Franklin Hannaford
Franklin Hannaford
| Died | 1864-06-01 Billerica, MA |
Franklin Hannaford was a sixteen-year-old Billerica boy who enlisted in the Civil War in December 1863 and died at home the next June. His name is cut on the Soldiers' Monument on the Common, the white granite shaft crowned with the figure of a soldier that the town dedicated on October 8, 1873.
His gravestone in the South Cemetery records his birth in September 1847. He was a son of Ira N. Hannaford, a laborer born at Newbury, Vermont, about 1820, and Emily Duren, daughter of John and Ann Duren, who were married on March 6, 1842. His brothers and sisters were William Nelson, born in 1843, Edward Warren, who died in 1847 aged two, and Mary Allen, born in December 1849; the 1850 census lists the family with "John F.", aged three, who appears to be Franklin. About 1851 his father built a small house on the Middlesex Turnpike in South Billerica, the Jacob Burt House, and sold it in 1852; in 1865 he bought the Duren place on Sullivan Road, the John Duren House.
Franklin was mustered on December 19, 1863 into the 15th Battery of Massachusetts Light Artillery. He was discharged for disability on April 4, 1864, after four months, and died in Billerica on June 1, 1864. He left no will and almost no estate: in November 1866 the probate court appointed John Davis of Lowell, a creditor, to administer it, with the boy's father, Ira N. Hannaford, as his only next of kin and the property valued at less than fifty dollars.