Tag Archives: Saco

Maine impersonates Ohio

A Saco adolescent aged remarkably before joining the 16th Maine Infantry Regiment. Whatever his actual age, he experienced war at its worst during the next four years. According to the 1860 U.S. Census for Saco, George A. Deering was the youngest living-at-home child of James M. Deering and Charlotte Deering. A wealthy merchant, James Deering […]

Christmas 1862: awaiting a brother’s fate at Fredericksburg

Her stomach probably tied in a knot, sometime on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1863 a sister of Samuel Franklyn Parcher sat at a desk while writing her brother. Blood-soaked Fredericksburg was eight days past, and Maine newspapers had already published casualty lists. The sister (either Eliza or Mary) worried deep in her heart about “Frank,” whose […]

John Haley, the reluctant recruit

At Saco in York County, 22-year-old John West Haley wondered if he should enlist as Maine formed five new infantry regiments in summer 1862. Looking back some 15 months, he realized that “in 1861 I concluded I had a duty to perform[,] but hesitated about embarking on this troubled sea,” said Haley, recently a Saco […]

Maine boys notice when Joe Hooker takes command, part I

Despite all the immorality-related baggage (drinking, carousing with prostitutes, etc.) historically associated with him, Joseph Hooker helped save the Union in winter 1863. Abraham Lincoln could have done worse than replace Ambrose Burnside with Hooker, at least in the months prior to Chancellorsville. In the regimental camps sprinkled across Stafford County opposite Fredericksburg, morale all […]

Appomattox Road: The solemn-faced nincompoop soon returned

  Winter 1865 found John Haley of Saco serving with the 17th Maine Infantry Regiment in the Union lines southwest of Petersburg. He and his Co. I comrades alternated their duty between the monotony and military regimen of camp life and dangerous duty at picket posts much nearer Confederate lines. “A new year dawns, the […]

Isabella Fogg investigated reports of Army mistreatment of wounded Union soldiers

    Isabella Fogg had already encountered the horrors of war when the slaughter known as Antietam took place on Sept. 17, 1862. Then Fogg discovered the hell that is war. Surnamed Morrison, her parents had emigrated to New Brunswick from Scotland before Isabella’s birth in 1823. Practically a child bride when she married William […]

Answering the call

After Abraham Lincoln asked the loyal states to send more men to fight the Confederacy in early summer 1862, the War Department requested that Maine raise four additional infantry regiments. That meant Maine would send 4,000 men (at 1,000 men per regiment). With 15 infantry regiments already sent to far-flung battlefields, Maine would create the […]