Chaplains and chaplain assistants from the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, pose for a photo in front of the Fort Bayard Commanding Officer's Quarters, used as a museum by the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society.

Photo and article by Mary Alice Murphy

On Thursday afternoon, March 23, 2017, 26 chaplains and chaplain assistants from the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, in El Paso, visited Fort Bayard.

Chaplain Maj. Todd Morrison, in the middle of the photo above, with a red collar visible under his jacket, requested a visit to the museum and said he would talk to those gathered about Chaplain Allen Allensworth, who began his service at Fort Bayard in 1886.

Morrison said he, his wife and daughter had visited Fort Bayard during a trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. He learned of Allensworth and his significance to the chaplains' corps, as an African-American, and began to research him.

"Allen Allensworth was born as a slave in Kentucky," Morrison said. "His owners taught him to read and write. Some masters taught their slaves and let them continue their education. Others didn't.

Education became a passion of Allensworth's. After he escaped from slavery, by putting mud on his face and marching out with the Union forces, he continued his education, became a teacher and a minister. He was also Kentucky's only African-American delegate to the Republican national conventions in 1880 and 1884. In 1886, he began to serve as a military chaplain to a unit of Buffalo Soldiers. He brought his wife, Josephine, and their daughter to Fort Bayard. While serving at Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, he wrote "Outline of Course of Study and the "Rules Governing Post Schools of Ft. Bayard, N.M.," which became the standard Army manual on the education of enlisted personnel.

Morrison said that when Allensworth decided he needed to educate the Buffalo soldiers, enlisted ones who had never had the opportunity to learn to read, he requested that he be able to also teach the white enlisted who had not received any education. He was permitted to do so, and held mixed classes.

Allensworth spent 20 years in the Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel, the first African-American officer to receive the rank.

After his retirement, he and his family went to California where he founded Allensworth, CA, the only town to be founded and governed by African-Americans. The town is now Allensworth State Historic Park.

Morrison said he had been intrigued by how Allensworth used education and his chaplaincy to improve units in the mission of Fort Bayard and other forts.

Liz Mikols said she saw Allensworth's journey as a series of lucky breaks with people who helped him, recognizing his worth and his recognizing the opportunity. "Yes, he was born a slave, but he had a mother and a father who were house slaves and had a 'good' master. His mother encouraged him to learn while playing with 'Massa Tom,' the master's son. He had good manners, but he sometimes mouthed off. That's why he marched out with the federal troops."

He knew to attach himself to good folks, Mikols said. He applied to be a janitor at a normal school and within a semester, he was a student. "With an education at a normal school, he could write his ticket to a better life."

Mikols reported that Allensworth went to the National Education Association meeting of 1892, which was held in Toronto, Ontario, so he was treated as an equal and allowed to stay at a hotel with the other participants.

"His best ace in the hole," she said, "was his wife Josephine, a talented woman who came from a free black family. She was poised, could play the piano, and was an asset to him."

Brewer Hill Baptist Church Pastor Earseye Ross, who often portrays Allensworth in Fort Bayard activities, said initially when Allensworth went to California, he started a community for fellow African-Americans, but they had no water rights. "He was 'accidentally' hit and killed by a motorcycle, while he was crossing the street in Los Angeles. His family investigated the death and it was determined that he was probably assassinated. He was a forerunner. The commune is still there as a state park."

Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society President Cecilia Bell said Allensworth recognized a good thing when he met Josephine and she realized he was the man for her. Allensworth had no textbooks to use to teach the enlisted men to read, but Josephine had cookbooks, so they brought in the students two at a time to their house to cook using the recipes. Plus it gave the men a job when they got out of the Army.

Bell said Allensworth was in demand in Silver City to speak and to baptize their Anglo and Hispanic children. Josephine became a role model for the women and was treasurer for the group of wives at Fort Bayard.

Mikols said the Allensworths moved to Utah, the state did not want blacks. However, Josephine could entertain and Allensworth could teach. He organized people to ride the streetcars in groups, so when they were on leave, they didn't get into trouble. "He turned around the community's impression of African-Americans."

Ross noted that Allensworth also designed the chaplaincy insignia.

Mikols said Allensworth also would invest in students to help him teach.

Bell added that the 24th Infantry Band at Fort Bayard was one of the best in the Southwest. Walter Loving could play any instrument and sing any song. He was sent to the Philippines where he learned the language. He liked the music and put it on the musical staff. The Japanese arrested him because they thought the music was code, and they chopped off his head.

Ross said many of the Buffalo Soldiers' descendants live in Grant County. He had met a Charlotte Rivera, who was brought to the area. A Mr. Thomas married her when she was 18. Charlotte stayed here. "I retired from Fort Bayard. Mrs. Rivera's mother came into Fort Bayard when she was 98 years old. She died at 104."

Bell invited the chaplains to tour the museum and told some history on the house. "The fort started out with people living in tents. This house was built between 1908 and 1910 for the Commanding Officer, Dr. Bushnell, who arrived with tuberculosis. It was a house for the commanding officer to hold parties. It had electricity and an ice box. This was during the tuberculosis era, after the Army had left, and turned Fort Bayard into a medical center."

She said the seven houses on Officer's Row were originally made of adobe and cost $45,000 for all seven. "In 1879, they refurbished them, and then around 1910, they knocked them down and built new ones. Bushnell came in 1903 and was named commanding officer in 1904."

Dr. John Bell, who often portrays Dr. Bushnell, said Fort Bayard was a fort from 1866-1899. In 1899, it became the Army tuberculosis hospital until 1922, when it because a veterans hospital to 1965, when it was turned over to the state. When the state took it over, it became a long-term care hospital, with lots of patients with schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury and some were vegetative.

"Until 2006, the hospital employees could stay in the houses on the campus," Dr. Bell said. "That year, they moved all the employees out of all the houses, and in 2010, the doctors, nurses and patients left the hospital one day to move to the new one, just outside the Fort Bayard boundaries. They backed up ambulances to the hospital to transfer them to the new one."

Dr. Bell said that since the move, the houses and the former hospital, which was demolished last year, have continued to be vandalized.

He said the average lifespan of a person born in 1900 was 45 years. Often marriages lasted only about 12 years, because of death. One in seven died of TB.

"The Army nurses had TB; Bushnell had TB," Dr. Bell said. "Bushnell had TB while he was here, and he wrote a lot of books on TB. He was world-renowned on the subject of treating TB."

Cecilia Bell said in Bushnell's time, they didn't have drugs to combat TB, so the soldiers that arrived with TB were very skinny. But between meals, they were fed a concoction of two raw eggs, 2 tablespoons of cod liver oil, salt and pepper with lemon, if available. Within usually about two months of this treatment, they began to recover.

Ross said, during World War II, German prisoners of war were housed at the fort. Mikols said they helped with agriculture at the fort.

Rocky Hildebrand, an FBHPS member and tour leader, said the prisoners didn't try to escape. "They were getting three meals a day, were paid private's wages and weren't getting shot at."

"On behalf of the major general of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, I want to thank you for hosting us," Chaplain Lt. Col Tom Helms of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, TX, said.

Morrison said the corps wants the chaplains to connect with their past, "so we planned this trip. We hope to return."

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