Notre Dame magazine

Published Winter 1998-99

Sherman's Notre Dame

Not many people know it, but while William Tecumseh Sherman was out commanding Union troops in the Civil War, much of his family was at Notre Dame.

Although Sherman was an agnostic, his wife, Ellie, was a pious Catholic. She was acquainted with Notre Dame's founder, Reverend Edward Sorin, CSC, and a favorite cousin of hers was Mother Angela, Sorin's counterpart at Saint Mary's College .

In 1862 Mrs. Sherman enrolled her son Willy as a minim at Notre Dame's boarding school and sent her daughter Minnie to Saint Mary's. Tragically, a year later, Willy fell ill and died while visiting his father in Memphis.

A Holy Cross priest, Notre Dame's Father Joseph Carrier, was at Willy's bedside when he died, and the family reportedly was greatly comforted by the priest's presence. That's thought to be one reason why, in September 1864, when the general was burning Atlanta and planning his famous March to the Sea, Ellie Sherman moved her entire family to South Bend from Ohio and enrolled their son Tommy in the minim program.

The following June, just two months after the war's end, General Sherman was Notre Dame's commencement speaker. It's said that while on campus he was moved to tears by the stories told to him about Willy, and he promised that the boys of Notre Dame would always be dear to him.

"Notre Dame had a special place in his heart, and that feeling stayed in the family," says Steve Moriarty, curator of the Snite Museum's photographic collection.

The family's fondness for Notre Dame led Sherman's granddaughter, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, to donate family papers, photographs and memorabilia to the Notre Dame Archives prior to her death in 1959. In 1996 the Snite displayed some of the most historically significant photos from the collection -- battlefield images captured by George Barnard, who served as official army photographer for Sherman's division in 1864. It was the first time the pictures had been displayed publicly. (Picture at left is from the Barnard collection.)

Besides the Barnard photographs, the Sherman collection contains letters Sherman wrote each night to his wife during the war, including one in which he announces his capture of Atlanta, a triumph credited with saving President Abraham Lincoln's re-election.

-- Maureen Hurley

Winter 1998-99 contents