Tag Archives: Waterville

Politicians’ anti-war resolutions angered returning Port Hudson veterans, part 2

As a Boston & Maine Railroad train carried the 21st Maine Infantry Regiment toward home on Friday, August 7, 1863, Col. Elijah D. Johnson and his surviving officers read the resolutions passed two days earlier during the Democratic State Convention held in Portland. History does not record who read the resolutions aloud on that rattling […]

Hannibal Hamlin sparks life into a dying soldier

Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was no faith healer, laying his hands on sick people, and nor did he peddle miracle cures involving mysterious liquids packaged in colored bottles. But one sick young Maine soldier supposedly on his way to a military graveyard credited the unassuming vice president with keeping that particular grave unfilled. Frank D. […]

Waterville veterans wanted a bronze Citizen Soldier

My lovely wife has patiently toured so many Civil War battlefields, she claims that “when you’ve seen one cannon, you’ve seen them all.” Pertaining to all the green-hued 12-pounder Napoleons scattered from Gettysburg to Vicksburg and Malvern Hill and back, she’s right. She could also say the same for many Civil War monuments in Maine. […]

Dear old Mom asked her son to spy on his brother-in-law

Reading the recurring requests penned in his mother’s familiar cursive writing, Edwin A. Lowe gulped. He clearly understood what Lucetta S. Parker sought: information about her third oldest son — and a particular son-in-law. Re-reading Lucetta’s questions marks, Lowe gulped again. This wasn’t going to be an easy letter to write home to dear old […]

Blanket Brigade: hard luck on the Potomac

  Note: This is the second part of a three-part series about the “Blanket Brigade.” A hard-luck infantry regiment that Maine fielded in midsummer 1862 later drew scathing ridicule as the autumn rains and cold literally dissolved clothing, men, and equipment in those wretched weeks after Antietam. Commanded by Col. Asa W. Wildes of Skowhegan, […]