Tag Archives: 1st Maine Battery

The son of “Stuttering Pat”

Five Patrick Kelleys appeared before recruiting officers in Maine and enlisted in the army during the Civil War. Four likely exhibited an Irish brogue when speaking English. The fifth Patrick Kelley possibly spoke English with the developing Aroostook County dialect that added “r” to words lacking that letter (such as “Ka-tar-din”). Whatever his accent, this […]

The Maine connections with Grierson’s Raid, part 1

The most successful cavalry raid conducted by North or South until the war’s closing months, the May 1863 expedition known as Grierson’s Raid saw two Union cavalry regiments and an artillery battery cut some 500 miles through interior Confederate-held Mississippi. Commanded by Col. Benjamin H. Grierson, the raiders tore up vital infrastructure and ran Confederate […]

Granite State Mainers

A Civil War monument in New Hampshire lists many local men who served in Maine units. Does this mean these veterans are “Granite State Mainers”? For some, certainly “yes.” Located sufficiently distant from the Seacoast and the White Mountains to avoid the tourist hordes, Rollinsford lies directly across the Piscataqua River from South Berwick, also […]