Civil War

Billerica had 1,776 inhabitants in 1860, and the Civil War drew on it more heavily than any war since the Revolution. Henry Hazen, who lived through it, wrote that when Fort Sumter was attacked and President Lincoln called for volunteers, "public meetings, enlistments, and aid societies and labors engrossed the public mind." The town hall on the Common, the Old Town Hall, "was thrown open, the church bell, aided by the drum and an old ship-gun, sounding the call to meetings for action and organization." Nathaniel D. P. Foster, who joined Company A of the 2nd Massachusetts in May 1861, was remembered as "the first enlisted soldier from the town," and John A. Burrows, of the sharpshooters, and Charles N. Fletcher, of the 5th Massachusetts and later the 22nd, were the first men mustered. Richardson's Light Infantry of Lowell, afterwards the 7th Massachusetts Battery and the first three-years company from the state in the field, came to Billerica for a reception and a drill, as did a rifle company; Jaquith's list puts two Billerica men, Alonzo D. Marshall and Israel N. Wilson, in that battery in 1861.

The first legal town meeting to act on the war was held on May 6, 1861. A committee of Stephen Gilman, the principal of the Howe School, Thomas Talbot and George P. Elliott reported in favor of "immediate and vigorous action," and the town voted to appropriate $2,500 to be spent by a committee of nine, with the treasurer authorized to borrow it, to provide "such articles of clothing and equipment, not furnished by the State," for Billerica men who volunteered, and to look after their families. The nine were James R. Faulkner, Talbot, Josiah Bowers, Elliott, Gilman, Edward Spaulding, Jonathan Merriam and Peter B. Bohonan, as Schouler prints them, and the meeting added R. T. Bryant, Joseph Dows, Leander Crosby and John Baldwin. On June 17 the committee reported that under the new state laws aid to soldiers' families had to be paid through the selectmen, and the town rescinded the May vote and appropriated $1,000 for state aid instead. The selectmen were Dows, Crosby and Gardner Parker in 1861, and Parker, William S. Gleason and Charles W. French from 1862 through 1865; Dudley Foster was town clerk and treasurer through the whole war.

After McClellan's defeat before Richmond in the summer of 1862 the town met again on July 21 and resolved that "the people of Billerica will respond to whatever call is made upon them, either for men or money, to the full extent of their resources." It voted a bounty of $125 to each of up to eighteen volunteers credited to its quota, and the quota "was filled almost immediately." The men were mustered on August 7, 1862 into Company D of the 33rd Massachusetts, and a meeting was held in the town hall the night before they left. On August 25 the town voted $100 to each man who enlisted for nine months; the nine-months men went into Company K of the 6th, Company I of the 44th and Companies G and I of the 47th, and when the quota was found short, Hazen wrote, "town meetings and bounties were again called into requisition." No town vote was needed in 1863. The first draft came that summer, "with but small results from this town"; Samuel W. Baldwin, drafted on July 14, 1863, was called the first soldier drafted from Billerica. That winter many of the three-years men, Hazen noted, re-enlisted "for the war."

On May 30, 1864 the town voted $125 to each volunteer for three years, and appointed Talbot, Parker, James Faulkner, Elijah Corliss and Foster to help the selectmen recruit, with power to draw on the treasury. In the summer of 1864 a second draft accepted only two Billerica men, and the remaining calls were filled with volunteers "secured in town or beyond" for large bounties. The town's accounts for the year ending February 23, 1865 show $4,000 paid as town bounty to thirty-two recruits, $623.62 in extra expenses of the recruiting committee, $375 for three recruits furnished by the State, and $34.50 for lighting the town hall for war meetings. Gardner Parker was paid as recruiting officer for thirty journeys to Boston, eighteen to Lowell and thirteen to Lawrence by the railroad, with car fares for himself and his recruits. By Adjutant General Schouler's count the town spent $6,230.91 on the war, and citizens subscribed $8,994.36 more, of which the town later repaid $7,047.14, for a total of $13,278.05 apart from state aid. The state aid paid to soldiers' families and later refunded by the Commonwealth came to $389.05 in 1861, $2,359.28 in 1862, $3,581.66 in 1863, $3,713.29 in 1864 and $2,200 in 1865, $12,243.28 in all.

Schouler credited Billerica with 173 men, "a surplus of four over and above all demands," seven of them commissioned officers, and the record of soldiers and sailors that Franklin Jaquith compiled for Hazen, gathered mainly from the town records, has 156 names, with 17 more from the state's Record of Massachusetts Volunteers. They served in many units. The largest groups were Company B of the 29th Massachusetts, raised in 1861, in which Israel N. Wilson rose to captain; Company D of the 30th, which went to Louisiana with General Butler; Company D of the 33rd; the nine-months companies of the 6th, 44th and 47th; the 15th Massachusetts Battery, which took about a dozen Billerica men at the end of 1863; and a 100-days company of the 6th in July 1864. Others were in the 2nd, 11th, 16th, 22nd, 24th, 26th and 59th Infantry, the 1st, 3rd and 4th Cavalry, the heavy artillery and the Veteran Reserve Corps, and a few served at sea. Marcus M. Cowdry of the 16th came home a captain, Charles A. Sperry and Coburn S. Smith first lieutenants, H. Austin Sperry a captain, and Dr. G. H. W. Herrick served as a surgeon.

Albert E. Farmer of Company A, 11th Massachusetts, taken prisoner at Bull Run and dead in Richmond within weeks of his muster, was the first Billerica soldier to fall. George C. Gilman Jr. of the 30th was mortally wounded at Baton Rouge on August 5, 1862 and died five days later; Thomas H. Maxwell of the same regiment died at New Orleans in June 1862. James Shields of the 33rd died of disease at Alexandria, Virginia, on October 10, 1862, Joseph F. Richardson of the 47th at New Orleans on January 25, 1863, Reuben J. Gilman of the 44th at New Bern, North Carolina, on March 7, 1863, and Calvin G. Tuttle of the 3rd Cavalry at Baton Rouge on April 14, 1863. James F. Edmands of the 2nd fell at Gettysburg. Charles N. Fletcher died at Fortress Monroe on August 2, 1863, and Asa John Patten, an eighteen-year-old cabinet maker of the 33rd, died at Chattanooga on November 1, 1863 of wounds received at Wauhatchie in Lookout Valley, Tennessee, on October 29. Edward A. Adams of the 59th, an early graduate of the Howe School who had been, Hazen wrote, the first in town to volunteer "for three years or the war," died of wounds near Petersburg on June 27, 1864. John C. Stewart of the 29th was killed at Petersburg on June 17, 1864, and William S. Collins of the 29th and Stephen H. Parker of the 59th, the son of selectman Gardner Parker, were killed there in the battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864. Henry Newbury of the 24th died of wounds at Fortress Monroe on August 29, 1864, and Hiram E. Davis of the 4th Cavalry at Point of Rocks, Virginia, on January 18, 1865. Ward Locke of the 29th and Edwin W. Huse of the 30th died of disease at home in Billerica while on furlough in April 1864, and Franklin Hanaford, Pollard R. Shumway and Dennis Buckley died after being discharged. Edward H. Persons of the 1st Cavalry died at Readville in October 1861, a month after enlisting, and Charles A. Saunders of the 15th Battery at New Orleans on August 24, 1864.

Some Billerica men were prisoners. Besides Farmer, John B. Gravlin of the 29th was captured near Knoxville on January 22, 1864 and not exchanged until March 8, 1865, and John J. Gorham Jr. of the same company was taken at Fort Stedman on March 25, 1865 and exchanged a week later. Jaquith's list records no Billerica man who died at Andersonville.

At home the women of the town, as a later account put it, "held meetings, made garments for the soldiers, knit stockings, raised money, and did what the women all over the land did so nobly." In January 1864 three Billerica women, Eliza A. Rogers, daughter of Calvin Rogers, Anne R. Faulkner, daughter of James R. Faulkner, and Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of Josiah Rogers, answered a call from Hannah Stevenson for teachers among the freed slaves and went to Camp Stanton at Benedict, Maryland, to teach the Black soldiers of General William Birney's regiments of the United States Colored Troops while they drilled; Stephen Gilman saw them off from Boston on January 13. Their journals were printed in 1912 and 1913 in the magazine The Billerica. The war years were busy ones for the mills at North Billerica: the Talbot Mills, built in 1857, came wholly into the hands of Thomas and Charles P. Talbot in 1862 and are said to have prospered on cloth for the army, and the Faulkner Mills kept making woolen goods. Charles A. Ranlett, the retired sea captain, was active in raising volunteers, and Thomas Talbot sat on the Governor's Council from 1864.

"The news of victory and peace filled the land with joy in the spring of 1865," Hazen wrote, "and though a deep shadow followed with the assassination of the beloved Lincoln, the substantial fruits remained." The returning veterans were welcomed on July 4, 1865 at a picnic in the grove by the Concord River near the Middle Bridge, with an address of welcome by Dr. Frank E. Bundy. The town then raised the Soldiers' Monument on the Town Common, a white granite shaft six feet square at the base and twenty-five feet high, crowned by the figure of a soldier at rest on his musket, with the battle names "Petersburg," "Gettysburg," "Newbern," "Lookout Mountain," "Bull Run," "Chancellorsville," "Baton Rouge" and "Cedar Mountain" in raised letters and the inscription "Billerica to her heroes, in grateful recognition of that steadfastness of purpose, devotion to principle, loyalty to country, and trust in God, which enabled men to die for Liberty and Union." The statue is attributed to Carl Conrads of the New England Granite Works. Gardner Parker was on the committee that built it. It was dedicated on Wednesday, October 8, 1873, before a large crowd gathered in a great tent south of the monument; Thomas Talbot presided, the Rev. Christopher C. Hussey offered the prayer, Col. Russell H. Conwell of Boston gave the oration, and Governor William B. Washburn, E. R. Hoar of Concord and former Governor Onslow Stearns of New Hampshire, a son of Billerica, took part.

The east and west sides of the monument bear twenty names: Edward A. Adams, Dennis Buckley, William S. Collins, James F. Edmands, Albert E. Farmer, Charles N. Fletcher, George C. Gilman, Reuben J. Gilman, Franklin Hanaford, William Hayes, Edwin W. Huse, Ward Locke, Thomas H. Maxwell, Stephen H. Parker, Asa John Patten, Joseph F. Richardson, Charles A. Saunders, James Shields, Pollard R. Shumway and John C. Stewart. Hazen named four more who "would properly have been inscribed with their comrades'," Hiram E. Davis, Henry Newbury, Edward H. Persons and Calvin G. Tuttle, and at the annual town meeting of 1921 the town voted $20 to add their names to the monument.

Billerica's veterans kept together as the Billerica Veteran Association, which in the town reports from the 1880s on spent the town's yearly Memorial Day appropriation, usually $75 to $125, on flowers and markers for the soldiers' graves, an oration, a band and teams; in 1890 its treasurer was Coburn S. Smith. The Billerica listed it in 1912 as "The Billerica Veteran Association, G. A. R.," with Franklin Jaquith president, Marcus M. Cowdrey vice president and Smith treasurer, eighteen members, meeting on Memorial Day. Beside it were the Asa John Patten Circle No. 20 of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, with seventy members in 1912, named for the young soldier who died of wounds in Tennessee, and a camp of the Sons of Veterans. On March 25, 1913, the forty-eighth anniversary of Fort Stedman, the Billerica veterans entertained a large delegation of survivors of the 59th Massachusetts at the town hall, with a banquet served by the Ladies of the G. A. R. In 1908, at the request of the resident veterans and on the motion of Sidney A. Bull, the town asked the Secretary of War for a cannon and voted $150 to bring it and mount it on the Common; Marcus M. Cowdrey was paid for part of the labor.

Many veterans became the town's officers. Franklin Jaquith, who served nine months in Company K of the 6th and then re-enlisted on the steamer Circassian, was postmaster, registrar and selectman; Coburn S. Smith sat on the board of selectmen from 1880 to 1892 and was an overseer of the poor for a quarter century. Civil War veterans rode in automobiles at the head of the town's welcome-home parade for the soldiers and sailors of the World War on July 4, 1919. The last of them lived into the 1930s: the town report for 1933 printed memorials to Elias D. Hannon, who died on January 18, 1933, and Marcus M. Cowdrey, who died on November 3, 1933, both "Grand Army of the Republic," and at the next town meeting the voters stood in silence for them while taps was sounded. In 1936 the Ladies of the G. A. R. asked the town for $75 toward their rent, but the article was dismissed because no law allowed it.

People

• Gardner Parker: Selectman 1861-1865 and the town's recruiting officer; served on the 1864 recruiting committee and the monument committee; his son Stephen H. Parker was killed at Petersburg July 30, 1864.
• William S. Gleason: Selectman 1862-1865, through the war; paid for recruiting expenses in 1864-65.
• Charles W. French: Selectman 1862-1865, through the war.
• Joseph Dows: Selectman in 1861 (Schouler spells him Down); added to the committee of nine on soldiers' clothing and families, May 1861.
• Leander Crosby: Selectman in 1861; added to the committee of nine, May 1861.
• Dudley Foster: Town clerk and treasurer through the war; paid out the state aid, kept the record of soldiers and sat on the 1864 recruiting committee.
• Thomas Talbot: On the May 6, 1861 committee, the committee of nine and the 1864 recruiting committee; Governor's Councillor from 1864; presided at the monument dedication in 1873.
• Stephen Gilman: Howe School principal; on the May 6, 1861 committee and the committee of nine; saw the three Billerica teachers off to Benedict, Md., in January 1864.
• George P. Elliott: On the May 6, 1861 committee that urged 'immediate and vigorous action,' and on the committee of nine.
• James R. Faulkner: Woolen manufacturer; on the committee of nine of May 1861; father of Anne R. Faulkner, who taught Black soldiers at Benedict, Md., in 1864.
• Edward Spaulding: On the committee of nine of May 1861 (identified as the leading citizen born 1803).
• Peter B. Bohonan: On the committee of nine of May 1861.
• John Baldwin: Added to the committee of nine, May 1861.
• Franklin Jaquith: Co. K, 6th Mass. (nine months, 1862-63), then re-enlisted and served on the Circassian to 1865; compiled the record of Billerica soldiers and sailors printed by Hazen; president of the Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R., in 1912.
• Coburn S. Smith: Served in Co. G, 47th, and Co. D, 59th Mass., rising to first lieutenant; later selectman and treasurer of the Billerica Veteran Association.
• Nathaniel D. Foster: Co. A, 2nd Mass., mustered May 1861, later in the Veteran Reserve Corps; called by Hazen the first enlisted soldier from the town.
• Frank E. Bundy: Gave the address of welcome to the returning veterans at the picnic of July 4, 1865.
• Christopher C. Hussey: Minister of the First Parish; offered the prayer at the dedication of the Soldiers' Monument, October 8, 1873.
• Sidney A. Bull: Moved in 1908, at the veterans' request, that the town ask the Secretary of War for a cannon for the Common.
• Charles A. Ranlett: Retired sea captain, active in raising volunteers and supporting the government in the war (Hazen).

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 283: Billerica in the Rebellion; town hall meetings of 1861, first soldiers, Richardson's Light Infantry, Albert E. Farmer, the 1862 bounty and the 33rd Regiment.
2. Hazen, p. 284: nine-months men, drafts of 1863 and 1864, re-enlistments, Lincoln's death, July 4, 1865 welcome, the Soldiers' Monument and its twenty names.
3. Hazen, plate facing p. 285: engraving of the Soldiers' Monument on the Common.
4. Hazen, p. 285: four names that should have been on the monument; dedication of October 8, 1873 (Talbot, Hussey, Conwell, Washburn, Hoar, Stearns); note on Franklin Jaquith's list.
5. Hazen, pp. 286-290: Record of Soldiers and Sailors from Billerica in the War of Rebellion, 1861-65, with muster dates, companies, regiments, deaths and remarks (Adams to Cormier on p. 286).
6. Hazen, p. 287: soldier list, Cowdry to Ham (Davis, Edmands, Farmer, Fletcher, the Gilmans).
7. Hazen, p. 288: soldier list, Hanaford to McKenney (Hanaford, Huse, Locke, Maxwell).
8. Hazen, p. 289: soldier list, McNulty to Russell (Newbury, Parker, Patten, Persons, Richardson).
9. Hazen, p. 290: soldier list, Saunders to Young (Shields, Shumway, Smith, Stewart, Tuttle, Israel N. Wilson).
10. Hazen, p. 291: names found in the Record of Massachusetts Volunteers but not in the town records.
11. Hazen, Genealogical Register, p. 3: Edward Amos Adams, Howe School graduate, first to volunteer for three years, died of wounds near Petersburg June 27, 1864.
12. Hazen, Genealogical Register, p. 8: Samuel Whiting Baldwin, the first soldier drafted from Billerica.
13. Hazen, Genealogical Register, p. 78: Franklin Jaquith, born 1839, soldier and compiler of the list of soldiers and sailors from Billerica.
14. Hazen, Genealogical Register, p. 116: Capt. Charles A. Ranlett, active in raising volunteers in the Rebellion.
15. Hazen, Genealogical Register, additions: Nathaniel D. P. Foster, born 1841, 'the first enlisted soldier from the town in the late war.'
16. Schouler, History of Massachusetts in the Civil War, vol. 2 (1871), Billerica: population, selectmen, the May 6, 1861 town meeting and resolutions.
17. Schouler, vol. 2, Billerica (cont.): committee of nine, June 17, 1861 state aid vote, July 21 and August 25, 1862 bounties, May 30, 1864 bounty and recruiting committee.
18. Schouler, vol. 2, Billerica (end): 173 men, a surplus of four, seven officers; town and subscription expenses; state aid by year 1861-1865.
19. Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Civil War, vol. 3: Co. B, 29th Mass., Billerica men incl. John J. Gorham Jr. (prisoner at Fort Stedman) and John B. Gravlin (prisoner near Knoxville).
20. MSSM vol. 3: Co. B, 29th Mass.: Ward Locke, 42, farmer, died of disease at Billerica April 9, 1864.
21. MSSM vol. 3: Co. D, 30th Mass.: George C. Gilman, 18, clerk, wounded at Baton Rouge Aug. 5, 1862, died of wounds Aug. 10, 1862.
22. MSSM vol. 3: Co. D, 33rd Mass.: Asa J. Patten, 18, cabinet maker, died at Chattanooga Nov. 1, 1863 of wounds received Oct. 29 at Wauhatchie, Tenn.
23. MSSM vol. 3: Co. D, 33rd Mass.: James Shields, 23, farmer, died of disease at Alexandria, Va., Oct. 10, 1862.
24. Billerica Annual Report, year ending Feb. 23, 1865: War Department account; town bounty to 32 recruits, state aid, Gardner Parker's recruiting journeys, lighting the town hall for war meetings.
25. Billerica Annual Report 1889: report of the town's Decoration Day committee and its $100 appropriation.
26. Billerica Annual Report 1890: Decoration Day account (flowers, markers, oration, band) signed by Coburn S. Smith, Treasurer of the Billerica Veteran Association.
27. Billerica Annual Report 1908: town meeting vote on Sidney A. Bull's motion to request a cannon for the Common for the resident Civil War veterans, $150.
28. Billerica Annual Report 1908: special appropriation for the cannon on the Common; freight, trucking, Marcus M. Cowdrey's labor, foundation and mounting.
29. Billerica (monthly), vol. 1 no. 1, 1912: introduction to the journals of Eliza A. Rogers, Anne R. Faulkner and Elizabeth Rogers, teachers of colored soldiers at Benedict, Md., 1864.
30. Billerica (monthly), vol. 1 no. 2, 1912: Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R. (Jaquith, Cowdrey, Smith; 18 members) and Ladies of the G.A.R., Asa John Patten Circle.
31. Billerica (monthly), April 1913: on March 25, 1913 the Billerica veterans entertained survivors of the 59th Mass. at the town hall on the anniversary of Fort Stedman.
32. Billerica Annual Reports 1915-1919: program of the July 4, 1919 welcome home celebration, with Civil War veterans in the parade and the Ladies of the G.A.R. float.
33. Billerica Annual Reports 1920-1924: 1921 annual town meeting votes $20 to place the names of Hiram E. Davis, Henry Newbury, Edward H. Persons and Calvin Tuttle on the Soldiers' Monument.
34. Billerica Annual Reports 1930-1934: In Memoriam page for 1933, Elias D. Hannon (died Jan. 18, 1933) and Marcus M. Cowdrey (died Nov. 3, 1933), Grand Army of the Republic.
35. Billerica Annual Reports 1935-1939: 1936 town meeting dismisses an article for $75 toward the rent of Asa John Patten Circle 20, Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic.
36. Massachusetts Civil War Monuments Project: Billerica Soldiers' Monument, dedicated Oct. 8, 1873; statue attributed to Carl Conrads of the New England Granite Works; 25 feet high.