Oswego Church Honors 19th Century Brigadier General

OSWEGO – The grave of Brig. Gen. Julius Hayden in Oswego now displays a veteran’s marker. The Civil War and Mexican-American War veteran is buried with his wife on the grounds of the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Oswego’s Historic District.

A native of New York City, Hayden was the son of an Army officer who served in the War of 1812.

He joined the Army himself when he was 18 years old and for a time was stationed at Fort Ontario.

In 1846 he married Sarah Pardee Hayden, the granddaughter of Amos Pardee, the first minister of Oswego’s Christ Church.

That church was the forerunner of the Church of the Resurrection on the corner of West Fifth and Cayuga streets near Franklin Square.

As a lieutenant-colonel, Hayden was chief of staff to Gen. William H. French during the Civil War.

After the war, he commanded forces on Governor’s Island, where he was appointed brevit brigadier general, and then commanded a military district in Alabama, overseeing the 1868 elections in accordance with the Second Reconstruction Act. The New York Herald reported that in 1870 Hayden was “retired by the President on account of wounds received in the service.”

Samantha Linn, a parishioner and member of the Church of the Resurrection vestry, obtained a veteran’s marker from the American Legion to honor Hayden’s service.

She researched how the Haydens came to rest at the church.

They are the only ones buried there, Linn said, or possibly at any church in the city of Oswego.

Linn said that Hayden donated $1,000 to Christ Church so that he and his wife, who died in 1865, could be buried in a vault under the church.

The building was made of a local stone that did not hold up.

Some years after it was demolished and replaced by the current church, the graves were reverently relocated to the church gardens.

When Hayden died on Oct. 29, 1878, in New Jersey, his obituary ran in newspapers from the East Coast to Texas, including the New York Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Paterson, N.J., Gazette version included this tribute: “Though a reserved and retiring man, he made warm friendships. His most distinguishing trait was a rigid conscientiousness which he carried into all the relations of life. For over thirty years he acted on the principle that one-tenth of his possessions and earnings belonged to the poor.”

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