Tag Archives: 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment

The fates of the Fales

The sunlight falling across the Thomaston Village Cemetery on a warm mid-August Saturday casts deep shadows beneath the trees and illuminates the Fales family monument, three sections of sculpted gray granite perched atop a slight grassy rise. The front inscription identifies Ebenezer Fales (1801 to 1872) and his wife, Mary Perkins (1814 to 1898). Each […]

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 […]

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 […]

Cavalry trooper killed at Middleburg came home to a hero’s funeral

A telegram arriving in Gardiner on Monday, June 22, 1863 broke a mother’s heart and stunned people living in the Kennebec River port. George Stone Kimball, age 30, was dead, killed by hostile fire in Virginia’s Bull Run Mountains days earlier. “In the springtime of life … blessed with education and talents and all that […]

Of the 1st Maine Cavalry, Middleburg, and two monuments

Two monuments located about a mile apart in Middleburg, Virginia honor four-legged Civil War veterans and the 1st Maine Cavalry troopers killed during three cavalry fights in mid-June 1863. Middleburg lies in the Bull Run Mountains, rolling terrain screening the Blue Ridge’s eastern flank in northern Virginia and spilling across the Potomac River to become […]

The Warren warrior, part 2

As detailed in The Warren warrior, part 1, Warren painter Charles Almond McIntyre enlisted in Co. B, 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment in February 1862. Present at Gettysburg, he made corporal in August 1863 and re-enlisted on February 1, 1864; why he did so after already committing to three years’ service in 1862 is a mystery. […]

The Warren warrior, part 1

A cavalry trooper from Warren epitomizes the ordinary Mainers who fought to save the Union during the Civil War — and for his story Maine at War thanks Orinda McIntyre and her husband, Gary Lemaster. A South Portland native, Rindy has two first cousins (four times removed) from Warren who served during the Civil War. […]

Volunteers dedicate new 1st Maine Cavalry monument, part 2

Seeking a place to site a 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment monument in northern Virginia, Steve Bunker of Gray “wanted to do something at Aldie,”where the regiment charged Confederate troopers defending a stone wall on June 17, 1863. He envisioned “at the very least a small stone at the stone wall … but the property owner […]

Volunteers dedicate new 1st Maine Cavalry monument, part 1

This past June, volunteers erected what is only the second monument in Virginia dedicated to a Maine combat unit from the Civil War. Steve Bunker of Gray was among “a number of New Englanders” who founded the 1st Maine Cavalry re-enacting organization at Jacksonville Beach, Fla. in 1959. “Most of the guys were 16, 17, […]

So you think you know Maine at Gettysburg, part 1

Gettysburg fans, let’s take Part 1 of the MMM quiz, short for “Maine Monument Minutiae.” And if you’re a “frequent flier” at Gettysburg or own the book Maine at Gettysburg, you might know the answers (printed below). 1. Which Maine regiment has as many monuments as its unit designation? And where are they? 2. Name […]