A Civil War Soldier
 

by Isabel Morse Maresh 

It was cold in the old house on the Plains Road in Montville, Maine. Martin couldn’t get out of bed anymore. There was no heat in the old house, as he couldn’t get up to wood the fire in the kitchen stove. Dell was working at a neighboring farm, or so Martin thought. Robbie was in school. The boys tended out on him as best they knew how. Neighbor Maria Griffin checked in now and then, bringing him hot soup.

Martin missed Melinda, the wife of his youth. She had been gone nearly eighteen years now. Memories flooded, as he bore the pain of the old War wounds. Seemed like things had gotten much worse lately. Perhaps it was the chill of winter coming on. He dreaded the cold and loneliness of the coming winter.

Mart, as Melinda and his family fondly called him, recalled that hot July day in 1862, actually the last day of the month, that he had arrived at the farm of Levi Bartlett on the other end of Montville, near the Freedom town line, and next-door to old Mr. Whitten. Mart and his brother, Horace Hannan, had walked, catching a ride part way on the back of a wagon, from South Liberty to the farm to help with the haying. They would be staying with the Bartlett family 'til the loose hay was all in the barn.

That morning they started mowing the field on the lower side of the road. Swish, swish, swish, was the sound of the hand-scythes as Levi stepped into the field, cutting a swath, followed by Mart, who in turn was followed by Horace, then by three farm hands. Swish, swish, swish, as the men kept in rhythm across the hay field. It was hot, as Mart recalled, but he would soon experience heat much hotter than any heat he’d felt on a hot Maine summer day.

As they mowed back across the field after several swaths, a man rode up on a sleek black horse. Levi yelled, asking the man what his business was. After asking the sweaty workmen if they were aware of the bloody battle of the previous year at Bull Run, in which nearly three thousand of the Northern soldiers had been killed, wounded, or just plain missing, he identified himself as a Recruiter for President Abraham Lincoln, who was asking for volunteers to sign on to fight the menacing Southern Army of General and President of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee.

Mart recalled that after the Recruiter left, Levi and the farm help went back to their task of mowing the field, swish, swish, swish. Mart was a strong young man of twenty-two years, able to keep up the hardiest of his friends and neighbors, and able to do a long, hard day’s work. The words brought by the passing messenger echoed in his ears. It shouldn’t take long to whip the Rebels, and keep the country strong and secure.

Levi’s daughter yelled across the field that it was time for dinner as they arrived back by the roadside. Mart hung his scythe in a young sapling maple tree, as the men went back to the farmhouse to eat dinner. He didn’t have much to say that day. He pushed back his plate and chair after eating the hearty dinner prepared by Ann Bartlett and her daughter, Ann, and reached for his straw hat. “I’ll finish the field when I get back,” he told them. “I’m going after that Recruiter!” As he started down the road, he heard Horace yell, “Wait up. I’m going with you!”

Mart and Horace returned home to South Liberty to tell their family of their decision. They had a month to get their affairs in order. There was a beautiful young seventeen-year-old girl over on the New England Road in Searsmont that Mart wanted to speak to before he left.

Mart winced at his pain and the cold, as memories of what that decision had had on his life. He and Horace went to Bath, Maine, along with some of the other men and boys of the community, many of them he knew from Montville, Liberty, Palermo, Searsmont, and other local towns, to be mustered into the service for three years. There they received a royal-blue uniform and cap, a brown woolen Army blanket, and a pair of ill-fitting shoes. They left Bath by train, into an unknown land, with unknown battles to be fought. At Bath they were paid a $25 bounty, after they were sworn into Company B of the Nineteenth Regiment of the Maine Volunteers. “What were we thinking?”, Mart mused. From that day in August, 1862 in Bath, when they were mustered into the Union Army, life as they knew it changed forever.

They first arrived by train in Washington, D. C. From then on, they marched. It seemed that it was always hot. It rained a lot also, as they trudged through mud, sometimes nearly up to their knees. Their meals were mostly hard bread and beef, with strong hot tea. Drills were held, again and again. The enemy was everywhere. It was hard to tell who was friend and who was foe. The only difference was the color of their uniform, and once they were all dirty and dusty, it was even harder to see a difference.

Mart’s memories were vividly real to him, as he tried to get comfortable in the cold old house. As vividly as when he swore out an affidavit, while applying for a pension, about the injuries that he’d received in Dec., 1862. He had been detailed to Hazard’s Battery. At Bell Plains, Virginia, they were building a ‘corduroy’ road just before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He and three comrades were carrying a large log to put into the road. The ground was very rough. Mart winced as he remembered stepping into a hole, and felt the severe pain through his lower stomach and groin area. Doctor Billings told him that he had ruptured his groin area and his testicles.

The War ground on. Some of the men had come down with measles. No one would have thought that a childhood disease like measles, would kill grown men, but several men had perished as the result of contracting the measles. Mart had heard of another Company having the threat of a smallpox outbreak.

In March of 1863, some of the officers felt that Mart had leadership qualities and promoted him to Captain. He’d made some good friends, a few who had left home with him, among whom were John M. Wellington, Orrin Overlock, Edward Mitchell, Stephen Daggett, Benjamin Crooker, and Israel H. Cross, and oh, so many other comrades. There were some good times with the comrades, but it was hard to recall them now. They’d play cards at night, if they were not too tired, and it was a time to write home, if one had paper, a pen, and a stamp. Ink was hard to come by, and a letter written in ink could easily be smudged if the rain got on it. If someone had a musical instrument, the mournful sound carried throughout the camp.

In the middle of June, 1863, while they were marching from Falmouth and Fredericksburg, Virginia, at a place called Dumfree, Virginia, it had been a very hot day, so hot that Mart felt that he couldn’t go on. The next thing he remembered, he woke up, looking up at the hot sun, now knowing how long he’d been unconscious. He crawled under some bushes by the side of the road. That day about a dozen of his comrades had been stricken by the heat. Brother Horace and Bill Churchill were also on the march that day. Israel Cross, the comrade from Lincolnville, stayed with Mart til nightfall, which brought a little relief. The soldiers brought the stricken men into camp late at night in an Army hospital wagon. Dr. Billings tended to him, and other fallen soldiers. The next night Mart and Israel caught up with the Regiment. Some men were not so lucky, and completely heat-struck.

On and on throughout the country they marched. It was always hot. In July, 1863, they’d marched to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Mart had never seen so many men in one place, lined up on opposite knolls. Then all hell broke loose. Men fell on the left, on the right, in front and behind him. He could hear screams, yelling and moans of the wounded and dying. There was no time to even think of his younger brother, Horace. Then he felt the hit. He’d been struck by a shell fragment in his left hip. It broke the skin, but he was so much better off than many around him. He did not complain. That night his comrades convinced him to tell the Regiment surgeon, Doctor Billings, who dressed the wound and applied a plaster. But the darn thing wouldn’t stay on, and chaffed it even more. He threw the plaster by the roadside. But, yes sir, he was back in action the very next day. In September, 1863, he was once again promoted, this time to Sergeant.

In January, 1864, Major Rollins and Captain McDonald, the commanders of the Invalid Corps ordered Mart to Camp Berry in Portland, Maine as a Recruiter. He wondered if he should have tried to convince others to go through what he had been through. But that old War couldn’t last forever. He was allowed a furlough to go home. The cold Maine winter seemed pretty darn good to him, after the extreme heat of the South.

While home on a furlough, Mart went to Searsmont to see pretty Melinda Herrick, who lived with her parents, Andrew and Betsey Herrick on the New England Road. Mart and Melinda were married in Montville on February twenty-first, 1864, by Rev. Moses McFarland. They intended to spend the rest of their lives together. Mart returned to Portland, where he was Recruiting officer til January, 1864, when he returned to his Regiment. He received an honorable discharge from the Army at Bailey’s Crossing, Virginia on the thirty-first of May, 1865. Nearly three years in the service of the Union, and he had the scars and pain to show for his service time. Mart recalled that he felt as though he’d been through the fires and trials that the ministers preached about in the Sunday services that the servicemen had attended.

Mart returned to South Liberty, where he purchased the seventy-acre farm that had belonged to old Robert Lermond, who had died in 1860, bordering on the farm of his parents, John C. and Julia Hannan. The farmhouse had been vacant for some time. Robert Lermond’s son, John, who lived over in the Fishtown section of Appleton, had purchased the farm from the heirs. Mart and Melinda had moved onto the farm shortly after their marriage. He’d gotten the farm paid off in 1870, receiving the deed at that time from Lermond.

Mart and Melinda settled down to raise a family on the farm. Their firstborn, Charley was born in 1866, followed by Annie, Addie, Herbert, Rose, as pretty as her name, Odell, named for Mart’s grandfather, John Odell Hannan, Carrie, who he fondly called ‘Cad’, Ella, and the baby, Robbie, born after moving up to the Plains, in 1885.

Mart did some farming, and coopering in his shop, where he made barrels, called casks, for the lime industry in Rockland. He’d harness up the horse, load the hay wagon with casks, drive through Fishtown and Burkettville, to Union, down through Rockport, on to Rockland. The casks did not bring in much money, but the work was light, and could be done on rainy days and early evenings in the summer, as well as the cold snowy days in the winter in his cooper shop where he kept a wood fire to take off the chill. On the way home from Rockland, after delivering the barrels to the lime industry, he would pick up staples by the barrel, gallon or sack, such as flour, crackers, molasses, etc., and a little treat for the young ones, if the load had been profitable at all.

Since his discharge from the Army, Mart had suffered from heart palpations, dizziness and even fainting spells. One day he passed out while working on the farm. His brother Bill happened along, thinking that Mart was dead, quickly went for their parents, John C. and Julia Hannan. Dr. Young was called, and admonished Mart to keep out of the sun. The doctor had considered that it was probably from the heatstroke suffered in the South.  Any exertion brought on dizzy spells. The War wound and rupture were a constant source of pain. He sometimes told of troubles in his head.

Mart applied for a Government Pension. James Fish who had known Mart since he was a young child, testified by affidavit as to how rugged a man Mart had been before he went to War. His War comrades, Edwin S. Mitchell, who had once been a tent mate, testified that he saw Mart fall under the weight of the log in the Army at Bell Plains. Another old tent mate, Israel H. Cross of Lincolnville, testified by affidavit of watching over Mart when he was unconscious over half a day with sun stroke. After returning home, Mart had been treated by Dr. Young, who had died in 1875, then by Dr. B. H. Bacheldor of Montville, until his death in 1889, and later treated by Dr. E. L. Porter of Liberty.

As Mart signed his name, Martin Hannan, on affidavit after affidavit, he recalled that he had been named for his grandfather, Martin Overlock, a descendant of the hardy German immigrants who had come to Old Broad Bay, later called Waldoboro, from Germany, many years before settling in South Liberty. The elder Martin lived to a ripe old age.

Mart’s neighbor, Hathorne Brawn, who later married his daughter, Annie, testified by affidavit that Mart was often struck by nervousness and prostration, and would suffer from coldness even on a hot day. George Smith, a near neighbor for about ten years, testified by affidavit in 1893 that Mart suffered from shortness of breath, and could not do hard labor. Mart received a Pension of $4 a month, eventually increased to $8 a month for the rest of his life.

Mart and Melinda were doing fairly well on the farm in South Liberty. In Mart’s eyes, she was a beautiful girl. She kept the children fed and clean, scrubbing their clothes on a washboard, carrying water from the well for the household, as well as helping him with the little garden that they grew. She canned and salted down the vegetables for their winter larder. He had a cow, a horse, and annually raised a pig for their table use. He and Melinda salted down the pork for use in baking Saturday night baked beans, and for ‘trying’ out each day to eat on the potatoes and vegetables that they raised in the garden. It seemed to him that Melinda worked a little harder than a lot of the neighbor women, because of the fact that he was just not able to do what he’d liked to have done. Some days it was just hard breathing. Melinda and young Herbert would do the farm work, as well as keeping the family together. Mart had taught Herbert to shoot. They both were quite lucky hunters, bringing in venison and rabbits to supplement the family larder.

Melinda’s sister, Olive Robinson, lived way Down East. She and Melinda kept in touch by letters. Shortly before Robbie birth, Melinda wrote to Olive, telling her that Mart had finally gotten his Pension, and that Charley would be bringing her down to visit one of these days.

Mart and Melinda, with their growing family, had moved from his father’s neighborhood in South Liberty in the fall of 1884, to a farmhouse with twenty acres, more or less, on the Plains Road in Montville. He had purchased the farm from his Aunt Sarah Hannan for $125. They had moved into the farmhouse, giving Aunt Sarah payments, such as he could, with the boys’ help, until the place was paid off.

It was five and half weeks after baby Robbie was born, and Melinda still had not rallied. It was her eighth child, a difficult birth, and she was sinking fast. Melinda’s mother had died a year after their marriage. Her father, Andrew, had hung himself during a time of depression in April of the previous year. Martin’s mother, Julie, passed away on the nineteenth of February, 1885, so there was no one in the family to come to their assistance. Their girls did what they could, and tended out on the younger children, getting meals, and generally keeping house. Melinda died on Wednesday, the twenty-second of April 1885. She was only forty years old. He laid her to rest beside her parents in the Village Cemetery in Searsmont. There was a small wooden marker to mark her gravesite, with no stone to mark his in-laws’ graves. He planned to buy Melinda a fancy headstone, but the little wooden marker would have to do for the time being.

On the very day that Melinda died, Aunt Sarah had signed the papers deeding the property to Mart. It was to be the home that Mart and Melinda would farm and live to old age together.

After Melinda’s death, with an infant to take care of, living on the Plains Road, Mart struggled to keep his family together. The girls helped care for little Robbie. Annie had married a month before Melinda’s death, at age seventeen, to Hawthorn Brawn, and lived nearby. Addie, who a lot of people called Jennie, was age fifteen, when she married Daniel Linscott six months after Melinda’s death. Daniel was nine years older than Addie.  In spite of rumors, Mart hoped that Daniel would be good to his daughter.

Herbert was but twelve years old when his mother died. He’d always been a help to Mart, even when he was a small child. He seemed to sense that his father was not well. Because Mart was not well enough to do hard labor, he had a lot of time to watch over little Robbie. When Melinda died, Charley was nineteen, a year older than Horace had been when they joined the Army. Charles was out on his own, working at local farms. Rose was eleven years old, Odell was nine, Cad, nearly six, Ella was four years old, and baby Robert was just a tiny infant of a little over a month old. Mart had always been so good at remembering his children’s birth dates, but he was getting a little forgetful. Who could blame him?

Mart remember the fateful day in 1891, when ten-year old Ella, a beautiful fair-skinned child, who looked so much like her mother, fell out of the old apple tree while playing with Cad. She struck on her head and neck, and almost immediately perished. There was no room to bury Ella with her mother, so Mart had purchased a cemetery plot in Searsmont, in the Pine Grove Cemetery, near the South Montville Town line. Two lives cut short in a brief span of time, in the prime of their lives, taking a piece of Mart’s heart with them. How he missed them both. Someday he’d move Melinda’s remains there to be interred next to Ella, and he when his time came..

Mart’s father, John Colby Hannan, who had also served in the Civil War, died on the fifteenth of August 1901. He was 82 years old. John had not served in the same Regiment as Mart, Horace, and later William. When talking about their War experiences, John had told Mart on more than one occasion, how hard it had been for an older man to keep up with the younger soldiers.

So many of those closest to Mart had gone on before him. Mart attempted to shift over in his bed, though he could not move much because of the pain. He was trying to keep warm. It was now November, 1903. Winter seemed to coming in early, or perhaps it was just his old bones that thought that it was colder than usual. Perhaps Maria would bring in some hot soup or oatmeal this morning. Hark! Did his ears deceive him, or did he hear sleigh bells? Someone was at the door. “Maria?”, he called. It was not Maria, but Herbert coming to check on him. Behind him followed Cad, and Dell. Dell had not gone to work, but had gone for Herbert and Cad instead.

Cad had her own problems. She had married the mail carrier, Charles Marden, when she was eighteen. Little Delbert, her first-born son had drowned in the mill pond two months ago. He was a month shy of being 5 years old.

“What’s that you say, Cad? It’s colder in here than outside. I just can’t get out of bed to wood the fires.” “What’s that, you say, Herbert? You’re taking me home with you.”

Cad put Mart’s old royal-blue Army coat with the brass military buttons onto him. Today it would nearly go around him twice. “My, Papa, you’ve lost weight”, Cad said. He supposed that he had. When he entered the Army, they weighed and measured him at Bath. He was five feet, nine and a half inches tall, and weighed a good sum. They recorded that he had a light complexion, dark eyes and brown hair. What hair he had left was totally white. Melinda always said that he had “pretty blue eyes”. Yes, he was sure that he probably had lost some weight, and was but a shadow of the man that he had been, when he left the hayfield in the prime of his life, to go to War. He recalled that day, when he had hung the scythe in the crotch of the sapling maple. He had fully intended to come back and finish up the haying, but it wasn’t meant to be. He’d met Levi Bartlett a few years back. Levi told him that the tree had grown around the scythe, and he had left it as a testimony to the young man who’d gone off the fight the Rebels.

His mind snapped back to the present. Herbert and Dell got Martin onto a home-made stretcher. Cad and Dell were wrapping his old brown woolen Army blanket around him. He recalled the many nights in the South, when he slept with the old blanket on the cold ground. But, that was in the past.

Mart’s two sons gently carried their father out to the waiting horse and loaded him onto the pung, with Cad riding on the back with him. They then drove the horse across the Plains Road to Ben Boynton’s farm in the Kingdom, where Herbert’s wife [and Ben’s daughter] Millie, and children were waiting in the warm old farmhouse kitchen. A bed had been prepared for Mart in the front parlor where a fire was burning brightly in the parlor stove. Mart was warmly and lovingly tucked into bed. As they took off the blue Army coat, four-year old Mildred, and Gladys, not quite two years old, rubbed the soft wool of the coat, while Herbert, Jr., aged a year and a half, was fascinated by the shiny brass buttons. Mart told Cad to give the coat to Mille to make warm outerwear for the little ones. He said, “I probably will have no more use of it now!”

Millie brought Mart some venison stew and hot “slut” biscuits with home-made butter. Herbert brought him a glass of cold raw milk, which tasted so good. Old Ben Boynton welcomed Mart to their home. The young ones roamed in and out of the room, chatting to him and each other, seemingly happy to have him there. Mart enjoyed telling them stories of his War years, reminding them that their great-grandfather, John Colby Hannan, had also served in the War, along with great-uncles, Horace and William. Mart knew that the children were too young to understand all that he told them, but he enjoyed their company.

Mart spent a pleasant winter, though his body was wasting away and racked with pain. Spring would soon come, and perhaps some time outside would be pleasant. He could dream of the warm days. Dr. Albert D. Ramsay of Brooks came to treat and medicate him, to try to make him more comfortable from the chronic inflammation of the old War wounds.

Martin Van Buren Hannan died in the loving home of Herbert, Millie and their young children on a warm Spring day, on Sunday, April tenth, 1904. He was but sixty-four years of age, but had suffered much more than a man of his years should have. He was laid to rest in the Pine Grove Cemetery in Searsmont, with little Ella. He’d never gotten around to bringing Melinda’s remains to join him and Ella. There was no gravestone to mark his burial site, until many years later, when his descendants, Mildred, Gladys, Herbert and David obtained a Government grave marker and a simple gray granite monument with “HANNAN” etched on it, as well as grave markers for Herbert and Millie. 

[In 2006, great-granson, Fred Bragdon, of Vassalboro, Maine, had the Government gravestone for Martin Hannan, in Pine Grove Cemetery, turned over and engraved with the correct data.  The former gravestone had 'MARINE' engraved on it in error.  Fred had the etching changed to 'MAINE'.]