The nation's early hopes, both North and South, that the war would be over quickly were gone by the time Private Todd wrote his letter in May 1862. It was more an expression of longing when he wrote that he hoped "to be back before a great while." Instead he spent the next sixteen months on scouting and outpost duty as the Union forces, now under General Banks, moved up the Mississippi while General Grant's forces moved down towards Vicksburg. General Banks' troops fought at Baton Rouge and, in May and June 1863, held a 48 day siege of Port Hudson. The siege might have gone on much longer had not the news of Grant's victory at Vicksburg proved that the Confederates no longer had any hope of holding the Mississippi. The Port Hudson garrison surrendered on July 9, 1863.

During the siege, on June 17, 1863, the three Massachusetts unattached cavalry companies, in which Pvt. Todd was serving, merged with the 41st Massachusetts Mounted Infantry and were known, from then on, as the 3rd Regiment Massachusetts Voluntary Cavalry. Private Todd's company was designated "M". The Third Regiment was under the command of Colonel Chickering who, after the surrender, became Port Hudson's Provost Marshall. The Massachusetts Third Regiment camped just north at the Plains Store crossroads, doing scouting and outpost duty. And it was there, on September 30, 1863, that Eugene Henry Todd, 21 years old, died of chronic diarrhea.

We do not know how his family learned of his death. There were no official notification procedures by the government during the Civil War and, except for burying bodies where they fell, no official arrangements for returning bodies to families. The Todd family, though, was prosperous and, at the end of the war, wealthy families could make private arrangements to retrieve and re-inter their dead. Eugene's family brought his remains back and interred them in Pine Grove Cemetery on March 24, 1865 (as did the Bradstreet family who brought back the remains of their son, John, who had died in Dec. 1863 in New Orleans.)

In time, national, state and local governments developed ways of memorializing the fallen soldiers. In 1879, Congress passed legislation for the government to purchase and install gravestones for all Union soldiers buried in private cemeteries as well as the new national ones. Private manufacturers received contracts for tens of thousands. Eugene's headstone was created by F.S.Gross on September 28, 1886.

Who were Clara and Sam Preston? Eugene came from a large extended family. He was the only boy sandwiched in between an older and younger sister. For almost a year, when Eugene was twelve, he had had a baby brother, John Wallace Todd, but John Wallace died before his first birthday. A year later, Eugene's last sibling, Clara, was born. When Eugene went off to war, his baby sister Clara was just six years old. Two years before, his older sister, Susan Chase Todd, had married William Preston Dodge, a trader. The couple lived in the Todd family home and, while Eugene was away on his whaling adventure, Susan gave birth to a son, Samuel Preston Dodge.

It was a large extended family. Eugene's father, Samuel Todd, had ten brothers and sisters, most of whom lived in town. His mother, Lydia Chase Todd, had five brothers and sisters living nearby in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Samuel Todd was a prosperous farmer who had inherited much of his father's property, some of which he sold to the town after the war to extend Pine Grove Cemetery. Samuel Todd was an intelligent, intellectually curious man who served in several town positions, including selectman during the war. From the insightfulness and humor of Eugene's letter, it seems likely he had inherited much of his father's personality. When news of his death arrived, surely the whole town must have heard.

Eugene H. Todd was remembered by his extended family and by his town for a long time. His name was engraved on the marble plaque in Town Hall along with the other Topsfield soldiers who died. The GAR placed bronze plaques on each Civil War soldier's grave in 1890 and each year flags are placed by veterans' graves on Memorial Day.

Eugene's extended family were long-lived people. Most of his aunts and uncles, his father's mother and his parents, lived until the 1880's and 1890's. His sisters lived into the early twentieth century. Sam Preston Dodge, a lifelong bachelor, lived his whole life in the Todd family home which still exists at the corner of Ipswich and Haverhill Roads. Sam Preston Dodge died there in 1959.

At 24, Clara married a prosperous Danvers merchant, Frank Melvin Spofford, and lived the rest of her life on 8 Cherry St, Danvers. She and Frank owned property in both Danvers and Topsfield and the Topsfield Historical Society archives have pictures of their summer home on Hood pond. They had two children, Frank and Mabel. Frank married, moved around the corner to Putnam Street, had six children and lived there until he died in 1949. His descendants live in the same house today on Putnam Street.

Mabel did not marry; she became a highly respected art teacher in the Gloucester Public Schools. She lived in Gloucester for some years but moved back to 8 Cherry Street to live with her widowed mother in the 1930s. Clara died in 1936 at the age of 81.

Mabel must have absorbed Clara's stories about the adventurous older brother who died in the Civil War. In 1939, Mabel had a granite monument erected to her Todd ancestors in Pine Grove Cemetery and left a legacy for the upkeep of their graves. When she died in 1981, Eugene's Civil War letters to his family, as well as his letter about his whaling adventure, were amongst her effects. They were donated to the Danvers Archive Center.