Tag Archives: Bath

Coastal cruise brought dignitaries to Fort Popham as Gettysburg raged

A day before draft riots erupted in New York City, some well-connected Maine residents took a cruise on the Kennebec River to see the latest War Department infrastructure being built on the coast. If anyone discussed Gettysburg and its aftermath that pleasant day, a newspaper correspondent invited along for the voyage didn’t mention it. Writing […]

A nurse goes to war, Part 1 — “such suffering and confusion I never before witnessed”

After receiving a telegram on Wednesday, May 7, 1862, Bath nurse Sarah Sampson hurried to the war zone, which in that far-away spring was Virginia’s so-called “Peninsula.” What she saw and did there launched her into history as a 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment legend. Sarah Sampson had traveled with her husband, Lt. Col. Charles A.L. […]

Confederates trap the 7th Maine in an Antietam apple orchard, Part III

Ordered by Col. William Irwin to take the depleted 7th Maine Infantry Regiment and charge Confederate skirmishers hiding among haystacks at the Piper Farm near Sharpsburg, Maj. Thomas Hyde rode out with his 170-or-so heroes to make a suicide charge shortly after 5 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 17, 1862. The Maine lads marched south and “crossed […]

The 7th Maine were to find their Balaklava at Antietam, Part II

The 3rd Brigade commanded by Col. William Howard Irwin absorbed casualties from Confederate artillery and rifle fire at Antietam throughout the afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 17. 1862. Including the 7th Maine Infantry Regiment commanded by Maj. Thomas Hyde, the brigade held ground east of the Dunker Church; from his vantage point amidst the boulders sheltering […]

They Are Our Glory — the 7th Maine at Antietam, Part I

Wind-stirred flags attracted Confederate attention at Antietam, as Thomas Worcester Hyde realized by mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 1862. A Bowdoin College graduate and the only son of a Yankee trader from Bath, Hyde had commanded the 7th Maine Infantry Regiment during the Sept. 14 attack on Confederate-held Crampton’s Gap on South Mountain in Maryland. […]

Sarah Sampson hurtled three stairwells and the Secretary of State to meet President Abraham Lincoln

  Neither the weariness of her all-night vigil caring for wounded soldiers nor social propriety kept a demure Bath nurse from making her self-appointed introduction to President Abraham Lincoln — — and nor could Secretary of State William Seward. When Oliver Otis Howard took the 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment to Washington, D.C. in early June […]

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 […]