Tag Archives: Maine Farmer

Free chowder and summer sun lured thousands to Fort Popham in 1862

Bad wartime news could not stop a shindig held in Phippsburg on Friday, August 29, 1862. Second Manassas raged in northern Virginia as people converged on “the mouth of the Kennebec river, on the spot anciently called the peninsula of Sabino” to observe “the 255th anniversary of the planting, by Sir George Popham and his […]

Come and get your Antietam dead

Maine boys still littered the Antietam battlefield six months after George McClellan and Robert E. Lee battered each other senseless on that mid-September day. Sometime in early spring 1863, New York resident James S. King traveled to Sharpsburg, Maryland and “visited the field of Antietam in search of the remains of a friend,” reported the […]

Civil War research digs into the weed patch

Researching the Civil War deep “into the weeds” requires time, patience, and a passion for the war. War-related research resembles a well-run Maine farm. There are the highly visible “crops”: the apple orchard, the potato field (think Aroostook County), the pea vines and bean stalks, etc., etc. Let’s compare that same farm to research related […]

Gettysburg shot them all out

Maine newspapers are excellent “original source” documents from the Civil War. The Daily Whig & Courier in Bangor, the Republican Journal out of Belfast, the Eastern Argus and Portland Daily Press of Portland, the Ellsworth American, and the Maine Farmer of Augusta are among the better Fourth Estate sources for letters and reports from Maine […]

Al Williams escapes a Gettysburg grave, part 2

As the sun swung westward over Gettysburg on Thursday, July 2, 1863, Sgt. Albert N. Williams of Augusta likely kept watch over the men of Co. G, 19th Maine Infantry Regiment. Commanded by Col. Francis E. Heath, the Maine boys could see blue-colored South Mountain on the western horizon and the Codori Farm buildings much […]

Open your mouth and say “ah”

In the summer of 1862, prospective recruits joining the five new infantry regiments forming in Maine faced one gauntlet not run by the volunteers of ’61: tougher medical exams. Fourteen months earlier, doctors had approved recruits because they had sufficient fingers and toes and a palpable pulse. Stunned by vast numbers of soldiers medically discharged […]

Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated: Selden Connor

The news struck Kennebec Valley residents like a lightning bolt: Selden Connor, long associated with the vaunted 7th Maine Infantry Regiment, was dead, shot and mortally wounded on May 6, 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness. “Gen. Seldon (sic) Connor, late of the 19th Maine … died last week in Washington,” reported the Daily […]

Battle of the Bards — Part 2: Regiments trade volley fire in a Maine newspaper

  If Col. Hiram Burnham was pleased that his 6th Maine Infantry received a brief mention in the May 15, 1862 issue of the Maine Farmer, he certainly did not care when he blew his Down East gasket nine days later. Several Maine infantry regiments had battled at Williamsburg, Va. on May 5. The 6th […]

Battle of the Bards — Part 1: The 7th Maine fields a two-man PR machine

  Not until after the Battle of Williamsburg, Va. in early May 1862 did Col. Hiram Burnham learn what Col. Edwin Mason instinctively knew: the value of a good press agent. A Cherryfield native, Burnham commanded the 6th Maine Infantry, Mason the 7th Maine. Months before that regiment fought at Williamsburg, readers of the Maine […]