Tag Archives: New Brunswick

Atlantic Canada’s Civil War heroes come to life in Graves Matter

Before each Memorial Day weekend, many volunteers (including Scouts) spread out across Maine cemeteries to place American flags on veterans’ graves. Afterwards, perceptive visitors notice the flags secured to the five-pointed metal stars marking specific graves. Based on the Grand Army of the Republic’s symbolic star, these stars identify the graves of Civil War veterans. […]

New Brunswick men bolstered the Union ranks during the Civil War

Maine sent approximately 73,000 men into the army to fight during the Civil War, but not all those recruits hailed only from the Pine Tree State. In fact, “over 2,400 New Brunswick-born men enlisted in the State of Maine,” says Canadian historian and Civil War re-enactor Larry Burden. He and his wife live in St. […]

Did Daniel Chaplin develop a death wish?

  Did Col. Daniel Chaplin lose his desire to live after watching the annihilation of his beloved 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment at Petersburg on Saturday, June 18, 1864? Yes, surmised Pvt. Joel Brown of Orono and Co. I. And Chaplin’s own behavior suggests the behavior of a man who cared not if he lived […]

Three bold Confederates strolled into a Calais bank

Fidgeting with his revolver earned George Foster a dubious and obscure footnote in Civil War history. By summer 1864, Confederate agents based in Canada dreamed and schemed about carrying the war to the Union home front. Still a British possession, Canada was a neutral territory across which Confederate and Union spies and counterspies danced — […]