Asa J. Patten

Asa John Patten (1844 to 1863) was a Billerica soldier of the 33rd Massachusetts Infantry who died at Chattanooga, Tennessee, on October 31, 1863, at nineteen. His name is one of those cut on the Civil War Soldiers' Monument on the Town Common.

He was born in Billerica on May 25, 1844, the youngest child of Deacon Aaron Hosley Patten and his wife Eliza Patten (born Eliza Andrews, of Boston). His father, deacon of the Congregational church, owned the saw-mill and grist-mill on Content Brook in East Billerica and from 1845 made cabinet work there, the business that gave Pattenville its name; the census of 1850 found the family in a household of cabinet makers and mill hands. His brothers included William Henry Patten, Azel Wilder, Aaron Hosley, Lyman Beecher and Thomas, and his sister Mary J. King married Samuel H. King.

Asa enlisted at eighteen and was mustered on August 5, 1862 into Company D of the 33rd Massachusetts, the company of Billerica's quota of that summer. He served fifteen months, through Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and went west with the regiment in the fall of 1863 to relieve the army besieged at Chattanooga. Hazen's record marks him among those killed in battle or dying within a few days, with the note "Lookout Mountain," and the family genealogy gives his death at Chattanooga on October 31, 1863, three days after the 33rd's night fight at Wauhatchie, in Lookout Valley.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 284: the Soldiers' Monument and the names inscribed on it
2. Hazen (1883), p. 289: record of soldiers, Patten, Asa J., D 33d, killed 1863 Oct. 31, Lookout Mountain
3. Hazen (1883), register p. 110: Aaron Hosley Patten and his children, Asa John b. 1844 May 25, d. at Chattanooga 1863 Oct. 31
4. Billerica Public Library: Military Memorials, Civil War memorial names on the Common