Abner Coburn stepped into a political mess upon becoming Maine’s second war-time governor as the calendar transitioned to 1863. Born to farmers Eleazar and Polly Weston Coburn in Canaan in Somerset County in March 1803, Coburn studied at Bloomfield Academy in the town of Bloomfield, which lay across the Kennebec River from the upper section […]
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 […]
Veterans who had endured Port Hudson’s hell patiently listened as two politicians — one a minister just as long-winded as any elected Maine official — welcomed the weary warriors home. Then they finally got to eat. And a local newspaper reporter criticized their perceived (and collective) lack of appetite. Commanded by Col. George Marston Atwood, […]
Bad wartime news could not stop a shindig held in Phippsburg on Friday, August 29, 1862. Second Manassas raged in northern Virginia as people converged on “the mouth of the Kennebec river, on the spot anciently called the peninsula of Sabino” to observe “the 255th anniversary of the planting, by Sir George Popham and his […]
Men — lots of them — likely lined the ship’s rails as the schooner Sarah B. Harris sailed into Portland Harbor on Thursday, August 18, 1864. Aboard the crowded schooner, Capt. Delano probably chatted with his unexpected guests, particularly other merchant skippers who had quite the tale to tell. They had survived (but not so […]
