Musings Part 2: Civil War Veteran

Musings Part 2: Civil War Veteran

Right next to Francis M. Carter’s gravestone is an impressive one for George H. Dunham. It looks more recent than Frank’s even though George was a Civil War, not World War II, veteran.  Etched in a reddish hued stone are his dates, 1838 – 1916, and service, US Navy. 

Then the mystery begins.  Two lines read, “USN Member Phil. Sheridan Post 34 GAR Schuyler Nebraska”.  It set me on the trail of George’s story.  

Fortunately, there are two other Dunham monuments, one for William H. Dunham, two years younger than George, and William’s wife, Augusta A. Dunham, whose names and dates helped to identify George. 

In the middle of the night when I began my research trek, resources were limited.  The War Monument and Memorial Bridge Markers tri-fold pamphlet created by the North Hampton Heritage Commission lists the names of local veterans inscribed on the Town’s war monument that is located in front of the stone building.  No George Dunham.

But I did learn a bit about George’s military service from free sources on the internet.  George was born and raised in Cambridge Massachusetts.  He was a substitute i.e. was paid by someone who had been drafted in 1863 and did not wish to leave home and go to war.  He was mustered into the 8th New Hampshire Regiment as a Private. The infantry regiment at that time was in Louisiana.  Within a year George transferred to the US Navy as a Seaman.  He served on the USS Cayuga. 

So what did he do and what was the Navy doing?  Any self-respecting Civil War buff knows what the Union Navy was doing.  Blockading the ports of the seceded states, including aiding in the siege of Vicksburg.  

Launched in 1861,  the USS Cayuga spent the war on the lower Mississippi River and along the Gulf coast of Texas.  George is listed as Surgeon’s Assistant or Surgeon’s Steward in a couple of on-line military documents. What qualified him for such duty?  Did his occupation as a carpenter, gleaned later from census records, give him skills that a surgeon might appreciate?

What prompted George to go west to Nebraska after the war?  And how long after the war?  He married Francis Clark in Boston in 1867.  Did he return home just to marry his sweetheart?  And what did he do in Nebraska? Apparently carpentry, especially staircase making, following in his father’s footsteps. But why would the GAR chapter in Nebraska pay for his monument in North Hampton  -- and take prominent credit for it? 

I shot off an email to the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg PA thinking they might have the GAR records that would explain the monument. The Grand Army of the Republic, formed in 1866, was composed of veterans who had fought for the Union.  When the last Union veteran died in 1956, the organization ceased to exist but there is a successor organization, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, organized in 1881, and continuing today with its headquarters at the Museum.

The Museum’s Education Director provided additional information, and offered to send me copies of the pertinent documents comprising George’s pension records that are at the National Archives.  I, of course, accepted, little anticipating a USPS Priority Mail packet of around 100 pages.  

George’s last address, the one the government had for his pension payments, was 19 Tuttle Street, Cliftondale, MA. (Cliftondale I learned is one of the neighborhoods within Saugus, located east of Route 1). In 1896, however, when George filed for a pension, his post office address is Schuyler, Colfax County, Nebraska; he was there as late as 1908.  In a 1914 letter relating to a pension request, his sister Julia Dunham wrote about the declining state of George’s health.

Had he returned east to live with sister Julia and perhaps later with brother William in North Hampton?  In 1910 William and his wife were living with the family of their son-in-law, Willard Philbrook, in North Hampton.  Did George join that household?  He died before the next census. William in 1920 was living with his granddaughter Mabel Philbrook in North Hampton; and in 1930 with Mabel’s husband, Henry B. Hobbs, and family in Hampton.  

Did George die in North Hampton?  Evidently not as he is not listed among deaths in the North Hampton annual town report.  Where is George’s wife buried?  And why would the Nebraska GAR post pay for such a nice a monument at Center Cemetery, North Hampton anyway?

Is it possible to find out?  How little we really know about the past.