Disaster at Cold Harbor: Sunday

The Cornwall Historical Society will present a special talk by S. Waite Rawls III, Co-CEO of The American Civil War Museum and part-time Cornwall resident, on Sunday, August 17, at 2 p.m. at the Cornwall Town Hall, 26 Pine Street, Cornwall, CT.

Rawls will discuss the Battle of Cold Harbor, one of the most devastating battles for Cornwall’s troops during the Civil War. The talk will be illustrated by slides. The program is being held in conjunction with the Cornwall Historical Society’s current exhibit, Cornwall and the Civil War.

The Battle of Cold Harbor began on May 31, 1864 and continued until June 12. Approximately 170,000 Union and Confederate troops fought in the battle, which included nine days of trench warfare. By the end, nearly 13,000 Union troops and nearly 5,000 Confederate troops were either killed, wounded, missing, or captured. One soldier from Cornwall was killed during the Battle of Cold Harbor, while another ten soldiers from Cornwall were seriously wounded; two died from their wounds weeks later. Approximately 200 Cornwall men served during the war, 10% of the town’s population.

Waite Rawls is a native Virginian and has been a Civil War buff all of his life. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, served in the U. S. Army, and got his M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Virginia.

Waite and his wife Malou, moved to New York in 1975, where he began his career in commercial and investment banking, at Chemical Bank in New York before moving to Chicago with Continental Bank. A pioneer in the world of derivatives and securitization, he longed for a change and moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 2004, to become the President of the Museum of the Confederacy, the country’s oldest and largest Civil War museum which includes the White House of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’ home and office during the War. It has recently combined with the American Civil War Center, to become The American Civil War Museum, the premier destination for those interested in learning more about the Civil War and its legacies. Waite has served on many charitable and corporate boards in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Virginia.

Waite and Malou have been weekenders in Cornwall since 1984, and their house and farm on Popple Swamp Road  is one of the area’s landmarks. The barn received a “Barn Again” award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1990 for its restoration to a working barn (Debra Tyler’s “Local Farm”), and the Joshua Pierce Farmstead was listed on the Connecticut Register of Historic Places just last year. His “new” house in Richmond (1860) is almost as close to the Cold Harbor battlefield as his Cornwall house is to John Sedgwick’s grave on Cornwall Hollow Road.

The Cornwall and the Civil War exhibit and related programs are supported by grants from Connecticut Humanities, Mohawk Mountain Ski Area, National Iron Bank, and Torrington Savings Bank.