Maine at War
Army officers lobbied for promotion in winter 1863
After the Army sacked Capt. Edwin Bachelder for cowardice during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., Gov. Abner Coburn sought a replacement to lead Co. B, 3rd Maine Infantry. He lacked no applicants, including Sgt. Rufus Crockett, a battle-hardened noncom who felt, “deserving and competent to have a commission” to command ...
The 16th Maine bled ‘a great Sacrifice’ at Fredericksburg
By Brian Swartz, BDN Advertising Staff Editor on Dec. 17, 2012, at 10:29 a.m.
The 16th Maine boys know that if they charge those distant hills, they will die. And today there can’t be a more miserable place to die than here, a few miles downriver from a Virginia town called Fredericksburg. Bobby Lee has strung his Confederate artillery and infantry all along the ...
Hampden native joins circus, life of crime ends in execution
Bad boy Albert H. Lunt could do no good, so 12 Union soldiers shot him dead at Hilton Head, S.C. on Monday, Dec. 1, 1862. And in case they missed, another dozen armed soldiers waited to use Lunt for target practice. Lunt seemed destined to pay for a life of ...
Maine at War
Calais nurse investigated Antietam’s hellish aftermath
Isabella Fogg discovered a hell on earth after the slaughter at Antietam. Born in New Brunswick in 1823, Isabella Morrison married William Fogg of Calais in 1837. She lived in Calais and had three children, including a son named Hugh Morrison Fogg who went to war in May 1861 with ...
MAINE AT WAR
The 7th Maine fought its way out of an Antietam trap
By Brian Swartz, Advertising Staff Editor on Sept. 10, 2012, at 11:40 a.m.
Thomas W. Hyde led the 7th Maine Infantry to glory at Antietam, where 25 of his men died for nothing. Hailing from Bath, the 24-year-old Hyde commanded the 7th Maine by Sept. 17, 1862, when death, disease and desertion had thinned the regimental ranks to 15 officers and 166 enlisted ...
Contrary to press accounts, the 6th Maine Battery fought well
Rather than file a protest by firing a 10-pound Parrott rifle at the State Capitol in Augusta, an angry Capt. Freeman McGilvery wrote Gov. Israel Washburn a letter instead. After all, the governor might be more accommodating if cannonballs were not whizzing around his head. Hailing from Prospect, the 38-year-old ...
MAINE AT WAR
Maine soldiers lost their pants during a battle in Louisiana
Like the other soldiers belonging to the 14th Maine Infantry, George Washington Bartlett lost his pants during a battle fought at Baton Rouge, La. on Aug. 5, 1862. Born in Litchfield in 1827, Bartlett prospected for California gold, graduated from Bowdoin College (’54), and became a Unitarian minister after graduating ...
Civil War Fashion Show draws attentive crowd to Hinckley School
FAIRFIELD, Maine — Social status and clothing functionality influenced circa-1862 fashions, as more than 50 people learned during a Civil War Fashion Show held Saturday, May 12, in the Prescott Building at Good Will Hinckley School in Fairfield. Sponsored by the Maine Living History Association, the event featured approximately a ...
MAINE AT WAR
Black Hawk (Putnam) down
A Confederate ambush in the Shenandoah Valley shot a Black Hawk down in May 1862. Putnams helped settle Houlton, and to John Varnum and Elizabeth Putnam a son was born on April 28, 1838. Six years earlier a Sauk chief had led several Indian tribes in a brief and tragic ...
MAINE AT WAR
Confederate artillery ambushed Maine cavalrymen in Virginia
Masked batteries drove Capt. Robert F. Dyer and his patrol bonkers on Tuesday, April 15, 1862. Early that morning, Dyer received orders to take his Co. C, 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment and conduct “a reconnaissance on the line of the Orange and Alexandria R.R. to the Rappahannock river,” as he ...
MAINE AT WAR
Lubec cavalryman saved the Southwest for the Union
Bandits and Confederates, beware: There’s a new “sheriff” in Tucson, Ariz. He’s James Henry Carleton from Lubec in far-away Maine, and he’s kicking desperado and Rebel butts all the way from Los Angeles to the Rio Grande. Born to Abigail and John Carleton on Dec. 27, 1814, James Henry discovered ...
Peru farm family paid heavy price to preserve the Union
After his son enlisted in the 8th Maine Infantry Regiment and left Maine for a South Carolina cruise in 1861, Stephen G. Tracy decided he should join up and save the country, too. Both men should have stayed home. By spring 1861, Stephen Tracy farmed land in Franklin Plantation, a ...
MAINE AT WAR
Waterville’s Charles Heywood battled an ironclad enemy
Charles Heywood kept his cannon firing even as his ship sank. Born in Waterville on Oct. 3, 1839, Heywood was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps at New York City on April 5, 1858. Thirty-five months later he reported aboard the USS Cumberland, a 24-gun sloop ...
MAINE AT WAR
Abraham Lincoln owed Dorothea Dix a favor or two
Did Dorothea Dix help save two Lincolns? The evidence suggests that she did, at least indirectly. Dix hailed from Hampden, where she was born to the destitute Joseph and Mary Dix on April 4, 1802. By the 1840s Dix championed the rights of the mentally ill and prisoners throughout the ...
MAINE AT WAR
John French avoided the temptations that awaited Union soldiers
John S. French epitomized a Maine recruiting sergeant’s dream: a naturally talented youth who took so easily to soldiering that he would earn a battlefield commission — and keep himself out of trouble. Hailing from Albion, the 21-year-old French enlisted as a private in the Lewiston Light Guard on April ...
MAINE AT WAR
Neither a sinking ship nor attempted murder could stop Ira Gardner
Ira Gardner survived a ship collision on the Mississippi River and murderous Copperheads in Old Town to reach Patten “and my best girl” — but she was 100 miles away when he arrived home. Yet Helen Darling rushed to Patten to spend time with her sweetheart, who had been away ...
MAINE AT WAR
Inaccurate rebel shooting let a LaGrange farmer come home alive
By Brian Swartz on Oct. 11, 2011, at 3:58 p.m.
Credit inaccurate shooting by Confederates for populating LaGrange with Hinkleys — and credit inaccurate shooting by Benjamin Franklin Hinkley for populating LaGrange with crows. Hinkleys figure prominently in LaGrange lore: • First settler: David Hinkley Jr. in 1822. • First frame house: built by David Hinkley Jr. • First married ...
MAINE AT WAR
Freedom of the press went flying in Bangor in August 1861
By Brian Swartz, Special to the NEWS on Sept. 19, 2011, at 5:34 p.m.
Freedom of the press — at least the press owned by Bangor Democrat Marcellus Emery — literally flew out the window on Monday, Aug. 12, 1861. By that summer, many Maine Democrats opposed the fledgling Civil War. In his 1967 graduate thesis “Civil War Bangor,” professor John DiMeglio wrote that ...
MAINE AT WAR
Oliver Otis Howard fought Confederate soldiers and an American president
By Brian Swartz on Aug. 08, 2011, at 4:25 p.m.
Col. Oliver Otis Howard brought Maine to the fight, caught partial blame for the defeat and his fearless battlefield leadership earned him a general’s star. As Confederate and Union troops battled atop Henry House Hill at Manassas, Va. on July 21, 1861, Howard commanded the 3rd Brigade comprising four infantry ...
MAINE AT WAR
William Deane carried the California Flag into battle at Manassas
By Brian Swartz on July 11, 2011, at 9:15 p.m.
Near sunset on Saturday, July 20, 1861, Col. Charles Jameson ordered the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment “drawn up in a hollow square” near Centerville, Va., according to James Mundy in his book “Second to None.” Color Sergeant William J. Deane of Bangor stood with the six-man color guard. As Jameson ...
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