Tag Archives: 14th Maine Infantry Regiment

Battle of Baton Rouge hero drowns courtesy of the U.S. Navy

Confederates shot Reverend Joseph P. French, and his own navy drowned him. Born in Solon in Somerset County, the 35-year-old French was a Methodist clergyman living in Old Town in 1860 with his 34-year-old wife, Lucretia. They had three daughters: Clara (5), Sarah (4), and Josie (2). Hannah French, 64, lived with the family; she […]

An army recruiter on every corner

Much like patent-medicine hucksters peddling liquid healing, Army recruiters occupying just about every street corner in downtown Bangor in autumn 1861 promised potential recruits the sun, the moon, and the stars — and a $100 bounty to boot. Across Maine, recruiters scrambled that fall to raise men for an artillery battery, a cavalry regiment, and […]

Black or white or both, he made a good Maine soldier, Part II

On June 16, 1862, a New Orleans businessman named B. Bronson discovered that his “light mulatto” slave, Calvin, had run away. With Union troops occupying the Big Easy, Bronson probably figured he would never see Calvin again. An enigmatic character, the “B Bronson” recorded in the June 28, 1860 census of “free inhabitants” of the […]

Black or white or both, he made a good Maine soldier, Part I

Franklin S. Nickerson knew a darn good soldier when he saw one, whether he was black or white or both. Four Maine infantry regiments — the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th — and the 1st Maine Battery went to New Orleans, Louisiana with Ben Butler in spring 1862. The Maine boys loved the fresh fruit […]

A brother dead, a brother dying, and a Mainer’s promise kept at Cedar Creek: Part I

Approximately 18 months after two sons vanished during the Battle of Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley, William H. Rogers of Quitman in Brooks County in Georgia received a letter from Maine. The letter was from a Yankee lieutenant, Lagrange Severance, not someone upon whom Rogers could look favorably. After reading the letter, Rogers may […]

Father and son lie in separate unmarked graves in Maine and North Carolina

  Do the father-and-son Mainers who went off to save the Union both lie in unmarked graves? Tracey McIntire of Maryland is not sure where the father lies, but she has visited the burial site of the son — and it’s definitely not marked with his name, no thanks to the Veterans Administration. Henry Herrick […]

Maine’s “Fighting Chaplain served his country in life and in death

Like the other soldiers belonging to the 14th Maine Infantry, Maine’s “Fighting Chaplain” lost his pants during a battle fought at Baton Rouge, La. on Aug. 5, 1862. Born in Litchfield in 1827 to William and Dorothy Bartlett, George Washington Bartlett prospected for California gold, graduated from Bowdoin College (’54), and became a Unitarian minister […]