The First Maine Heavy Artillery

A Regimental History Website based on the book of the same name By Horace H. Shaw and Charles J. House
[pp 209-212 The First Maine Heavy Artillery. Shaw/House]


CHAPTER XVIII. OFFICIAL AND INDIVIDUAL HISTORY OF THE REGIMENT—THE ORGANIZATION.

This Regiment was organized and mustered into the United States service August 21, 1862, with 37 commissioned officers and 969 enlisted men, making a total of 1,006. Prior to November 1, 1863, there were added 175 recruits; from November 1, 1863, to November 1, 1864, there were added 965, and after the latter date 54 more were added, making a total of 1,194 new men added to the 1,006 original members, or an even 2,200 in all.

Lemuel W. Carter, George A. Freeman, and Franklin Fremont, of Company M, and Aaron Williams, of Company G, were of African descent. Thomas Loren, Louis M. Thompson, Thomas Dana, Thomas Lewis, Supple Orson, and John Tomar, of Company B, John Saul, of Company E, and William H. Over, of Company M, were Maine Indians, all except the latter belonging to the Penobscot tribe.

PERSONAL RECORDS.
In compiling the following personal records of the officers and men of the Regiment, the chairman of your committee has consulted every available record which had any bearing on the matter. The Adjutant General's office at Augusta of course furnished the great bulk of the data, but there the records of several hundred of our men are incomplete and a very large number are not accounted for on the final muster-out rolls.

In prosecuting the work every application for State pension since the war, amounting to over 50,000, counting duplicates, on file in the State Pension office, has been examined for facts. Files of all the leading newspapers of the State, published during the war, and the evidence in pension cases on file in the offices of the num­erous pension attorneys in Central and Eastern Maine have been carefully scrutinized. Correspondence, more or less extensive, has been. had with every surviving member of the Regiment whose post-office address could be located, but a large number of our members failed to answer communications. The work was commenced in 1885 and has been continued with diligence ever since. The work is yet more or less incomplete, and without doubt errors and omis­sions will be discovered, but it is offered to you as the result of the conscientious efforts of your chairman, covering a period of eighteen years. No one can realize the amount of research required in a work of this kind and extent until he has a trial of it himself.

The figures following the names in each case indicate the age at time of enlistment, and the letters m. and s. indicate married or single. In case of the field and staff the age was rarely given in the records. The date of promotion is given in each case whenever possible, but in cases where several promotions were received by an individual soldier within the year there was generally no record of any except the last. The places of residence among the recruits arriving early in 1864, the great majority of whom were either dead or absent with wounds when the report was made to the State Adjutant General the following autumn, were found to be erroneous in several hundred cases. These have been corrected as far as possible. The place and date of death of those who have died since their discharge and the place of residence of those now living, so far as has been ascertained, are given. In cases where neither residence nor fact of death is given, nothing is known of the men. Doubtless a large majority of such are dead. In cases of transfer to the Veteran Reserve Corps, the initial letters V. R. C. are used.

This record covers the 2,200 officers and men who actually joined and served with the Regiment, also the 21 men in the Fort Knox, Maine, squad, who remained at that post during their term of enlistment, and who were attached to Company L by order of Colonel Shepherd a few weeks prior to our final muster out on September n, 1865. In addition, a brief record is given of 54 men who were mustered into service as recruits for our Regiment, but for one reason or another never reached us. A roster of the 3d Maine Battery, as it existed on November 1, 1863, is added.

No attempt has been made to compile the record of the mem­bers of the 3d Maine -Battery, which was attached to the Regiment as Company M for several months and then detached, nor of the members of the 17th and 19th Maine Infantry, who joined us about the 1st of June, 1865, except those who served with field and staff and the three commissioned officers transferred from the 17th Maine, and of these only such record as transpired after the transfer.

In order to include such matter as properly belongs in this part of the history and to keep the cost of the book at a figure low enough so it could be sold at a price within the reach of all, the record of each individual soldier is necessarily made brief, but does include, so far as could be ascertained, all the essential points tending to give a clear record of each. The sketches of officers accompanying their pictures, written by Capt. Horace H. Shaw, the historian, are, for the same reason, reduced to a few brief lines in each individual case.