Tag Archives: Hilton Head

Appomattox Road: You have read of Virginia rainstorms and Virginia mud

Reading the letters that her brother, Daniel Withum Sawtelle, wrote from Virginia in January and February 1865, Caroline Sophronia Murphy developed a good idea about what passed for winter in Virginia. The widowed Murphy often traded letters with Daniel, born in Minot in April 1838 and raised in Township 3, Range 5 in southwestern Aroostook […]

A deserter’s fate, Part II: A firing squad delivered the verdict

  After deserter Albert H. Lunt of the 9th Maine Infantry Regiment was convicted of various crimes by a court martial convened at St. Augustine, Fla., he was sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln upheld the sentence in mid-November 1862; Army officers scheduled the execution for Dec. 1. Lunt was transferred to Hilton Head, S.C., […]

A deserter’s fate, Part I: Even the Confederates didn’t want him

  Bad boy Albert H. Lunt could do no good, so 12 Union soldiers shot him dead at Hilton Head on Monday, Dec. 1, 1862. And in case they missed, another dozen armed soldiers waited to use Lunt for target practice. Assigned to Co. I, 9th Maine Infantry Regiment, Lunt seemed destined to pay for […]

Spring gales almost sank the 2nd Maine Cav

Two terrifying ocean storms almost turned a Confederate dream into reality in early spring 1864: wiping out some 300 Maine cavalrymen before they ever fired a shot. In mid-March, troopers from three 2nd Maine Cavalry Regiment companies — A, B, and D — started loading their horses aboard two transports docked at Portland. Orders called […]