Whether Tabbutt, Tibbets, or Tibbetts, an Addison warrior he was

Even if the government could not spell his surname correctly, Hillman Look Tibbetts of Addison still did his job as the good soldier he was.

A sailor standing 5-10 when he enlisted in Co. G, 6th Maine Infantry on May 2, 1861, Hillman hailed from Addison, a sea-faring town on the Washington County coast in Maine. His middle name, Look, remains a common surname in Addison and such neighboring towns as Jonesport and Beals.

At Addison, Maine, the incoming Pleasant River tide reflects the lobster boat Anita Joyce. Many men from Addison defended the Union during the Civil War. Among them was a sailor named Hillman Look Tibbetts, his surname butchered as “Tabbatt” on his Soldier’s File at the Maine State Archives. (Brian F. Swartz Photo)

Hillman had blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion. Born May 15, 1838 to David and Mary “Polly” Tucker Tibbetts, Hillman had eight siblings. Either side of him, the oldest to the youngest were Catherine (Kate), Julia, James Richard (often called Richard), Joseph, Mary (May), Hillman, David, and Arthur. Another sister, Lydia, apparently died not live long after her birth in 1840.

The war’s opening month found Hillman supposedly married, at least according to his Soldier’s File in Augusta. However, according to the genealogy provided by his descendant Jill Kohler-Easley, Hillman would not marry until after the war.

Jill documented her facts. Maybe the military did not, because almost from his enlistment, someone wrote down wrong stuff about Hillman.

The errors appear in his Soldier’s File, which identifies Hillman as “Hilman L. Tabbatt.” The notes written under “Records” indicate he was “Possibly Hilman L. Tibbets or Hilman S. Tibbetts.”

If you’re a Tibbetts from Maine, you know there are three “t’s” in your name if it ends in “s.”

A Civil War veteran from Addison in Maine, HIllman Look Tibbetts was living in either Wisconsin or Washington when photographed later in life. (Courtesy Jill Kohler-Easley)

Another error about Hillman appears in author James Mundy’s excellent 6th Maine Infantry history, No Rich Men’s Sons. The three-line description of Hillman indicates he was a “painter” rather than a sailor, but Mundy may have used a source other than the Soldier’s File.

Anyways, on with Hillman’s Civil War career. He mustered on July 15, 1861, made corporal in 1862, and certainly fought in at least some battles involving the 6th Maine. Kohler-Easley discovered that the “U.S. Adjutant General Military Records, 1631-1976, lists him as wounded” at Rappahannock Station on November 7, 1863. That bloody nighttime battle cost the 6th Maine dearly.

For a two-part, detailed account of Rappahannock Station, click here and here.

Mundy placed Hillman squarely in the Wilderness on May 5, 1863. While the Co. G boys “cautiously probed the smoky underbrush, somewhere in the gloom a Confederate sharpshooter” targeted Pvt. William F. Davis of Steuben and then fired.

The bullet struck Davis in the head and wound up in his brain. A surgeon “dressed his wound but knew it was hopeless,” Mundy wrote. “Davis never regained consciousness and died the next day.”

Hillman took the dead soldier’s “belongings to Davis’s cousin, William Leighton,” who mailed some items to Davis’s widow, wrote Mundy, basing his information on the pension record later filed by the widow. She is identified in the pension records as “Amanda M. Davis.”

Jill Kohler-Easley notes that “Hillman Tibbetts was also a cousin to William Leighton (several times removed)” and “so may have been been related to … Davis … as well.”

But Davis’s Soldier’s File has the “dead” man transferring to the 6th Maine Battalion on July 14, 1864 and transferring to the 1st Veteran Infantry on September 20, 1864.

And Maine Vital Records lists the birth records for a son, William F. Davis Jr., born in Steuben on October 20, 1864 to William F. Davis (a “millman”) and Amanda M. Davis (“housewife”). Amanda was pregnant when her husband was shot in Virginia.

So which is correct, the pension records or the Soldier’s File for William F. Davis? Did he die in May 1864 or survive the war?

Given this major error on some clerk’s part about Davis, we can understand how Hillman was a Tabbatt when he actually was a Tibbetts.

Infantrymen from the VI Corps fight in the Wilderness in early May 1864. The 6th Maine Infantry Regiment belonged to that corps, and Hillman Look Tibbetts participated in the battle. (Library of Congress)

Busted from corporal to private, Hillman stayed the course and mustered out at Portland on August 15, 1864. He had done his duty, whether as a Tabbatt, a Tibbets, or a Tibbetts.

His four brothers also fought in the war. James Richard possibly served with the 2nd Maine Infantry; he definitely joined the Maine Coast Guards in March 1864. Joseph went into the 2nd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery and switched to the Navy, David served with Hillman in Co. G of the 6th Maine, and Arthur served with the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery.

Arthur transferred to the Navy on April 17, 1864, two months before the 1st MHA charged to its destruction at Petersburg. All five Tibbetts brothers survived the war.

By age 30, Hillman lived in Oconto, Wisconsin, where he married Elizabeth Folsom on June 27, 1868. She presented Hillman with five sons and three daughters before her death on September 11, 1883.

Drawn by the rich soil and tall, uncut trees, many Maine boys moved to the upper Midwest after the war. Joseph Tibbetts moved to Wisconsin and, after Hillman opened lumbering camps in Middle Inlet in 1887, evidently moved to that town, where he died in 1895.

At age 46, Hillman married Adeline L. White in Oconto on May 4, 1885. That marriage produced no children, and by 1889 the couple lived in Snohomish, Washington. The Tibbetts returned to Wisconsin by the early 1890s and by 1910 lived in Menlo, Washington.

Hillman died in Menlo at age 76 on June 29, 1914. His family buried him in Evergreen Cemetery in Oconto, Wisconsin.

Note: We are indebted to Jill Kohler-Easley for providing the information about Hillman Look Tibbetts.

Sources: Hilman L. Tabbatt (Tibbetts) Soldier’s File, Maine State Archives; James H. Mundy, No Rich Men’s Sons: The Sixth Maine Volunteer Infantry, Harp Publications, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 1994. pp. 189, 254; William F. Davis Soldier’s File, MSA


If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to like Maine at War on Facebook and get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. —————————————————————————————————————–

Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.