The Project Gutenberg eBook, Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers, by Albert Maxfield and Robert Brady

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Title: Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers

With a Sketch of Its Services in the War of the Rebellion

Author: Albert Maxfield and Robert Brady

Release Date: April 26, 2014 [eBook #45503]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROSTER AND STATISTICAL RECORD OF COMPANY D, OF THE ELEVENTH REGIMENT MAINE INFANTRY VOLUNTEERS***

Roster and Statistical Record
—OF—
COMPANY D,
—OF THE—
Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers,

WITH A SKETCH OF ITS SERVICES
—IN THE—
WAR OF THE REBELLION.

PREPARED BY

ALBERT MAXFIELD and ROBERT BRADY, Jr.

"Far from over the distance,

The faltering echoes come:

Of the flying blast of bugle

And the rattling roll of drum."

In offering this Sketch, Roster and Statistical Record of the services of Company D in the War of the Rebellion, to its members, we wish to acknowledge the kind assistance given in its preparation by the men of D and of the Eleventh; also of that given by citizen friends in Maine, in tracing the fate of members of the Company who have wandered out of view in the twenty-five years that have passed since they were mustered out; and to acknowledge that of Captain Thomas Clark of the Office of the Adjutant-General of Maine, he having kindly furnished us with valuable and necessary information.

In reading the Sketch, members of D will kindly remember that it is written from one point of view only, and that many things they would like to see in it that are not there, may not have been sufficiently well remembered by the writer, if he ever knew them, to enable him to set them down in a trustworthy manner, and, too, that the limitations of space and the unity of the sketch made it necessary for him to leave out many things that he himself would have been glad to have incorporated in the story he had to tell.

The Roster and Statistical Record is as complete as it has seemed possible to make it. That there are blanks where there should be information is not at all the fault of the compiler, he having sought diligently but unsuccessfully for the information the blank spaces should furnish.

ALBERT MAXFIELD,

ROBERT BRADY, Jr.

This Company was formed in the early Fall of 1861. Its members were chiefly from the towns of the upper Penobscot, from Lee, Springfield, Topsfield, Enfield, Prentiss, and contiguous towns; a few from other parts of the State signing the Company rolls at Augusta.

According to its first descriptive list, much the greater number of the original members of D were farmers by occupation at the time of their enlistment, and most of them were young men of from eighteen to twenty-four years of age. And according to the same authority, its voluntary organization consisted of Leonard S. Harvey, Captain; John D. Stanwood, First Lieutenant; Gibson S. Budge, Second Lieutenant; Robert Brady, First Sergeant; with Abner F. Bassett, Jas. W. Noyes, Judson L. Young and Francis M. Johnson as Sergeants; John McDonald, Richard W. Dawe, Ephraim Francis, Hughey G. Rideout, John Sherman, Benjamin Gould, Wm. H. Chamberlain and Freeman R. Dakin as Corporals; Robert A. Strickland, Musician; Henry W. Rider, Wagoner; the rest of the Company, 77 in number, consenting to serve their country as private soldiers.

AUGUSTA AND WASHINGTON.

Thus organized, the Company rendezvoused at Augusta, where, October 19, '61, it was mustered into the service of the United States, as Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers.

The regiment started for Washington, November 13, '61, arriving there on the 16th, and the same day pitched its circular Ellis tents on Meridian Hill, back of Washington, naming its camp "Knox," after the hero of the Revolution that Maine claims as her own.

The only really notable event that took place in the several weeks the regiment occupied Camp Knox, was the Battle of the Sand Pits, by which name the quarrel between the men of the Eleventh and those of a United States Cavalry Regiment camped near Camp Knox, is known to the initiated. Whatever the cause of the quarrel, it culminated in an undisciplined rush to arms and a prompt occupation of the disputed sand pits by the more hot headed of the Eleventh. Fortunately no blood was shed before the officers of the two regiments got their men under control. No reputations were lost in this engagement, and but one was made, that of Private Longley, of D Company, who, with characteristic French-Canadian impetuosity slipped a cartridge into the muzzle of his Belgian rifle, bullet end first, effectually spiking the piece.

The Eleventh was here brigaded with the 104th and 52nd Pennsylvania, the 56th and 100th New York Infantry Regiments, Regan's Seventh New York Battery of three inch ordnance guns attached; Colonel W. W. H. Davis, of the 104th Pennsylvania, in command of the Brigade, by reason of seniority of commission.

Soon after this formation, on New Year's Day, 1862, the brigade went into winter quarters in Carver Barracks, on Meridian Hill. Each regiment was domiciled in a dozen or fourteen one-story wooden houses, shell like structures of from fifty to sixty feet in length, twenty-five or thirty in width, and separated from each other by a street of perhaps twenty-five feet in width. The buildings of each regiment bordered one side of a great esplanade, the garrison flag floating from a tall staff in its center, each building laying a gable end to this square, which was common to all for drill and parade purposes.

Here the Winter