Of the 50 soldiers’ whose graves are identified by name on the Antietam burial map, one belongs to “Asa Reed 10 Me,” a private in Co. K, 10th Maine Infantry Regiment. Why he was identified among the 5,844 graves marked on the map drawn by Simon G. Elliott, no one knows.
The 10th descended from the 1st Maine Infantry, a 90-day regiment that reached Washington, D.C. in mid-1861, but did not fight at First Manassas. The regiment returned to Portland and disbanded, but Maine Governor Israel Washburn Jr. decided its members owed more than 90 days’ service and promptly created the 10th Maine.
Into that regiment did most 1st Mainers go. Except for newer three-year recruits, the 10th Maine mustered out in spring 1863 — but many members soon joined the 29th Maine.
Virginia resident Nicholas Picerno, a Civil War historian and chairman emeritus of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, is the country’s leading expert on the 1st/10th/29th Maine infantries. He was amazed to find Reed’s name on the Antietam burial map. Picerno wrote about Reed in “A Name On The Map,” published in the October 2020 Civil War Times.
Reed was already an orphan when born to Asa S. and Phebe Hicks Reed on November 28, 1840 in Danville (part of Auburn). His father had died 13 days earlier, leaving Phebe with the new baby and his 2-year-old sister, Abby.
Phebe later married Danville widower (and farmer) Jonathan Chase, who already had four children. The 1850 census indicated that Phebe gave him an additional daughter and two more sons.
According to 10th Maine Pvt. Abial Edwards, before the war Reed had started “a fine farm” in Aroostook County and then returned to Danville to marry his sweetheart, “an old schoolmate” apparently not identified by history.
The newlyweds “were to return to Aroostook[,] but times were hard,” so Reed got his wife’s permission to join the 10th Maine, Edwards wrote. “With the money he got here” in the military, Reed and his wife would “return next spring” to The County, as Aroostook is called in Maine.
Reed fought with the 10th Maine at Cedar Mountain, Virginia on August 9, 1862.
Part of the XII Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. Joseph K.F. Mansfield, the 10th Maine was “in the lead element” as the corps advanced into battle at Antietam on September 17 along the original Smoketown Road, which lay about 50 yards west of the modern road, Picerno told a recent Zoom gathering of Richardson’s Civil War Round Table in Maine.
The regiment fought at the East Woods, still largely intact and unlike the West Woods not divided by a modern highway. A Co. K comrade, Pvt. Leroy Tobie, recalled that “Asa Reed [my] chum had a presentment [sic] that he would be killed in that fight and so stated while they were making bean swagen in a quart dipper the night before.”
The shooting started on that Wednesday morning at Antietam, and Reed “was one of the first men killed, and was found after the battle with a bullet hole through his head[,] the ball going in just under the eye,” said Tobie, quoted by Picerno in the Civil War Times.
Reed “fell … close to my side[,] his blood flying over me and his death struggle,” Edwards wrote.
Before burying Reed and setting an identifying marker at his grave, comrades searching his pockets found “a carte-de-visite photograph of his sister, Abie” and sent it to her, Picerno wrote.
Asa ‘s body was relocated to the Antietam National Cemetery on November 3, 1866. The cemetery officially opened on September 17, 1862.
A downloadable copy of the Antietam burial map is available here.
Sources: Nicholas Picerno, A Name On The Map, Civil War Times, October 2020; 1850 census for Danville, Maine; Asa Reed, Soldier’s File, Maine State Archives
If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to like Maine at War on Facebook and get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. —————————————————————————————————————–
Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.