February 7, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Area writer, 82, bases Civil War novel on own family
by Richard Lee
and Mary Price Lee

Mary Hennessy, charming interviewee and new author, continues to read extensively on the Civil War. (Photo by Richard S. Lee)

Mary Hennessy of Fort Washington has a life story every bit as fascinating as the adventures of her not-totally-fictitious Civil War hero, Henry Washington Sawyer. Sawyer, born in Pennsylvania in 1829, is connected to Hennessy through her daughter’s marriage — and as we’ll see, this real-life Civil War cavalry officer had a latter-day Chestnut Hill connection.            

Let’s take it from the top. The delightful 82-year-old Hennessy has just published her first (and, she claims, last!) novel, His Hour Upon the Stage, The Story of a Civil War Horse Soldier and the Woman Who Fought to Save His Life (Vantage Press, 332 pages, $13.95). According to Mary Hennessy, “It’s an embroidered true story” using family documents and Civil War research from 54 sources to weave an absorbing tale.

“The true parts are letters that the real Henry Washington Sawyer wrote from the battlefield, plus his 30-page diary. My son-in-law, Jonathan Sawyer, has these documents; he is Henry Washington Sawyer’s great-grandson, and they just fell into my lap. When they did, I knew I had to write a story around Henry.”

Mary told us she could write authentically about Sawyer’s upbringing on a Central Pennsylvania farm — the opening part of the book — because she had been an Ohio farm girl. From there, Sawyer ventured to present-day Cape May (Cape Island in the book), where he became a successful carpenter-builder, married Harriet, the lighthouse-keeper’s daughter and began to raise a family. During Sawyer’s time at Cape Island, he met the legendary Underground Railroad pioneer, Harriet Tubman. Mary said of this twist, “I made them meet.” Historically, Tubman was on Cape Island briefly at the time the real Henry Sawyer lived there, so they could have met, and perhaps they did.

We won’t tell the whole story except to say that, as early volunteer cavalry officer Sawyer fought for the Union, he was wounded and captured at the Battle of Brandy Station, was imprisoned and condemned to die. Did he?  We will only say we were treated to a good fireside-and-sherry book, rich in the period details of 19th century civilian and military life, all woven into a sturdy adventure that maintained our interest to the end. And the epilogue contains great facts for any Cape May enthusiast.

The book took Mary seven years to research and write, at first using yellow legal pads and later a portable typewriter. “I was living in Amherst, Massachusetts, when I started,” Mary says. “I spent time at the library. I read whole books that described Civil War prison life and the U. S. Cavalry. You know, there wasn’t any real cavalry in the Union Army until McClellan and the Battle of Bull Run. Henry Sawyer was among the first Union horse soldiers. I also tell a Lincoln story that has never appeared in a book, only in a magazine.”

The author’s life is just as interesting and varied as that of her hero. It carried her from the Ohio farm to boarding school in Massachusetts, then to Antioch College for a degree in English Literature, Class of ‘47, then to California as a newspaper reporter and photographer, and on to a writing stint with Readers’ Digest. For a start.

Next came her 30-year marriage to an Irish author, Maurice Hennessy. Mary worked alongside her husband on researching, writing and editing his books and newspaper articles, many for The New York Times, with 10 of those years spent in the U.K.  At age 66, Mary joined the Peace Corps and taught English to high-school students in Poland. (She has Polish friends to this day, some of whom live in our area.) Today, among other activities, Mary teaches English as a second language, and spends time with her daughter, Elizabeth, and her family.

Which brings us to the Chestnut Hill connection: Henry Washington Sawyer III (1918-1999). Of  him, Mary Hennessy wrote in a background piece for us that he had “...attended Chestnut Hill Academy in the last class of boarding students, and graduated in  1936. He attended the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship, graduated in 1940, took one year of law school, then enlisted in the Navy and went to war.

“[After the war, Sawyer] joined the Philadelphia law firm of Drinker, Biddle & Reath and spent his entire professional career with them, from 1948 to 1996.

“When the National Voting Rights Act was passed, supposedly it outlawed the literacy test required of voters (in the South). Sawyer went to Mississippi and Alabama in 1965 as one of the lawyers who volunteered to force municipalities to observe this Voter Registration Law. He marched with [Dr.] Martin  Luther King [Jr.] in Selma [Alabama] in 1964. [The] KKK caused trouble.”

This, too, may be a story as worthy of print as that of the original Henry Washington Sawyer!

 Mary Hennessy’s novel is available from Vantage Press (800-882-3273), online from www.amazon.com, or by special order from Borders or Barnes & Noble.