One of the almost-forgotten aspects of warfare in World War I was the dependence of the military on wood supplies.  The Allies’ war effort required a tremendous amount of lumber for their operations.  It was used for shoring up trenches and mines, lining roads to make them passable after destruction by shelling and overuse, building structures such as hospitals, ordnance depots and bridges, supporting barbed wire barriers, and manufacturing smaller but necessary items such as boxes for shells.

There were still forests in Britain, many on private lands, but the manpower needs of the war had created a shortage of labor to cut them down.  In April 1917, a colonel attached to the British War Office sent a cable to an American colonel in Boston mentioning this critical need.  Lumbering was something at which Americans had experience to offer.  Government and industry leaders in New England decided to recruit and equip ten units of skilled men and send them to the Allies’ aid.  Getting approval from both sides of the Atlantic took a month, so the practical work started in mid-May.

Part of the committee that got the process going was Arthur F. Blanchard of West Acton.  Each New England state pledged to equip a sawmill unit at an estimated cost of $12,000-$14,000 each, including the cost of food, lodging, medical care, and the issue of “hat, shoes, mackinaw and oilskins” (Boston Daily Globe, May 23, 1917, page 10).  Private lumbering companies, including Blanchard’s, pledged money to pay for four additional companies.  The British government would provide transportation to and from England and would pay the men’s salaries from the time of sailing, for a term of up to a year’s service.

According to the Boston Daily Globe (June 12, 1917, page 4), some people predicted that the venture would fail because of scarce labor in lumbering in the United States.  This concern was unfounded.  The committee advertised and within two days had enough men for three units.  Many applications were reviewed and eventually whittled down to about 35 men per unit plus support staff.  One of the units was composed mostly of men from Acton and surrounding towns under the leadership of Arthur Blanchard’s son Webster.  Locally, it was thought of as the Blanchard & Gould company, but its title was New England Sawmill Unit No. 3.

The logistics were daunting.  Each unit was to have a portable sawmill and everything it needed to function independently for a year, including an engine and boiler, wagons, axes, saws, blacksmiths’ and carpenters’ tools, harnesses, lamps, cooking utensils, bedding, and other camp equipment.  Over two thousand different items were procured, carefully accounted for so that each would go to the proper unit, and delivered to Boston.  One-hundred and twenty work-ready horses were bought and kept in Watertown until it was time to ship out.  On the personnel side, men had to be found who were experienced, “of good character,” and willing to sail on two days’ notice.  Each man needed to be approved for a passport and to sign an individual contract with the British government.  Not only were men needed to deal with cutting, transporting and milling the lumber, (in roles such as the interestingly named “head chopper” and “swamper”), but there was also need of cooks, bookkeepers, blacksmiths and veterinary support.  In an amazing feat of cooperation and organization, the ten units were created, equipped, and ready to go in a month.  America’s military was just gearing up at the time, and New Englanders were proud of getting help to their allies so quickly.  A self-congratulatory note appeared in an industry publication: “There was not an amateur or an epaulette connected with the affair.  It was worked out practically – hence its success.” (Lumber World Review, Nov. 10, 1917, p. 54)

When organized, the lumbermen convened in Boston where they stayed at the South Armory.  The committee had organized a welcome for them, arranging for them to see a baseball game and be eligible for free motion picture and vaudeville performances.  At least some of the men also participated in the Elks’ Flag Day parade, accompanied by their mascot, a black bear cub.  The Saw Mill Unit’s send-off seems surprisingly generous, but they were in the vanguard.  There may also have been a less generous motivation; the organizers seem to have been nervous about lumberjacks running amok.  “The Ten Mill Units are a civilian, not a military organization, so it was impossible to impose military discipline on the men, many of them loose in a large city for the first time in their lives.  However, it must be said, that the men behaved a lot better than anticipated.” (Lumber World Review, November 10, 1917 p. 54)  On the evening of June 14, they were feted at a banquet at the Boston City Club.  The Christian Science Monitor noted the next day the unusual nature of the dinner as members of the club and the Public Safety Committee in dress suits mingled with lumberjacks, “some in overalls, moccasins, flannel shirts and bared arms, the type of men who fought in the American Revolution.” (June 15, 1917, p 7)  Despite concerns over attire, it was reported to have been a successful event.

For the organizers, there was some stress as departure-time approached, because some of the expected men did not show up.  According to the Lumber World Review article, as late as the morning of the day of departure, they were missing three cooks and a couple of blacksmiths.  Somehow they were able to fill the slots, “although the last cook got over the gang plank just as it was being raised.” (p. 54)  

The Sawmill Unit sailed to New York, arriving on June 16th.  On the 18th, they sailed on the troopship Justicia to Halifax, staying in port until June 25th, when they were joined by 4,000-5,000 Canadian troops and headed across the Atlantic.  A letter written at sea by Whitney Bent described the trip. (Concord Enterprise, July 25, 1917, p. 7)  Two ships accompanied them at a distance of about ¾ of a mile, one with the horses and wheat and one that carried nitroglycerine.  The Justicia apparently also carried wheat and lumber.  The letter did not mention where all the equipment was, perhaps with the horses.  It was, fortunately, a relatively smooth sail.  The men were required to wear life preservers at all times.  They slept in tightly-arranged hammocks, alternating in direction of head and feet.  For most of the journey, there was not much to see except the other ships and occasional whales, although the men kept busy with “church, boxing, cards and reading” and received news and baseball scores by wireless.  A dog fight between different groups’ pets interrupted the monotony.  On July 3, Bent added to his letter that they had been joined by “submarine chasers” and there were possible submarine sightings that day and the night before.  The Boston Daily Globe, (Aug. 19, 1917, p. 36), printed a letter from Hugh Connors of Maynard who also described the trip.  “We arrived, as you probably know, July 5, [in Scotland], after a long tiresome trip.  The last two days we were in the war zone.  We had been on the boat so long that some of the boys didn’t care whether we were torpedoed or not.”  According to Mr. Connors, at the end of the trip, the boat was fired upon by two German submarines.  Two torpedoes were fired, but missed by 12 feet or less.  A contrasting letter, written to the head of the organizing committee back in Massachusetts by Downing P. Brown, general manager of the ten mill units, said that “For a time there was considerable conjecture about the possibility of submarines, etc., but as soon as the fleet of destroyers arrived, the tension relaxed and everyone felt safe.” (Lumber World Review, Nov. 10, 1917, p. 56)  The different tone may have been because of censors.  The Boston Sunday Globe (Aug. 26, 1917, a.m. edition,  p. 10) quoted a letter from Hap Reed to his parents that the Atlantic crossing was “a most bitter experience – more than I can write about” and that British censors were keeping the men from revealing details of the trip.  Whatever actually happened, it was a dangerous time to cross the Atlantic.

After landing in Liverpool, the “lumberjack unit” took a train to northern Scotland where they were to work in forests on private estates, including that of Andrew Carnegie.  Unit No. 3 worked at Ardgay.  They had to wait for their equipment to arrive by boat.   The Concord Enterprise (Aug. 22, 1917, p. 3) reported that the “Blanchard & Gould mill known officially as Unit No. 3. had the distinction of cutting and sawing the first lumber on foreign soil for the cause of the Allies, by an organized body of men and complete equipment from the United States.”  The first work was done by Burpee Steele of Boxboro and G. Howard Reed of Acton.  Three officers from the general staff were present and inscribed a piece of wood with “First Lumber Sawed by American Lumbermen in this Country, July 28, 1917 at 3:20 p m.”  A portion was inscribed by Reed and Steele and given as a gift to Arthur Blanchard for Christmas, 1917.  The Society has a picture of the inscription.

Once the mills were up and running, the men worked hard.  Friendly rivalry seems to have boosted their productivity; letters home periodically mentioned units’ records relative to the others.  An unsourced newspaper clipping in the Society’s collection (from sometime after March 23, 1918) reported that Unit No. 3 was proud to have been the first to reach the million-foot mark.  They were also pleased that they increased their productivity enough in December, 1917 to maintain their weekly average output despite Scotland’s low sunlight at that time of year and a week off at the end of the month.

The men of the whole Sawmill Unit were treated well by the local inhabitants of the region and seem to have caused little trouble, though a retrospective article in the Northern Times mentioned occasional rowdiness, attributed to the locals being a bit too generous in supplying alcohol.  (It also mentioned one serious accident that we did not find in our local newspapers.)  Published reports of the time generally focused on lumber production, not leisure activities, but we do know Unit 3’s clerk Glenn Gould was considered the unit’s musician and seems somehow to have had access to a phonograph.  We also know that about half of the sawmill men took the train to London for their December break to see the sights.  There must have been some time for mingling, because according to the Boston Sunday Herald, “more than a dozen Scotch wives” would head to America when the Sawmill Unit returned (June 30, 1918, p. B2) 

By all reports, the Sawmill Unit was a success.  The men produced more than 20,000,000 feet of lumber for the Allies.  Though they were exempt from the draft during the term of their contract with the British government, they worked long hours and completed the job early.  According to a Boston Globe article, the New England Sawmill Unit was commended by the British government for doing “twice the work at half the cost of any organization producing lumber for war service.” (Dec. 1, 1918, p. 16)  Their efforts were also noticed by soldiers in the trenches. The same article quoted a soldier’s letter that having boards lining the trenches “was particularly appreciated in wet weather, when we were protected from the mud and water which otherwise would have been around on all sides.”

Though the Sawmill Unit fulfilled their contract, the war continued.  Most of the men of the unit, as soon as their work was completed, enlisted in the military.  Apparently, their status had been subject to much “diplomatic correspondence” between the British and American authorities.  “Many of the young men resented the fact that they were published in their districts as delinquents [from registering for the draft], though their records were ultimately cleared.” (Boston Globe, June 16, 1918, page 7)  Over a hundred of them joined the U.S. Army’s 20th Engineers who dealt with overseas forestry activities.  Six Acton men from Sawmill Unit No. 3 were among them.  A large number of the sawmill men, including Webster Blanchard, went into the Navy.  That sounds surprising, but there were significant naval operations near northern Scotland.

We did not find any mention in newspapers on this side of the Atlantic of what happened to the animals and equipment after the sawmill unit disbanded.  However, we did find a June, 1919 ad in the Aberdeen Press and Journal stating that the Timber Supply Department of Scotland was selling ten portable New England Sawmills, complete with spare parts.  That September, the first reunion of the New England Saw Mill Unit was held in Boston.  Twelve local men attended, and “Webb” Blanchard presided.

The Society is lucky to have a collection of Webster Blanchard’s photographs showing Unit 3’s and other sawmills in operation, the Unit 3 crew, the horses, and even the pets that they brought over with them.  You can view the photographs at Jenks Library during our open hours. We would like to add to our collection; if anyone has photographs with members of Unit No. 3 identified, letters written by them from Scotland, or any other Acton-related World War 1 pictures and materials, we would be grateful for donations, copies, or scans.

Captain Isaac Davis's company of minute men gathered to leave for the Concord fight on April 19, 1775 at his home farm.  Current residents of Acton sometimes refer to the house currently standing on the property as the “Isaac Davis House.”  Given the fact that there is a granite monument in front that says in large letters “DAVIS HOME”, it’s an understandable shorthand.  Jenks Library has in its collection postcards going back more than a century that picture the current house and are labeled “Home of Isaac Davis”.  But did Isaac Davis really live in that house?

Unfortunately, what was once common knowledge has become lost as successive generations have associated the “home” on the granite marker with the building they see behind it.  In this case, old sources are very clear.  Rev. James Fletcher, in his 1890 history of Acton, (page 261), wrote “The house in which [Isaac Davis] lived, has been replaced by another and that one repaired and enlarged....  The original house was two story in front, and the back sloped down to one, the kitchen in the lower part.”  (It sounds very similar to the Society’s Hosmer House before it was enlarged to accommodate a second household.)

Thanks to D. Henry Scarlett’s helpful notebook, we can access the more colorful recollection of Moses Taylor who evidently had lived nearby as a child and played with the children of Nathaniel Brown who owned the farm.  (Nathaniel's father Captain Joseph Brown bought the property after Isaac Davis’s death.)  As related by Scarlett in 1906, “The house of Capt. Davis was not torn down by Nathl Brown, he only built the L which stands today.  Ward S. Haskell tore down the main or original part, totally destroyed it; and a few of the timbers were used in building the new main part while most of the lumber was used in building the hog house which still stands, at the rear of the present house.  The one large pine timber in this hog house is a cross-beam from the room in which Davis was laid out.”

Question answered.

Family researchers sometimes find pre-1850 US federal censuses to be frustratingly sparse, but they can yield useful discoveries.  Perusing the 1840 census, we discovered that it listed Acton’s pensioners from the Revolutionary War.  Among them we found John Oliver, age 92.  Curious about him, as his name was not as familiar as the minute men of April 19, 1775, we traced him through existing federal censuses, military documents, and Acton town records. 
 
In the 1790 census, John Oliver’s household was listed in the “free white” column, with one male aged 16 or over, one male under 16, and five females.  In 1800 and 1810, John Oliver’s household of five was listed in the column for other persons (i.e., not considered white, not slaves, and not “Indians not taxed”).  The ages and gender of household members were not specified.  In 1820, the household consisted of a free white male and female, both age 45 or older, with one person engaged in agriculture.  In 1830, John Oliver’s household members were all listed as “free colored persons”; three males (one each in the age categories 10-23, 24-35, and 36-54), and seven females (two under 10, two between 10-23, three between 24-35, and one each between 36-54 and 55-99).  (Oddly, this does not seem to include a male as old as John Oliver himself; there is not enough information to sort out whether it was a simple error or something else.)  Finally, in 1840, John Oliver was listed as a 92-year-old military pensioner in a household of five “free white persons,” one male in his nineties, one female in her forties, and three children under the age of ten, two boys and a girl. 
 
Though official records were inconsistent in classifying John Oliver’s race, they were remarkably consistent with respect to his Revolutionary War service.  It is very well-documented, partly because he lived long enough to be eligible for a military pension and partly because he served in several companies for which written evidence exists.  His 1832 pension application contains the record of John Oliver’s testimony in open court about his Revolutionary War service as well as corroborating statements from those who knew him. 
 
John Oliver stated that at the end of April 1775 he enlisted at Acton, was stationed in Cambridge at “the colleges,” participated in Battle of Bunker Hill, and was moved to Winter Hill, serving for a total of eight months.  (Locations are shown at the top left of a 1775 map.)  His officers were Colonel John “Nickerson” (Framingham, actually Nixon), Lt. Colonel Thomas “Nickerson” (Framingham), Captain William Smith (Lincoln), 1st Lt. John Hale of Acton (actually Heald, probably the court clerk’s error), and 2nd Lt. John Hartwell (Lincoln).  This shows up in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (MSSRW), a massive undertaking by the Secretary of the Commonwealth in the 1890s and early 1900s that pulled together extant written records to try to document military service.  It corroborates John Oliver’s service in Captain William Smith’s Company, Col. John Nixon’s 5th regiment, with an enlistment date of April 24, 1775 (v. 11 p. 639).  As he stated, he stayed after the original enlistment term of 3 months and 15 days had expired, as he showed up on a September 30, 1775 company roll.  In John Oliver’s pension application, Solomon Smith of Acton, age 78, confirmed both John Oliver's membership in Capt. William Smith’s company and his eight months’ service.  Smith mentioned officers Col. John “Nickson” of Framingham and 1st Lt. John Heald of Acton.  Lt. Heald actually commanded the company at Bunker Hill, as Captain Smith was ill.
 
John Oliver stated that he enlisted in February 1776 for two months and was stationed in Cambridge at “the colleges,” serving in the company of Captain Asa Wheeler (of Sudbury) in Col. “Roberson’s” Regiment.  In the pension application, James Wright of Carlisle, age 78, confirmed Oliver’s Feb. 1776 service in that company.  MSSRW (p.639) similarly shows that he served in Capt. Asahel Wheeler’s Company, Col. John Robinson’s regiment that marched Feb. 4 (year not given), service 1 month, 28 days.  That service was precipitated by the need in early 1776 to strengthen the American position around the city.  The culmination of that effort was the evacuation of the British from Boston on March 17, 1776.
 
John Oliver next enlisted in Acton in September 1776, serving for two months and participating in the Battle of White Plains in Col. Eleazer Brooks’ Regiment, Capt. Simon Hunt’s company.  Solomon Smith confirmed that 1776 service in his deposition, and MSSRW (p. 648) showed that John “Olliver” of Acton was with Captain Hunt at White Plains.  Brooks’ regiment was in the heavy fighting at Chatterton Hill in the White Plains battle on October 28, 1776.  They had apparently been sent across the Bronx River to occupy the hill but did not have time to create more than the most quickly-formed defenses before the fighting began.  Accounts vary, but it seems that the primary defensive structure for John Oliver’s unit was a stone wall and that the Americans did not have artillery support to match their opponents'.  The fighting against both British and Hessian forces was brief but intense, and the Americans retreated.
 
John Oliver stated that around April 1778, he enlisted at Acton for three months, but “owing to circumstances he hired one [_ben?] Leighton to go as a substitute for him for the term of one month.”  After the month, John Oliver went to Cambridge where Leighton was stationed and served until the expiration of the three-month term.   His officers were Col. Jonathan Reed (Littleton), Capt. Harrington (Lexington) and 1st Lt. Elisha Jones (Lincoln).  This was the only service for which John Oliver seems to have lacked corroboration in 1832.  The pension application reported “the only evidence that he can obtain would be from one Ephraim Billings whose mind is very much broken he is unable to give his deposition upon that account.”  (Ephraim Billings was the sergeant of that company.)  MSSRW (v. 11, p.647) has an entry that John Olivers of Acton was on a list of men detached from Col. Brooks’ Regiment to relieve guards at Cambridge (“year not given probably 1778”) and was reported as belonging to a company commanded by Lt. Heald, Jr. of Acton.  According to a muster roll dated May 9, 1778, Col. Jonathan Reed of Littleton was in command of a detachment in Cambridge.  Capt. Daniel Harrington and 2nd Lt. Elisha Jones served under him there, so John Oliver may well have been transferred to their command in the spring of 1778.
 
Finally, in 1780, John Oliver enlisted at Acton for six months’ service in and around West Point.  He said that he served in Col. Brooks’ Regiment under Capt. White and Ensign Levi Parker (Westford).  MSSRW (v. 11, p. 639) places him in Captain William Scott’s company, marching out July 22, 1780 and serving six months.  Perhaps he was transferred; the Continental Army seems to have undergone various reorganizations over time.  Several extant lists show John Oliver as a six-month volunteer in 1780.  One list describes him as 23 years old, 5 feet, 6 inches tall, complexion dark, engaged for the town of Acton.  He was present at Camp Totoway, Oct. 25, 1780.  In the pension application, Charles Handly of Acton, age seventy, testified that Oliver enlisted into the continental service for six months in 1780 and first marched to West Point, from there to New Jersey, and then to West Point and then was discharged in Patterson’s Brigade.  In May, 1782, the selectmen of Acton billed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for wages paid to John “Olivers” for this service.  (The town had neglected to include his wages on a previously-submitted pay roll.)    
 
In his pension record, John Oliver stated that he lived in Acton when he first enlisted and had lived in Acton since the war.  Based on later records, he apparently had a young family during the war years, though their birth records are lacking.  Acton’s records do show that in 1788, town meeting voted to abate his tax rates along with Peter Fletcher’s (no reason noted) and that in 1789, he was paid for working at Laws Bridge.  In a less-than-appealing practice of earlier days, in 1790, the town of Acton “warned out” residents who had “lately” moved into town, a practice that was meant to assign responsibility for the poor to the towns from which they came.  A fairly long list of people was warned out in 1790.  Among those was John Oliver, “who is residing in Acton Labourer who has lately come into this town for the purpose of abiding therein not having obtained the Towns Consent" and therefore that he should "Depart the Limits thereof with his wife and their children.”  Given his service in the Revolution, this seems to be an act of eye-opening ingratitude, but it was standard practice of the day.  He was not the only veteran on the list or the only one who had been in town since before the Revolution.  Duly warned about a lack of safety net, John Oliver continued to live in the Acton, apparently near the family of John Handley (who lived not far from Nagog Pond on the road to Littleton).  In 1800, the selectmen laid out a “bridle way to accomidate John Oliver by said Olivers and John Handleys” that was accepted as a town “way” in May 1801.  He was paid for “lowering a bridge with Stone near Mr. Jonathan Davis” in 1802.  He showed up in town expenditures for 1813 - 1815 being compensated for supplying wood and taking care of people (apparently relatives) who were on the town’s needy list due to sickness or injury.  Finally, in the 1830s, he was able to receive a pension for military service.  He seems to have achieved old age in good health and outlived most of the Revolutionary War generation.  John Oliver was one of ten surviving veterans of the Concord fight who attended Concord's 200th anniversary celebration on September 12, 1835.

John Oliver died in November, 1840.  His probate record included a petition to the court that Francis Tuttle be made administrator of the estate.  It was signed by “all the sons & daughters of Mr. John Oliver Late of Acton” and included three heirs: Abijah, Joel and Fatina [Fatima].  (Presumably there could have been other children who died earlier; Abigail Triator, daughter of John Oliver, died in Acton Oct. 13, 1819, for example.  Without birth records or detailed census data, it is very difficult to put together the whole family.)  John Oliver left behind a home farm with a house, barn and about 14 acres of land (appraised at $300), a cow, hay, lumber, corn, potatoes, pork, beef, beans, tools, some furniture, household goods, old books, a few pieces of furniture, and a note with interest.  He also had debts to Ephraim and Joel Oliver (grandson and son, respectively) and Edward Tuttle.  Abijah and Joel signed a petition to sell the real estate to pay off the debts because a partial sale of the land would “greatly injure” the farm.  Both sons stayed in Acton, however, and can be found in later years’ federal and state censuses and local records.

 
We would like to find out more about John Oliver’s life, both in Acton and before he arrived.  The 1790 warning out notice does not mention where he originally came from, but his pension application says that he was born in Concord in 1759.  We have not been able to corroborate that in Concord’s records.  (A search only yielded a John Oliver born to Peter and Margaret in 1747.  That date better matches his age of 83 given in his 1832 pension record, the age of 92 in the 1840 census, and a supposed 1772 birth year for son Abijah.  However, it obviously conflicts with the 1759 birth year also given in the pension application and his age of 23 in the 1780 descriptive soldier list.)  We have not found a marriage record for John Oliver in the 1770s before the children evidently were born. His children’s births were not recorded in Acton at the time.  (Only Abijah appears in Acton births, but in a later volume and without parents’ names.  It seems to have been added to Acton's vital records in the 1800s when Abijah's children's births were recorded as a group.)  John Oliver’s death is mentioned in the town’s vital records without details, though his probate file is an excellent source of information about his family and possessions as of 1840.  The house on his farm presumably did not survive; his homestead was not marked on an 1890 map of Acton’s old houses and sites created by Horace Tuttle (although John’s sons’ homes were marked).  John Oliver’s grave evidently was marked with a Sons of the Revolution marker in 1895.  Unfortunately, its location is no longer remembered; no gravestone exists.  It is likely that he was buried in Forest Cemetery as was his son Joel and his daughter-in-law Esther, but that is conjecture.
 
History can easily be forgotten unless someone makes an effort to preserve it.  From the mid-nineteenth century on, Acton’s local historians and native sons and daughters wanted to emphasize Acton’s importance in the Revolutionary struggle by remembering its “first at the bridge” role.  One can’t blame them when reading Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 History of the Town of Concord (and Acton) in which he made the dismissive statements about the town of Acton that its history before the Revolution “contains no features worthy of particular notice” and afterwards “is of little general interest.”  In reaction to such attitudes, more historical attention has been given to people who fought on April 19, 1775, and less notice has been given to others’ later war service.  Acton provided many soldiers to the Revolutionary cause.  Some of their identities, unfortunately, will never be known with certainty.  Some, however, can be discovered.   John Oliver’s service was extensive and his life in Acton long.  He should be remembered.

Before we leave the subject of Jonathan Hosmers and their roles during the Revolutionary War, we have one more issue to clear up.  The youngest Jonathan was remembered on his sister’s gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery with the statement that he “died at Bennington in ye Servis of his Country In the 18th year of his age.”  The easy assumption from the wording of the gravestone is that he was killed at the Battle of Bennington.  That, however, could not have been what happened.

Jonathan Hosmer served in Captain George Minott’s company, Colonel Samuel Bullard’s regiment.  (Our previous blog post discussed finding sources of information and the difficulty of distinguishing his service from his father’s.)  Jonathan enlisted in Massachusetts on August 16, 1777, the day that the Battle of Bennington occurred.  Jonathan’s service lasted until October 1, and his pay included 9 days’ travel home, so he clearly was not killed in the battle.  One website lists Jonathan Hosmer as having been at Saratoga (apparently based on the fact that Bullard’s regiment went there after Vermont).  Was that possible? 

To answer that question, we tried to learn more about Captain Minott’s 1777 company.  It had been formed in response to an order from the Massachusetts legislature on August 9, 1777 that the towns needed to provide a sixth of their “Able-Bodied Men in the Training Band and Alarm List, now at home” to reinforce the Continental Army.  The order stipulated that if men refused to serve, they would be forced to.  In the following week, a number of men volunteered for a three-month tour of duty (either because they wanted to or they expected to be drafted).  The towns filled the rest of their quota with draftees.  Existing records give us no way to distinguish volunteers from draftees.  Seventeen-year-old Jonathan Hosmer’s name was on the Acton draft list drawn up by Simon Hunt and among those who joined the company of Captain George Minot/Minott of Concord.  Also in the company were Jonathan’s uncle Jonas Hosmer, two years his senior, and others from Acton, Concord, and surrounding towns.

Captain Minott’s Company was part of Col. Samuel Bullard’s Regiment, also known as the Fifth Middlesex County Militia.   A useful article by Edward A. Hoyt and Ronald F. Kingsley in Vermont History (2007, Volume 75, No. 2) described the activities of the Massachusetts three-month militia put under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln, (approximately 2,000 men in September, 1777, joined by about 500 soldiers from Vermont and New Hampshire).  According to the article, the men gathered in Bennington, Vermont.  Some were left on guard duty there while the rest of General Lincoln’s men were moved to Pawlet, Vermont around September 8.  In mid-September, the men were divided up, and three groups of 500 were sent on expeditions to “divide and distract” General Burgoyne’s army by attacking the detachments left to guard the British supply line up to Canada.  Because speed and surprise were necessary, the groups sent out were not complete regiments; experienced soldiers were mixed with the “inexperienced and less disciplined men.”  Records do not seem to list exactly who went and who stayed behind, so we cannot tell whether Jonathan Hosmer went out with one of the expeditions or served on guard duty in Bennington or Pawlet.  Most of the men moved on to join General Gates at Stillwater/Saratoga, some around September 22 and others after the expeditions returned to Pawlet at the end of September.  Given the timing of his discharge and assuming he did indeed die in Bennington, Jonathan Hosmer probably would not have been among them, though it is possible that he was discharged elsewhere and was on his return trip when he died there. 
 
Jonathan Hosmer was discharged before others in the company; it is likely that he was released early due to illness but died before he could get home.  Perhaps Jonas Hosmer, discharged a few days after Jonathan, carried home the news.  One can imagine the impact on the family.  (It is not surprising that Jonathan’s father, who would have known too well about the effect of war service on those left behind, was chosen later in the war to serve on a committee to provide for soldiers’ families.)  There do not seem to be any extant records about Jonathan’s death and burial.  Fortunately, his relatives made sure that he was remembered.  In 1783, when the family lost Jonathan’s married sister Submit, her gravestone was inscribed with a memorial to Jonathan’s service and his death away from his home.

There is no question that Jonathan Hosmer, builder of our 1760 Hosmer House, came from a family committed to the colonists’ side in the Revolutionary War.  Jonathan’s brother Abner and his son Jonathan died while serving the cause.  We thought it would be a simple matter to discover whether "builder" Jonathan also served.  What we discovered instead was that over the past 240 years, writers’ assumptions have created a tangle of confused identities of three generations of Jonathan Hosmers.  Trying to sort them out was daunting.

At least two major problems occur when trying to prove or disprove Revolutionary War service.  Many records have been lost, assuming they ever existed.  For example, three Acton companies went to Concord on April 19, 1775, but we do not have exact roster lists for any of them.  Members of Captain Isaac Davis’ company have been identified based on his successor John Hayward’s “Lexington Alarm” muster roll, generally thought to be fairly complete, though still not perfect.  Captain Joseph Robbins’ East Acton company was almost a complete mystery until the 1990s.  His descendants found and donated to the Acton Historical Society papers that listed those who signed up to train with Captain Robbins in 1774 and a memo written at some point that listed those who served with him in the army in 1775-1776.  (They, too, are probably not complete and do not specify those who were at the Bridge in Concord, but they certainly added enormously to what had been previously known.)  Simon Hunt’s company of April 19, 1775 is still almost completely unidentified.  Clearly, some Acton men’s service on that day (and later in the war) will never be known. 
 
In addition, and particularly relevant for this situation, the existing lists often consist only of names without identifying details.  The common practice of naming sons for fathers (or grandfathers or uncles) makes it hard for modern researchers to distinguish among them.  (See our blog post on John Swift, as one example.)  The lists sometimes included “Junr”  or “2nd”after a name, but the designation was inconsistent, even for the same man, and might change after the older generation died.

To find out if builder Jonathan Hosmer served in the war, we first had to isolate what is known and documented.

Starting with what we know:

Three Jonathan Hosmers (that we know of) lived in Acton at the beginning of the American Revolution:

1. Jonathan Hosmer, 1712-1775, often referred to as “Deacon Jonathan Hosmer,” married Martha Conant on April 25, 1734.  He and Martha had a number of sons including:
2. Jonathan Hosmer, 1734-1822.  Some, but not all, town records refer to him as a junior.  He married Submit Hunt of Concord on Jan. 31, 1760, was a farmer and mason, built the house now preserved by the Acton Historical Society, and had many children including eldest son:
3. Jonathan Hosmer, 1760-1777.  He died in service at Bennington, VT, in or around October, 1777.
   

A memorial notation on Submit (Hosmer) Barker’s gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery says: “This in memory of Jonathan Hosmer Junr, Son of Mr Jonathan Hosmor & Mrs. Submit his wife, who died at Bennington in ye Servis of his Country In the 18th year of his age.”  Submit Barker, who died in February, 1783, was Jonathan (3)’s sister. 

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the American Revolution, a compilation done by the Secretary of the Commonwealth in the 1890s (volume 8, page 289) states that “Hosmer, Jonathan (also given Jonathan, Jr.)” was among men listed by Captain Simon Hunt on August 14, 1777 who were drafted “from train band and alarm list” (men available to go) to reinforce the Continental Army.  On its own, the parenthetical statement “also given Jonathan Jr.” is somewhat confusing.  Based on similar entries and the fact that Mass. Soldiers and Sailors only included one entry for a Jonathan Hosmer in Simon Hunt’s listing of draftees, we assume this parenthetical note was to distinguish Jonathans, rather than to suggest that two Jonathans were on the draft list.  The Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors entry adds that Jonathan Hosmer enlisted as a Private in Capt. George Minott’s Company, Col. Samuel Bullard’s regiment, on August 16, 1777 and was discharged Oct. 1, 1777, noting compensation for nine days’ journey home.   (From the gravestone, we know that he did not make it back to Acton.)
 
Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors also shows a separate entry for Jonathan Hosmer, called up with Captain Simon Hunt’s Acton company, March 4, 1776, to help to fortify Dorchester Heights.  His rank was Sergeant.
 
No other Revolutionary War service for a Jonathan Hosmer was found by the compilers of Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the American Revolution.  (Note that their records were incomplete.  Early service in the war is particularly difficult to document; even Abner Hosmer who died at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775 is not listed.)  Compiled lists that we have of men who went from Acton to fight at Concord or Bunker Hill do not include a Jonathan Hosmer.  If one of the Acton Jonathans served in 1775, we have no proof of it.

The possibility that Deacon Jonathan Hosmer (1) served militarily in the Revolutionary War was discussed in an earlier blog post, concluding that it was unlikely and that there was no supporting evidence.  Jonathan Hosmer (3)’s war service is clear from the Woodlawn Cemetery memorial.  Acton records show that he was born September 24, 1760, and the gravestone says that he died in service in his 18th year.   This matches the military record for Jonathan Hosmer’s serving in Captain Minott’s company August 16-October 1, 1777.  As discussed above, Mass. Soldiers and Sailors makes it appear that only one Jonathan Hosmer served in that company.  (Another blog post discusses this 1777 service.)
 
Tradition in the family and town seems to have been that both Jonathan (2) and (3) served at some point in the Revolution.  In 1895, the Massachusetts Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution marked the Acton graves of individuals that they believed had served in the Revolutionary War.  An April 18, 1895 Concord Enterprise listing and a 1901 inventory stated that both Jonathan Hosmer and Jonathan Hosmer Jr.’s graves had been marked.  Charles Bradley Stone, born in Acton to a Hosmer mother, applied to the Sons of the American Revolution as a great-grandson of Stephen Hosmer, Revolutionary War soldier.  (National SAR member #5046, application available on Ancestry.com)  In addition to describing Stephen’s service, the application states that Stephen’s brother Abner Hosmer fell at Concord and that
 
“Jonathan Hosmer his brother was also in the service and his son Jonathan Jr was killed at Bennington.  Recapitulation
My great-great grandfather Deacon Jonathan Hosmer had three sons in the service viz Sthephen [?], Jonathan & Abner and one grandson Jonathan Jr who was killed.” 
 
Unfortunately, no sources of proof of non-ancestors’ service were presented.  (Note that the list omits the service of younger brother Jonas Hosmer who moved to Walpole, NH after the war.)
 
Rev. James T. Woodbury, installed as first minister of the Evangelical Church of Acton in 1832, compiled a list of Acton Revolutionary War soldiers.  Presumably it was based upon collective memories and the few written records that he had access to; he acknowledged at the time that it was very incomplete.  Rev. James Fletcher’s Acton in History (page 263) reproduced the list, including “Jonathan Hosmer, Esq., Simon’s father, died in the army”.  Jonathan (2) was Simon’s father and actually lived until 1822; this entry combined him and his son.   Was the error simply a “typo” in Fletcher’s book?  Did Rev. Woodbury credit service to the wrong Jonathan Hosmer, or should he have included both the father Jonathan (2) and the son Jonathan (3)?  Over a century later, Harold Phalen revised the list in his own history of Acton, changing the entry to “Hosmer, Jonathan (died in Army)” (page 385).  This cleared up the conflation of the two Jonathans, but it eliminated Jonathan (2) from the service list.  (Adding more confusion, Phalen’s index entry for Jonathan Hosmer’s Revolutionary War service includes the title “Ensign & Capt.” that belonged to a later Jonathan Hosmer.)
 
Town histories are not the only source of identity confusion.  At least two hereditary society applications mentioned the 1777 service of their ancestor “Jonathan Hosmer Jr.,” private in Capt. George Minott’s company, Col. Samuel Bullard’s regiment, but gave the birth and death dates of Jonathan (2).  (Ada Isabel (Jones) Marshall, Daughters of the American Revolution member #46274, Lineage Book Vol. 47, page 126; Merton Augustine Jewett Hosmer, National Sons of the American Revolution member #73474 application, both available through Ancestry.com).  Augustine Hosmer’s entry in the 1893 Massachusetts SAR roster (page 93) cited the same service and dates for ancestor “Jonathan Hosmer.”

If we are correct that the 1777 service cited in the Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors entry belonged only to Jonathan (3), it seems that Jonathan (2) was credited with his son's service in a number of sources.  The question remains, can we definitively show military service of Jonathan (2) separate from that of his son? 
 
It is very possible that some of Jonathan Hosmer (2)’s Revolutionary service is unrecorded, but the only actual close-to-the-time evidence that we have found is the listing of those in Captain Simon Hunt’s Acton company, March 4, 1776, called to help fortify Dorchester Heights.  Sergeant Jonathan Hosmer went with the company along with Jonathan (2)’s younger brother Stephen who served as Corporal.  Jonathan (3) would have been fifteen years old at that point.  It is possible that he could have gone with the Acton militia that day, but it is very unlikely that he would have been chosen sergeant, outranking his uncle who was twenty-one years older.  Of the information that we have, we believe that this record shows military service that belongs to Jonathan (2).
 
Unfortunately, the fact that both Jonathan (2) and Jonathan (3) were at times known as “Junior” seems to have led to confusion among those who tried to compile lists of soldiers in later years.  We have tried, very cautiously, to disentangle the various references to Jonathan Hosmer’s war service.  Much as we want answers to our questions, we can only work with the information that we have.  As research on Jonathan Hosmer has progressed, we have been reminded how critical it is to state sources and to distinguish assumptions from proof so that people after us can draw their own conclusions. 
 
We would be grateful to hear from anyone who has more information about the Hosmers’ experiences in the Revolutionary era, whether military or not.  The Hosmer family of Acton contributed and sacrificed a great deal during the Revolutionary War years, and we at the Society, caretakers of a Hosmer family home, want to make sure that they are remembered.

Pictures are often truly worth a thousand words, but sometimes it would help to have words accompanying them.  A Find-A-Grave memorial for Acton’s Deacon Jonathan Hosmer (1712-1775) has clear photographs of his gravestone with a Sons of the American Revolution marker directly in front of it.  The marker implies that Deacon Jonathan Hosmer was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  But was he?
 
Deacon Jonathan Hosmer was born March 29, 1712 and died June 25, 1775.  He served the town of Acton from its founding in 1735, becoming a selectman in 1743 and town clerk in 1744, serving in both capacities through 1755, and again 1758-1761. He also served as Deacon in the town's church.  Records cited by Charles Husbands' History of the Acton Minutemen and Militia Companies (page 109) show that Deacon Jonathan served in the "Acton Alarm Company" in 1757.  He would have been sixty-three when the Revolution started in April, 1775.  He probably would have been exempt from militia duty by that point, but it could be possible that he served at some point in the two months before his death.  The problem is that there is no evidence that he did.  Noting that full records do not exist of all who served militarily in the spring of 1775, we can say that no Acton Jonathan Hosmer is mentioned in existing lists of soldiers who marched to Concord or of those who served at Bunker Hill.  The compilation of service in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (volume 8, page 289) noted no known service by a Jonathan Hosmer before 1776.  All applications for membership in the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution that we have seen have cited the military service of Deacon Jonathan’s sons, not his own service.  None of the later lists of Revolutionary War veterans in Acton town histories included “Deacon” Jonathan Hosmer or implied that he was the Jonathan Hosmer they referred to.
 
Fletcher’s Acton in History, page 270, relates a story about Deacon Jonathan on April 19, 1775.  His granddaughter Sarah, whose Uncle Abner had marched to Concord from the family farm that morning, remembered that her grandfather “went out to see if he could hear any news on that day, and when he returned he groaned when he passed their window to go into the front door.  What sorrow was then experienced!”  Clearly, Deacon Jonathan was not at the Battle of Concord but instead had to suffer the agony of waiting and learning of the loss of his son Abner.  He also would have learned that another from his household had been wounded that day, Luther Blanchard who had been living on his farm while learning the mason’s trade.  We can assume that the last two months of Deacon Hosmer’s life must have been filled with grief and concern for his family and townsfolk, but we have found no proof or even implication that he was in the army at the time.
 
So why is there an SAR marker on Deacon Jonathan Hosmer’s grave?  Unfortunately, it is impossible to know where the marker was originally placed.  We know that markers were placed for Jonathan Hosmer and Jonathan Jr. in April, 1895.  (See a discussion and listing of Acton's SAR markers.)  We also know that in the mid-1990s when the Revolutionary War-era stones were photographed for the town of Acton, the SAR marker was not directly in front of Deacon Jonathan’s stone.  A recent visit to Woodlawn Cemetery revealed that since the Find-A-Grave photos were taken, the SAR marker had been moved to the left side of the stone and then fallen down.  Unfortunately, markers are not a perfect indication of war service; even if they were originally placed in the correct location, winter upheavals, maintenance, and even well-meaning “corrections” can move them.  The same visit to Woodlawn Cemetery showed that there is currently no SAR marker for the Acton Jonathan Hosmer whose Revolutionary War service is actually mentioned on his gravestone.  It is highly likely that the marker originally meant for his gravestone was mistakenly placed on his grandfather’s grave at some point.  Research into the military service of Acton's other Jonathan Hosmers will be discussed in a future blog post.

Here at the Acton Historical Society, part of our work is to preserve the 1760 Jonathan Hosmer House and to share it with the public.  Wrapping up our celebration of 40 years of stewardship of the house, we are launching an “Out of the Ashes” exhibit to highlight the work of the amazingly far-sighted and intrepid citizens who rescued the house after arson and vandalism in the 1970s.  Some sections of the house were in terrible condition.  The pictures that will be displayed at the exhibit are humbling to those of us tasked with caring for the house as it is today.

As work on the exhibit progressed, we realized that not only did we need to show the work of our predecessors, but also to remind people of the many reasons that the house is a treasure worth preserving.  The house has stood through a great amount of history.  Its story in some ways is representative of Acton’s own progression from an outlying, colonial farm town with one church to a collection of villages shaped by the railroads to a busy suburban community. 

Some highlights of what we have learned about the house’s history so far:

The original house was built in 1760 by Jonathan Hosmer.  He moved in with his new wife Submit Hunt and raised seven children there.  A mason as well as a farmer, Jonathan installed plaster on the end(s) of the house and painted and scored it to look like brick.  It is not a surface that one would expect to last for centuries, but some of it was preserved by an addition and was discovered when the house was restored.  Some pieces of the original painted plaster will be on display at the exhibit. 

The Hosmer family was deeply involved in town affairs and in the colonists' cause during the Revolutionary War, a subject that is currently being researched and will require a separate blog post.  Here we will simply mention that it was a costly involvement for the family; Jonathan's brother Abner was killed at Concord in April, 1775, and Jonathan and Submit's eldest son Jonathan died in service in Bennington in October, 1777. 

The house became a two-family when youngest son Simon married and Jonathan added a second dwelling to the original house, complete with a large second kitchen.  Jonathan’s skills as a mason would have been useful in adding three more fireplaces to the original five and adding another large chimney.  Simon and his wife Sarah Whitney raised eight children in the house and lost two more.  It would have been the site of much activity. 

After almost 80 years, the farm was sold.  The new owner Rufus Holden split the property.  Hosmer children and grandchildren apparently owned at least two of the pieces.  (The Society has one of the deeds transferring land to Jonathan Hosmer’s son-in-law.)

The house itself was sold again to Francis Tuttle, a merchant who moved in with his wife Harriet Wetherbee and their youngest four daughters.  In April 1861 after the fall of Fort Sumter, the house was again the home of worried parents as their eldest son went off to war.  Captain Daniel Tuttle led the Davis Guards to join Massachusetts’ 6th Regiment that was the first to arrive in Washington fully equipped to serve after Lincoln put out the call for troops.   The Society is fortunate to own several items relating to Captain Tuttle and the Davis Guards, including the drum carried to battle by Gilman S. Hosmer, grandson of Simon.

Francis Tuttle’s children and their spouses were deeply involved in the commercial development of South Acton as the village grew after the arrival of the railroad.  The founders of the firm “Tuttles, Jones, and Wetherbee,” merchants of the Exchange Hall, were all related, and other family members were brought into the business as well.

The house sold again in 1868, this time to Edward O’Neil, a native of County Cork who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad.  He and his wife Mary Sheridan raised four children in the house.  We are currently trying to learn more about this period in the house’s history.  We do know that in 1870, the house was being used as a two-family dwelling, with the O’Neils and four children on one side and Edward’s (probable) sister Catherine (O’Neil) Waldron’s family on the other.  The O’Neils’ lives were not easy; all three of the sons died of TB.  The house passed to daughter Mary Mehegan in 1908.

Between 1908 and 1918, the house sold for $1 four times.  We are trying to discover why and to understand the relationships among the owners.  In 1918, the house was sold to George S. Todd who worked in the composing room of the Boston Globe.  For almost 100 years, the house’s attic has stored a box of paper matrices for an evening edition of the Globe from the first week of August, 1918, the week that George Todd bought the house.  We don’t know if they were a keepsake or if perhaps he used them as packing material.  Some of the pages will be on display in the upcoming exhibit.

George’s sister Ethel lived in the house with him and eventually owned the property.  The siblings took care of animals, many of whom George brought home from the city to save them from a sad fate.  George Todd had a garage built in 1922.  It became the site of an early automobile service business apparently run by a relative of the O’Neils.  Work on the Hosmer House property uncovered old car parts; a few license plates and a decorative leaded glass insert will also be on display at the exhibit.

There is much more to learn about the house and its people, both the Hosmers and the later inhabitants. The O’Neils and Todds lived on the property for about 100 years; we would like to learn more about them in order to have a complete and balanced history of the house.  We would be particularly interested in finding pictures of them and of the property while they were living there.  An auction was held at their property after Ethel Todd’s death in 1969, we would be interested in finding out what items were still in the house at that time. 

Aside from the Todds’ addition of electricity and plumbing and a few minor alterations that were reversed during the restoration, one of the unique features of the house is that it was left almost completely intact.  The house has essentially maintained its shape since 1797.  We are fortunate to be stewards of the property and to share its story.  Please visit the house and view the wonderful items from Acton’s history that it contains.  We’re always learning something new; we hope that you will, too.  If you can add to our knowledge of the property and its occupants, we would be delighted to hear from you.

At first glance, one might wonder why Sidney J. Edwards Square at the intersection of Central Street and Massachusetts Avenue in West Acton is named after someone who was born in England and fought for Canada in World War I.  It turns out that he and many others, especially those with British origins, joined up to serve in Canada while the United States was not yet involved in the “Great War”.  Sidney Edwards was killed two years before the war became real for most Americans.

Sidney John Edwards’ birth, possibly in December 1878, was recorded in Barnstaple, Devon, England between January and March, 1879.  By the 1880 U.S. census, he was in Acton.  His father Alfred J. (a carpenter, age 25), mother Rhoda (age 22), and Sidney (age 1) were living with Eliza Owen (Alfred’s sister), her husband Thomas, and their three children.  Sidney’s sister Millicent Mamie Edwards was born in South Acton on July 17, 1880.  After that point in Sidney’s life, we have a bit of a mystery.  In the Society’s collection, there is a white card on which someone typed a brief (and quite incomplete) synopsis of Sidney’s life.  The card has tack holes as if it were once part of an exhibit.  It states that Sidney was born in England, moved to Acton as an infant, and lived in the town until he was fourteen years old.  We have tried to confirm that timeline and so far have not found evidence that Sidney was in town that long.  (Unfortunately, the card has no notation of its date, author, or source.)  The Owen family stayed in Acton, but Sidney’s family moved fairly quickly.  Millicent’s death record in 1881 and brother William’s birth record in 1882 listed a residence of Boston.  Father Alfred’s 1888 naturalization reported his address as Winchester, MA, and he seems to have stayed there through 1917.  (In the city directories that we found, Alfred was a listed Winchester resident in 1889, 1895-1908, and 1915.  We also found him in Winchester in a 1909 Masonic record, the 1900 and 1910 censuses, and 1915 newspaper reports.)  It’s possible that Sidney stayed with Acton relatives during his childhood, but one would ordinarily assume that he lived in Boston and Winchester with his parents.  (Neither of those locations is mentioned in the typed biography.)  At the very least, Sidney probably spent time in Acton visiting his many Owen cousins.

Sidney’s obituary (from the Winchester Star), reported that he graduated from Winchester High School and the Burdett Business College in Boston.  He worked as a clerk for Boston’s A. C. Lawrence Leather Company, living with his family in Winchester for several years.  Around 1908, he moved to British Columbia.  The gold industry was booming in the town of Hedley, and Sidney worked in the reduction plant of the Hedley Gold Mining Company.  In 1913, the local Hedley Gazette reported that he had been initiated into the Loyal Orange Lodge.  He also served in a local militia unit, the 102nd Regiment of the Rocky Mountain Rangers. 

At the outbreak of the First World War, Sidney went to Victoria, British Columbia to enlist in the regular army.  His enlistment papers show him to have been 5’ 6.5” tall with brown hair, fair complexion, blue eyes, and robust health.  On November 1, 1914, he became a private in the 30th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  According to his military record at Library and Archives Canada, he sailed for Britain on Feb. 23, 1915.  (A newspaper report mentioned that his father traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia to see him off.)  In the reshuffling of troops that occurred after the Canadians went overseas, the 30th Battalion supplied manpower for the needs of other units.  Sidney was transferred to Canada’s 15th Battalion that saw action at Festubert, France in mid-May 1915.  He was lost in the shelling during that battle.

Sidney was originally reported as missing.  The Boston Daily Globe reported on June 4, 1915 that his father had just received a telegram saying that Sidney's whereabouts were unknown.  The family hoped that he had been captured rather than killed.  However, a letter received by his parents and published in the Winchester Star on June 11th and later in the Hedley Gazette stated that he had been killed on May 20th.  Lieutenant H. Price of the platoon from which Sidney was transferred wrote that Sidney’s new assignment had been to help to form a machine gun section and that he was killed in that capacity by the bursting of a shell on the night of May 20th.  Canadian army records say that he was last accounted for in the trenches at Festubert.  Apparently, his body was never recovered; his service records state that he was declared missing 21 May 1915 and later declared dead with an assumed death date of May 21 for official purposes.  For some reason, though Sidney’s parents had been informed of the circumstances of his death by Lieutenant Price by June, 1915, headquarters did not have the same information.  There was probably a great deal of confusion; the official war diary for May 20 stated that the 15th battalion had 150 casualties that day.

After Sidney’s death, his family moved back to Acton, living there from 1917-1928 (according to Concord Enterprise articles, the 1920 census and a 1927 passenger list).  Sidney’s parents were in town when Acton’s 1924 town meeting voted to rename West Acton’s Central Square in his honor and during the dedication at the 1924 Memorial Day exercises.  After mother Rhoda’s death, father Alfred moved for a few years to Lake Forest, Illinois, returned to his School Street house in the summers, and finally relocated to Acton between 1935 and 1940 (according to the 1940 census). 

Sidney J. Edwards was born in England, grew up in the United States, and fought with Canadian troops, a man from multiple places whose final resting place, very sadly, is not known for certain.  He is, however, memorialized in a number of locations.  He is one of the soldiers with no known grave who are memorialized by the beautiful monument to Canadian War Dead at Vimy Ridge in France.  He is mentioned on his parents’ gravestone in Acton’s Woodlawn Cemetery and has a memorial marker in Sidney J. Edwards Square, West Acton.  In addition, his name is included on the World War 1 monument in Hedley, British Columbia where he was living and working at the time of his enlistment.  Ironically, despite the fact that the article that reported his death in the Winchester Star was entitled “Winchester Boy Killed at Front,” he was not listed at the base of Winchester’s War Memorial as one of Winchester’s war dead and is not on the Roll of Honor by the town hall.  Sidney was gone and his family had moved on by the time the lists were created.

Soldiers’ and families’ circumstances and residences were sometimes complicated and often changed.  The lesson for family researchers is that if a soldier is missing from a veterans’ roll in a town from which he/she came, it is worth double-checking corroborating records.  As we have discovered in Acton and elsewhere, lists of veterans do not always tell the whole story, even if carved in stone or displayed in bronze.

The Society does not have a picture of Sidney J. Edwards.  If anyone has more information about him or would be willing to donate a photo or a scan, we would be grateful to be able add it to our collection.

A previous blog post discussed the furor that erupted in Acton in 1936 over placing a cannon from World War I on the town common.  After much contention, it was installed near the town hall.  Unfortunately, the Society does not have a picture of it, and the cannon is no longer there.  Until last week, we had not found anyone who knew where it went.

One of our volunteers has been cataloguing a large number of newspaper clippings that came to the Society with records of the local American Legion. It turns out that among the clippings was the story of the fate of the World War I cannon.

The American Legion materials include an article and two letters that were printed in an unknown newspaper, one dated December 19, 1942.  Thanks to these clippings, we now know that the cannon was taken as part of the nationwide scrap metal drive in 1942.  War production was gearing up, and citizens were urged to contribute not only metal but paper, rags, rubber, phonograph records, and even used fat to counteract shortages in military supplies.  Along with school, church, and veterans’ groups, an Acton Scrappers Club was formed to collect material.  Acton had a “scrap heap” at Kelley’s Corner.  However, the World War I cannon went farther away.  The article entitled “ACTON DONATES WORLD WAR GUN,” announced on November 12 (no year) that the nearby town of Acton had contributed a 7,420 pound cannon to the salvage drive conducted at Fort Devens.  Fort supply officer Colonel Thomas Mahoney sent a “powerful ordnance wrecker” to Acton to pick up the gun which was dismantled and added to the Fort’s “immense scrap stockpile.”

The writers of the letters in our collection were veterans and were certainly in favor of aiding the war effort.  One of the writers was Herbert Leusher, Commander of the American Legion.  He wrote that members of the Legion were busy gathering scrap metal themselves.  However, they were upset that they had not been informed about plans to scrap the cannon that was, to them, a memorial.  Legion members had been instrumental in bringing it to the town.  Leusher said that “gladly would my organization have given its consent for the removal of the cannon but I would have called it a common decency to have been notified.”  Someone in the town must have been involved in arranging the removal; it was presumably that person or people with whom the American Legion members were unhappy.

The Legion members were not the only group dealing with these issues.  In 1942, many metal items of historical, sentimental or aesthetic interest were claimed for the national salvage campaign.  Railings, grates, and fences were torn down, including the iron fence around the State House in Boston.  In August, Franklin Roosevelt called for the donation of old cannons and bronze statues that resided in parks and suggested that they could be replaced after the war with newer items.  In the resulting patriotic fervor, the conflict between the tug of history and the need of the present was felt all over the country.  A historic cannon was sometimes used as the impetus for local scrap drives.  Though obviously the needs of the troops were paramount, opposition arose from people who wanted to make sure that the supply of “junk” was exhausted before historical artifacts were sacrificed.  Such objections were not always appreciated; newspapers carried the story of St. Louis citizens who tried (unsuccessfully) to conduct a midnight mission to force the “donation” of a cannon on the capitol grounds to a salvage drive.  Locally, newspapers reported debates about the fate of memorial cannons in other Massachusetts cities and towns, including Billerica, Burlington, Cambridge, and Townsend.  Pittsfield in Western Massachusetts had collected cannons earlier in the year and, with ceremony, sent them in a “cannon caravan” over the route by which Henry Knox delivered artillery captured at Ticonderoga to help liberate Boston in 1776.

Reading about the widespread scrapping of old cannon and other cherished items in 1942 makes the second letter in the Society’s collection more understandable.  Major Charles Coulter’s letter talked about the Civil War cannons on the Town Common, with a colorful description of his views on Acton’s Civil War memorials.  (His cynical assessment may have been shaped by the fight over bringing the World War I gun to the town in the first place.)  Usefully, he described the cannons; they were rifled Civil War Parrotts, obtained for the town of Acton by Congressman John F. Fitzgerald, shipped to South Acton at government expense, and then brought to Acton Center by Nelson Tenney, who made the mounts and placed them on the Common. In Coulter’s view, they had no historic or sentimental value and no connection to Acton.  “The scrap heap is the place for them.”

Taken by itself, Major Coulter’s letter seemed surprisingly strong.  However, reading about similar debates in cities and towns across the county allowed us to understand the context in which it was written.  The Acton Legion’s World War I veterans were upset, not only that their memorial cannon was removed without notice, but that the big Civil War guns on Acton’s Town Common were left behind.  Perhaps emotions were particularly high because the fight over obtaining the World War I cannon was still quite fresh in the memory of the Acton’s veterans, but they would naturally wonder why their cannon was considered less worthy of preservation than those from the Civil War. 

So Acton’s cannon controversy continued.  In the end, despite Major Coulter’s views, the Civil War cannons stayed.  Clearly someone decided that it wasn’t worth the cost, whether monetary or political, to send the old cannons to the scrap heap.  The World War I veterans were memorialized in a bronze plaque across the street; fortunately, despite concerns of some of the veterans, the salvage drive never went so far as to claim it.