His hometown newspaper thought Charles T. Sprague “would … have made an excellent soldier.” Boy, did the press ever get that wrong. According to the 1860 U.S. Census for Gardiner, Josiah L. W. Sprague (the “W” was for “Winter”) was a 44-year-old “house carpenter” with real estate worth $2,600. He and his wife, Melinda Joy […]
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 […]
Pain wracking his shattered body, George Ray Parsons shivers as he stirs in the damp Fredericksburg mud in midafternoon on Saturday, Dec. 13, 1862. He’s been hit, whether by a 0.58-caliber lead bullet or a shell fragment, he cannot tell. Seeping blood suggests the wound in his side is bad … real bad. Parsons […]
