Dorence Atwater

Dorence Atwater was a Union Army soldier, merchant, entrepreneur, and United States Consul to Tahiti. He was born and raised in Terryville, Connecticut, the third child of Henry Atwater and Catherine Fenn Atwater. He was welleducated, and athe joined the Union Army to fight in the American Civil War. In July 1863, Atwater was captured and found himself among the first batch of prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia. There, he kept a list of the dead and made a secret copy of his own, which allowed him, in cooperation with Clara Barton, to mark the graves of otherwise unknown soldiers. After persecution and prosecution by a small clique in the Federal Government, he was released from prison by President Andrew Johnson and sent to the Seychelles as a 23yearold United States Consul. From there, he was sent to Tahiti to be consul there. He met and married Princess Moetia Moe Salmon, and was successful in shipping, pearl fisheries, and many other enterprises. He was a proficient businessm

Dorence Atwater was born in Terryville, Connecticut in 1845, the third child of Henry Atwater and Catherine Fenn Atwater. He was clever, had a natural ability for getting into scrapes, was excellent with numbers, and had calligraphic penmanship. Despite his middle child personality, he was raised with ethics and values that became the foundation of his entire life. As a child he worked as a store clerk due to his handwriting and aptitude for numbers. He designed and planted a garden for a neighbor, and for this, too, he had a natural gift. His sister Fanny once said of Dorences mischievousness, Whenever he and I were playing at something we werent allowed, invariably I got caught while Dorr simply vanished into thin air.

Source: Wikipedia