For Whom the Bell Tolls: Harvey Mitchell in Washington City, 1860

According to most of the institutional library catalogs I've perused, Harvey Mitchell was born circa 1801 and died circa 1863. On July 26, 1860, the day an enumerator for the 1860 federal census recorded his information, Harvey Mitchell was still residing in Washington City, D.C. (as we left him in the previous post). In the same household was his immediate family, Jane Wood Johnston Mitchell, William (Manning) Mitchell, and Sue (Susan Henry) Mitchell; plus J.M. Brinkley and Mary S. Brinkley; and Martha Lucas and Jacee Dutch. 

Harvey Mitchell is listed as "draughtsman" (design and drafting), with a personal estate of $1,000.  J.M Brinkley is labelled a "clerk," with Martha Lucas ("cannot read and write") and Jacee Dutch characterized as "black" and "servant."  William Mitchell is listed as "medical student." My guess is this: the Brinkley couple were paying lodgers, supplementing the Mitchell family's modest governmental income.     

Mary Louisa Mitchell had probably already married John Milton Binckley by that time, residing elsewhere. Nellie Binckley, their daughter, later remembered (or "believed") that Harvey Mitchell "once held a position in the Land Office of the Government in Washington."* That detail would dovetail nicely with his being a draughtsman. In 1860, the Land Office was also assisting in compiling the federal census data, and had taken on extra clerks.

However, within a year everything must have changed drastically for the entire household. On April 17, 1861, Virginia moved provisionally to secede from the Union, and ratified articles of secession on May 23, 1861. In between, Joseph E. Johnston -- who'd also resided in Washington City in 1860 -- resigned his commission as Quartermaster General in the US Army and departed for Virginia. Presumably, Harvey Mitchell and family did the same, removing to either the Bedford/Liberty/Lynchburg area, or to the vicinity of Abingdon.

Harvey Mitchell's final few years and death are a mystery. Did he die as a direct result of the war? Did he die of illness, or even suicide?  In the 1860 census, he'd been listed as sixty years old, so upon his death in or around 1863, he would have only been sixty-two or sixty-three. Perhaps more will be revealed.

In any case, Jane Wood Johnston Mitchell survived the war, and so did Mary Louisa, William and Sue. But these survivors seem to have dispersed by 1870, when in census records Jane is residing as a single boarder in Abingdon, Virginia, and listed as a teacher. 

*T. Bowyer Campbell, Harvey Mitchell: Virginia Painter (Bedford, Virginia: The Bedford Democrat, 1953), page five.  Picture of Washington City, 1860 (above): A Meyer, Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004662334/