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- Feb 5, 2017
I've been in Gray, Maine so this was of particular interest to me.
The link shows the actual gravestone and more, but I'm not sure who owns the modern photographs so I didn't post them. Anyway, it's very interesting and heartwarming that the historic society of Gray, Maine keep up the tradition of every year decorating the "Stranger's" grave with a Confederate Flag. So please read the link because they did receive another body and it still wasn't the right one!
https://www.newenglandhistoricalsoc...y-maine-bury-an-unknown-confederate-soldier/#
The Ladies of Gray had good reason to despise the Confederacy and its people. The small Maine town sent 200 of its sons—more than a tenth of its population–to fight for the Union in the Civil War. There are 178 Civil war veterans resting in peace at the Gray Village Cemetery.
Maine sent proportionately more men to serve in the Union forces than any other state. Gray claimed to have sent more men per capita than any other town in Maine.
But, in a foreshadowing of Memorial Day ceremonies that started after the war, the Ladies of Gray showed compassion and forgiveness for the Confederate soldier who arrived in their midst.
Intersection of Greenleaf and Brown in Gray.
Ladies of Gray
Gray at the outbreak of the Civil War had about 1,700 residents and a woolen mill, the first in America powered by water. The town also had sawmills, a brickyard and prosperous farms.
The son of a prominent Gray family, Charles H. Colley, enlisted in the 10th Maine Infantry Regiment on Oct. 4, 1861.
On Aug. 9, 1862, Sgt. Colley was wounded in the knee at the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Culpeper, Va. Promoted to second lieutenant, the 29-year-old died of septicemia on Sept. 20 in a hospital in Washington, D.C.
The Battle of Cedar Mountain by Currier & Ives.
When notified of his death, his family asked to have his body sent home to Gray. During the war, funeral directors loitered around the hospitals, offering to embalm the dead—for a price, of course. Colley's grieving mother Sally arranged to have her son's body embalmed and shipped by rail back to Gray.
When the plain, lead-lined casket arrived, someone—probably a family member—opened the lid. Charles Colley wasn't in it. Instead, an unidentified Confederate soldier dressed in his gray uniform lay in the pine box.
They had no place to return the body. And so the Ladies of Gray had the unknown Confederate soldier buried in the Gray Village Cemetery. After the war, they raised enough money for a headstone on his final resting place. It reads,
"Stranger
A Soldier of the late war died 1862."
The Ladies of Gray, Maine, Bury an Unknown Confederate Soldier - New England Historical Society
The Ladies of Gray, Maine, rose above the bitterness and pain of the Civil War when the body of a Confederate soldier was mistakenly shipped to their town.
www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com
The link shows the actual gravestone and more, but I'm not sure who owns the modern photographs so I didn't post them. Anyway, it's very interesting and heartwarming that the historic society of Gray, Maine keep up the tradition of every year decorating the "Stranger's" grave with a Confederate Flag. So please read the link because they did receive another body and it still wasn't the right one!
https://www.newenglandhistoricalsoc...y-maine-bury-an-unknown-confederate-soldier/#
The Ladies of Gray had good reason to despise the Confederacy and its people. The small Maine town sent 200 of its sons—more than a tenth of its population–to fight for the Union in the Civil War. There are 178 Civil war veterans resting in peace at the Gray Village Cemetery.
Maine sent proportionately more men to serve in the Union forces than any other state. Gray claimed to have sent more men per capita than any other town in Maine.
But, in a foreshadowing of Memorial Day ceremonies that started after the war, the Ladies of Gray showed compassion and forgiveness for the Confederate soldier who arrived in their midst.
Intersection of Greenleaf and Brown in Gray.
Ladies of Gray
Gray at the outbreak of the Civil War had about 1,700 residents and a woolen mill, the first in America powered by water. The town also had sawmills, a brickyard and prosperous farms.
The son of a prominent Gray family, Charles H. Colley, enlisted in the 10th Maine Infantry Regiment on Oct. 4, 1861.
On Aug. 9, 1862, Sgt. Colley was wounded in the knee at the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Culpeper, Va. Promoted to second lieutenant, the 29-year-old died of septicemia on Sept. 20 in a hospital in Washington, D.C.
The Battle of Cedar Mountain by Currier & Ives.
When notified of his death, his family asked to have his body sent home to Gray. During the war, funeral directors loitered around the hospitals, offering to embalm the dead—for a price, of course. Colley's grieving mother Sally arranged to have her son's body embalmed and shipped by rail back to Gray.
When the plain, lead-lined casket arrived, someone—probably a family member—opened the lid. Charles Colley wasn't in it. Instead, an unidentified Confederate soldier dressed in his gray uniform lay in the pine box.
They had no place to return the body. And so the Ladies of Gray had the unknown Confederate soldier buried in the Gray Village Cemetery. After the war, they raised enough money for a headstone on his final resting place. It reads,
"Stranger
A Soldier of the late war died 1862."
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