Former slave's path to Litchfield still a mystery

Al Van Spence was the lamplighter of Litchfield. Each dawn and dusk from 1880 to 1904, "the short, portly and proud" man would stop his horse-drawn wagon and position his ladder to clean, fill, ignite and then, at day's end, snuff out the eight kerosene street lamps that illuminated his central Minnesota village.

Thanks to a fat file tucked away at the Meeker County Historical Society — chock-full with his marriage and death certificates, military pension documents and newspaper obituary — we know oodles about Van Spence.

He stood 5-foot-4. He was an avid gardener. He married Missouri Jay Blair in Oakfield, Wis., in 1870. Kids would follow him around because he carried a sack of candy in his pockets, dispensing sweets freely. And he received a $10 monthly pension for his military service.

His "genial disposition radiated sunshine," according to an old newspaper clipping. He laughed deeply, played piano, and sang spirituals while his daughter, Ada, pumped the organ at church and community suppers often held with long tables and family-style servings of oyster stew and chicken pie in the Grand Army of the Republic Hall. Civil War soldiers built the brick castle in Litchfield as a clubhouse after the War between the States.

"His laughter and song always opened the door," according to a poem read at his 1910 funeral. "Where ever he went, he made friends by the score."

That affable and beloved nature masked a traumatic life. Van Spence was born into slavery in Alabama in 1837, raised in Georgia and sold twice before he was 20. He was conscripted into, but ran away from, the Confederate Army — fleeing north despite huge danger to join a black Union artillery division as a private and general's valet. Four of his six kids died before he and Missouri Jay did.

So why zero in on Van Spence as we launch this new, weekly Star Tribune feature on Minnesota history? Two reasons: He's just one example of the countless characters in stories collected — and primed for retelling — in the state's rich network of county historical societies.

Enter Frank Daggett, a Litchfield newspaperman and ardent abolitionist, whose name graces the Litchfield Grand Army of the Republic post. Like many early Minnesotans, Daggett heeded President Abraham Lincoln's call and joined the Union forces, commanding some of the army's so called "colored" divisions.

Somewhere — no one seems to know precisely when or where — Van Spence and Daggett must have crossed paths on or near the battlefield. After all, Van Spence didn't merely settle in Litchfield.

Long after the war, he named one of his sons Frank Daggett Henry Spence after Daggett died suddenly from a stroke at 39 in 1876 — four years before Van Spence arrived.

Ken Flies, one Minnesota's most respected Civil War researchers, comes close to connecting Van Spence and Daggett. Close. The 10th Minnesota Infantry was in Memphis in 1864, where the former slave might have met other Minnesotans.

Flies' analysis shows Van Spence's 79th Colored Infantry and Daggett's Sixth Minnesota regiment were both in Arkansas. But Daggett transferred six months before Van Spence arrived in 1865. Daggett likely passed through Memphis to get his assignment and might have met Van Spence there.

Van Spence's job delivering coal, cutting firewood and lighting lamps for 50 cents a day enabled him to own a home at 401 S. Marshall Av. in Litchfield. A neighbor gave him an ivory-inlaid, mahogany grand piano.

He would button up his Civil War uniform and march in Litchfield parades. When he died at a Minneapolis hospital, his body was promptly returned to Litchfield.

"It is generally regretted that his hearty hand clasp will no longer be felt," according to the Aug. 6, 1910, Litchfield Saturday Review, "and that his even heartier laugh will be heard no more."

We don't know if Daggett ever clasped that hand or shared a laugh with Van Spence, but it seems more than plausible. Sometimes, that's the best historians can do.

The Van Spence family tree offers little help. With four of his six children dying young from various diseases — two from diphtheria the same month of 1884 at ages 11 and 12 — it appears neither of the other two children had kids.