Maine’s adjutant general might believe otherwise, but the some four-score enthusiastic volunteers reporting for duty in rural Maine in mid-spring 1861 knew exactly who commanded them. Responding to the Fort Sumter news, young (and not so young) Piscataquis County men had enlisted in a local company by late April. The Maine Legislature had carved the […]
Gathering at a local cemetery beneath a beautiful late summer sky, residents of Milo re-dedicated their town’s Civil War monument this August with capable assistance from Civil War descendants and re-enactors. Participating organizations included the Milo Historical Society; the Sarah Elizabeth Palmer Tent No. 23, Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War; the Col. […]
Ellsworth rolled out the red carpet when the 6th Maine Infantry’s elderly survivors converged on the Hancock County shiretown 50 years after going forth to defend the Union. When the 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment left Bangor for Washington, D.C. by train on May 14, 1861, five unattached companies remained at Camp Washburn. These companies were […]
With one son killed and another son wounded while defending the United States, finances turned grim for Cherryfield farmer Nicholas Newenham and his wife, Bridget, during summer 1864. They asked the town’s selectmen to provide the family with financial assistance, as mandated by state law. When selectmen repeatedly sent the Newenhams packing, Nicholas appealed to […]
A few days before Ulysses S. Grant launched his multi-front assaults against Southern armies in spring 1864, a 20th Maine Infantry private thought about eternity and what the approaching Virginia campaign could bring. Then he composed a last letter home — and included with it a last prayer. Born to William and Eliza Parsons in […]
A wild raid on Robert E. Lee’s post-Gettysburg retreat lines earned a Calais officer a mention in dispatches — and almost got him shot. A 25-year-old Calais schoolmaster in 1861, Reuel W. Furlong stood 6-2½ and had gray eyes, black hair, and a florid complexion. He joined the 6th Maine Infantry Regiment as Co. D’s […]
When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, “we were all young. The most of us had seen nothing of the world,” said 20-year-old Charles Amory Clark, whom no one in April 1861 would mistake for a warrior. Born in Sangerville on Jan. 26, 1841 and raised in that rural Piscataquis County town, Clark stood 5-7½ and […]
Even if the government could not spell his surname correctly, Hillman Look Tibbetts of Addison still did his job as the good soldier he was. A sailor standing 5-10 when he enlisted in Co. G, 6th Maine Infantry on May 2, 1861, Hillman hailed from Addison, a sea-faring town on the Washington County coast in […]
As Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick extricated his trapped VI Corps overnight on May 4, 1863, orders went to the 6th Maine Infantry Regiment to defend the corps’ far right flank along the Rappahannock River, even if doing so meant capture or death. As the night passed, time ran out. Concealed in dark woods near Banks’ […]
Talk about bureaucratic delay: The federal government took 33 years to reward Charles Amory Clark for saving a Maine regiment at Chancellorsville. Born in rural Sangerville in Piscataquis County on January 26, 1841, Clark “was a student at Foxcroft Academy” when the Civil War began. “I was fairly well fitted for college, and would have […]
