s podium that Beecher was seen at his best. Enthusiasm, imaginative insight, a strong interest in his fellow man, ready wit, and mastery over the English tongue produced a convincing eloquence. Although remembered today for his social activism, in his own time Beecher was always, foremost, a minister of the Christian gospel. Indeed, during the two years that Gomez spent in Brooklyn he was encouraged to study for the ministry. He was urged to commence formal studies at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati where the elder Beecher was a professor.

But far more powerful and insistent was Abraham Lincoln’s call for service to the nation. A year after the Civil War commenced, Gomez walked into the Navy recruiting office at the Brooklyn Naval Yard and volunteered his service aboard the USS North Carolina. He was assigned as a Ward Room Steward and his name was entered as Antonio Francisco Gomez.

CIVIL WAR SERVICE

In 1830s, the USS North Carolina was one of the "nine ships to rate not less than 74 guns each" in the US Navy. Considered by many to be the most powerful naval vessel then afloat, North Carolina served to open ports in the Mediterranean to American traders.

In the early days of the Republic, as today, a display of naval might brought a nation prestige and enhanced her commerce. North Carolina protected the important American commerce of the eastern Pacific until March 1839. Since her great size made her less flexible than smaller ships, she returned in 1860 to the Brooklyn Naval Yard which employed about 6000 personnel.

This is where the 26-year old Antonio Gomez answered the call of President Lincoln, and began his service in the US Navy: aboard the USS North Carolina at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on 8 February 1862, as Ward Room Steward.

His next assignment was with the steam sloop USS Dacotah. Gomez was on board when she served in the waters around Hampton Roads. Assigned to the James River Flotilla, she had several skirmishes with the Confederates including those in which a company of her sailors destroyed a Confederate battery of 11 guns at Harden's Bluff, Virginia, on 2 July, and one of 15 guns at Day's Point, Virginia, the next day. She joined the blockading forces off Wilmington, North Carolina, on 8 December and served there until 11 June 1863 when she was ordered into quarantine at New York the next month when several cases of smallpox were discovered on board.

While serving aboard the first USS Iroquois, a sloop of war in the United States Navy, Gomez saw action at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where she prepared for attack on New Orleans, Louisiana. On 24th April 1864, under Captain Henry H. Bell, Iroquois moved abreast the Forts Jackson and St. Philip, guarding New Orleans, and, after a spirited engagement, helped capture the South's largest and wealthiest city, and key to the Mississippi Valley. It turned out to be Gomez’s finest first hand battle encounter which he would relate in letters to Beecher that are preserved at the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois, under Ephemera of Henry Ward Beecher - Collection 128.

According to Muster Rolls dated December 1864, Gomez was on assignment as an Officer’s Steward aboard the frigate USS Niagara, when it steamed from New York on June 1864 to watch over Confederate warships then fitting out in Europe. She reached her base, Antwerp, and from there roved the English Channel, the French Atlantic Coast and the Bay of Biscay. On 15 August she took Georgia, a former Confederate warship, off Portugal, and continued further combat exercises before returning to her home base.

Just as the Civil War drew to a close, Beecher was the main speaker when the Stars and Stripes were again raised at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, site of the war's first battle. The private papers and personal correspondence of Henry Beecher reveal that Gomez was present on that occasion when the Union victory resulted in a grand celebration in the former "cradle of secession." On April 14, 1865, Union officers and dignitaries gathered at Ft. Sumter. A band played, several nearby Navy warships, including the Niagara on which Gomez was serving, fired salutes, and there were hymns and prayers as the Union flag was transformed into a symbol of a restored and victorious United States.

The ceremony was of most intense interest. Charleston Harbor was filled with Uncle Sam's vessels covered with holiday flags. Great crowds thronged Fort Sumter. Beecher delivered the oration: "On this solemn and joyful day, we again lift to the breeze our fathers' flag, now, again, the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children.... Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace [and] as long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving.... We lift up our banner, and dedicate it to peace, Union, and liberty, now and forevermore." The crowd responded with great applause.

That night, fireworks brightened the skies over Charleston harbor. Almost five hundred miles to the north, President Lincoln went with his wife to Ford's Theatre for the last time.

LIFE IN SAN FRANCISCO

After spending some time at the Beecher’s summer home in Peekskill, New York, Gomez decided to make his home in the West Coast, becoming one of the earliest South Asians to settle and raise a family in San Francisco.

That was in 1867. Five years later, the list of voters published in the San Francisco Call database, listed three persons who were born in India: Edward Doyle, Daniel Warren Poor, and George Farquhar. We are not certain if they were natives of India or Europeans who were born in India. Gomez’s name had not yet entered the list. But we do have evidence from the San Francisco Call database that his marriage to Ann Vass took place in 1869 and that their daughter Catherine was born in 1890.

By the turn of the century, when Swami Vivekananda arrived in San Francisco, it was a cosmopolitan, urbane city, full of vigorous life and variety. With a population little less than 350,000 it was the undisputed business and cultural center of the western U.S. The city may have presented an architecturally drab appearance but its natural setting was nothing less than stunning. To the North and East lay its wide Bay jewelled by islands and surrounded by golden hills that turned emerald in spring; to the west lay the Pacific Ocean and to the south the gentle hills of the Peninsula.

Then, as now, the fog that rolled into the city from the Pacific gave a mysterious charm. The landmarks were there: Cliff House where one could watch sea lions lolling on Seal Rock, Golden Gate Park with the romantic Stow Lake, the gardens of Sutro Heights, the forested Presidio, the enchanted foreign enclaves of Little Italy, Little Mexico and mysterious Chinatown. Flower stalls graced almost every downtown street corner with a riot of color. The jaunty cable cars fearlessly ascended and descended the steep hills, the fishing boats, the sedate ferries, the tall masted ships and steamboats lying at dock along the Embarcadero or sailing through the Golden Gate (the bridge came only in the 1930s).

San Francisco was lighthearted. It also had scholarship with access to prestigious universities: UC Berkeley and Stanford down the Peninsula. There were well-stocked bookstores, literary societies. San Francisco was proud to be free from the tensions of the East Coast, from the oppressive narrowness of the Midwest and free too from the straining ambitions of Southern California. The people here were seeking beyond the orthodox or even liberal forms of Christianity for deeper answers to even deeper questions and needs.

It was to this San Francisco that Vivekananda came to lecture Friday evening 23rd evening February 1899 at Golden Gate Hall, 625 Sutter Street; subject, "The ideal of a Universal religion"; admission 50C; tickets on sale at Sherman Clays, corner Sutter & Kearney. We can only speculate whether Conjee R.C. Bey, alias Antonio F. Gomez, went to have a glimpse of his countryman and to hear him speak.

At the time, and after his marriage to Ann Vass in 1869, Gomez made his home at 1613 Gough Street. There the couple raised their only child, Catherine. In the year following Ann’s death in 1888, Gomez, then 52 years, married Suzanne Dutreux aged 18 at the Grace Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The couple had a son Frank (born 1891), and two daughters (born 1893 and 1898).

For 44 years Gomez worked for the Navy Pay Office in downtown San Francisco.

Newspapers have always played an important role in genealogical research. In the case of the Gomez family in San Francisco, California, this role becomes even more important because of the devastating earthquake of April 18, 1906 and the subsequent fires that engulfed the core of the city.

By the time the fires had been extinguished, leaving another $400,000,000 in losses, most of the city had been destroyed including the government buildings. The loss included nearly all of the public records held by the San Francisco city / county government --- land records, vital statistics, court records, and so on. Because of this great loss to the records of San Francisco, the newspaper accounts of events become the key to finding genealogical information.

The Gomez residence at the corner of Bush and Gough on 1613 Gough Street was among those that were gutted in the fire. All family memorabilia, letters and documents were irretrievably lost. Within walking distance of Lafayette Park, the site is now home to Next Stage Theater and the Trinity Episcopal Church.

The Gomez family moved to 2622 Gough Street in late 1906 and remained there until Anthony Frank Gomez alias Conjee Rustumjee Cohoujee Bey contracted “Lobar Pneumonia” and died of cardiac failure on February 17, 1911. His wife Suzanne and their four children survived Gomez.

The Indian American hero received full military honors on 19th February when he was buried in the National Cemetery in the Presidio in San Francisco.

(Dedicated to San Francisco-born Aruna Yasmin. We are indebted to long-time Civil War researchers Terry Foenander in Australia and Edward Milligan in Washington for graciously helping us with documentation.)

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