civil war – Ben Jacques Stories

The Story of Charles Cephas

This is a story about Charles Cephas, a Black man who came to our town after the Civil War. On his gravestone in the soldiers’ lot at Lindenwood Cemetery, you’ll see he served in the U. S. Navy.

Charles was born in 1844 in Norfolk, Virginia. He may have been enslaved. One year after the Emancipation Proclamation, he joined the Union Navy and was inducted aboard the USS Ohio in Boston. He was then assigned to the USS Sacramento, which served to blockade Confederate ships off South Carolina and in Europe.

Discharged after the war, Cephas settled in Stoneham, Massachusetts. On August 13, 1867, as reported in the Stoneham Independent, he appeared before Silas Dean, justice of the peace, with his bride. Her name was Sarah Cecelia Hill, and she was from Brooklyn. He was 23, she was 18. In Stoneham they would raise five children, three sons and two daughters.

I don’t know what Charles Cephas looked like, but he must have been a man of considerable strength. I say that because he was a mason, a well digger, an earth mover. An ad in the Stoneham Independent reads: “The services of Charles Cephas stone mason can now be had. He tends to laying pipes, sinking wells, digging cesspools and blasting. ‘He thoroughly understands his business.’”

That same year the newspaper reported that “Charles Cephas is digging and stoning a well in Montvale, which he thinks will be the deepest in Woburn. It is 35 feet deep.”

In the 1870 federal census, Charles and Sarah are two of only 27 “non-whites” listed in a town of 3,444. Yet, from what I can find, they did all right, and by 1876 purchased their own home. In the Independent, we read: “Wm. Howell sold a house on Hancock Street to Charles Cephas, and the latter had had it successfully moved to Albion Ave in the north westerly part of the town. Ellis of Malden did the moving.”

But life for the Cephas family had its rough parts. And here the story gets complicated. It’s complicated, because if we are to know the tenor of Charles Cephas’s life, we must acknowledge the persistent prejudice African Americans faced, not only in the South, but in booming factory towns like Stoneham. His story raises questions that make us uneasy.

Most of what we know about Cephas comes from the Stoneham Independent. There are also census reports and vital records. We also have notices of court actions, arrests and fines. Sometimes, we have to read between the lines.

I don’t know if Charles was enslaved in Virginia. He may have been. Certainly, his desire for freedom, his enlistment in the Union Navy, and his insistence that he be respected as a free man played out in his daily life. He didn’t always get respect.

Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888. William L. Clements Library

Disturbing the Peace

Although Charles Cephas found Stoneham a good place to start a business, a place where hard work was rewarded, he was also learning that even in the North men who looked like him could become targets of abuse.

In 1878, as reported in the Independent, five men, aged 16-25, attacked and beat Cephas and Thomas Shanks, another Black man. Arraigned in court for assault and battery, the men were fined and released.

There were other times, however, when Cephas was the one being charged. For example, in 1891 at the P Cogan & Sons shoe factory on Main Street, where he was arrested for disturbing the peace.

According to the Independent, Charles Cephas was walking beside the Cogan plant when, from an upstairs window, someone dumped a bucket of whitewash onto him. Furious, he rushed into the mill in search of the culprits. Not surprisingly, no one admitted the racist prank. Cephas was “pretty well worked up,” wrote the reporter, “and may have talked pretty loud, for Officer Newton appeared on the scene.”

Rather than find the perpetrator, however, the officer “arrested Charles and started for the ‘lock-up.’” When Cephas resisted, the policeman enlisted “one or two outsiders for aid” and hauled him off to jail.

Another time, according to the papers, Cephas threatened to blow up the Stoneham police force. The Boston Globe, which picked up the story, told it like this:

Early this morning an officer saw a young man chasing a girl along a street. The latter was shouting for assistance. The officer hailed the man, who stopped and was informed that he was under arrest. The man, who proved to be Charles Cephas, refused to be taken into custody and opened a handbag he carried, and told the officer the contents were dynamite, and if he was molested he would explode the same.

The Independent gave more detail, alleging that Cephas, uttering profanity, had chased a “Miss Kelly” to the home of Officer Green, where she sought protection. Green and another officer confronted Cephas, who was standing in the street, and told him to go home or be arrested. Cephas started, but then stopped, warning the officers that he had dynamite in his bags and would blow “the whole —- police force up” if they came near.

On Monday Cephas showed up in court and paid a fine of $10 for disturbing the peace. He told the judge that he couldn’t remember threatening “to blow up the police force,” but if he did, “he was sorry.” No mention was made of the altercation between Cephas and the young woman.

Looking back at Charles Cephas, we see a puzzle with many pieces missing. We will never get a full picture. Still, what we have suggests the complexity of his life in our town. We also learn a little about his family, about their losses and achievements.

In 1869 the Independent listed the death of a son, age 1. Infant deaths were also recorded in 1874 and 1883. In the notes section of an 1885 edition, we read: “Mr. Charles Cephas has had the misfortune to lose one of his youngest children lately.”

In October of 1884 Sarah (also known as Cecilia or Celia) posted a card thanking family friends in Woburn, Wakefield and Stoneham “for their many kindnesses and sympathy in her late bereavement.”

But there were also good times, such as the wedding of their son, George, to Carrie H. Yancey. It was “a very pretty home wedding” reported the Independent, “performed in the presence of a large company of friends.”

In another story we learn about an ice-hockey game on Spot Pond in which the Stoneham team beat Salem 1-0. The ice was rough, the paper reported, due to the many ice yachts that had been racing on the pond. Playing with the Stoneham team was Ernest Cephas, George’s brother.

There is evidence that the Cephas boys learned shoemaking trades. Ernest, however, seems to have something else in mind.

In 1887 we find out that Ernest has gone to sea. Like his father, he enlisted in the Navy. Home on leave in 1896, wearing his sailor’s uniform, he was returning from Woburn late one night when he was accosted by several toughs, who berated him with racial slurs.

Getting off the trolley at the last stop, Ernest stepped up to the gang leader “and lit into him like a cyclone,” giving him “such a pummeling as he probably never had in all his life.”

Although Ernest was later charged in court, the Independent clearly took his side. The headline ran: “He Deserved It!—Ernest Cephas Teaches a Haverhill Tough a Wholesome Lesson.”

Two years later, during the Spanish-American War, Ernest was serving aboard the Navy cruiser USS Brooklyn. In a letter published by the newspaper, he described in dramatic detail a victorious battle between American and Spanish warships.

Of the Cephas’ third son, Louis, born in 1876, we know very little. His name does appear, however, in a news report of the 1904 trolley car disaster in Melrose. Lewis was riding in the car when dynamite carried by workmen exploded. Nine passengers were killed and 30 wounded. Blown into the street, Louis survived with cuts and bruises from flying glass and debris.

Of the two surviving daughters, Eva, born in 1883, and Sarah, born in 1887, there is also little information. Records show that Sarah married John Addison in Boston in 1912, and that Eva married a man with the last name of Carter in 1913.

Coming Home

Charles and Sarah Cephas were not the only African Americans to settle in Stoneham after the Civil War. There were also the Yanceys, Freemans, Reeds and others. In the Independent, we find mention of “a Mr. Curtis and a Mr. Turner, [who] owned adjoining lots on Albion St. in 1874.” Also noted was the Lewis family, “that married into the Yancey family.”

For the Black families, Stoneham was a good place to put down roots. But the soil could also be rocky, in more ways than one. For Charles Cephas, getting along in an overwhelmingly white community inevitably involved conflict.

On at least one occasion, reported in the press, he was assaulted. Other times, he was charged with disturbing the peace, including the time workers at a shoe mill dumped whitewash on him.

His marriage was another story. We can never know the complexities of any marital relationship. But the stresses of his life must have crossed over to his marriage. In the Independent on March 9, 1895, we learn that Sarah Celia Cephas, after 28 years, has petitioned the Middlesex Court for divorce and that “a decree of divorce was given.”

Sometime after this, Cephas moved out of Stoneham. In 1899 we find him living in Chelsea and working at the Charlestown Navy Yard, where he continued for another nine years. Until June 10, 1908.

What happened on that date is unclear. It was not reported on, as far as I can tell, by any Boston papers. Nor, does it seem, were the police involved. It was, however, reported on by the Independent. Here is what the Stoneham newspaper said on Saturday, June 20:

Charles Cephas, colored, passed away Wednesday evening of last week, at the Chelsea Marine hospital, as the result of injuries received by being assaulted as he was coming out of the Charlestown Navy Yard, where he has been employed as a stone mason. He was about 65 years of age.

The paper then speculated that “the object of the assault was robbery, his assailants evidently being after Mr. Cephas’ pension money.”

After listing the five names of his surviving children, the Independent continued:

The deceased was a Civil War veteran, having served four years in the Navy. Until about 15 years ago he was a resident of this town for thirty years. He was born in Virginia in ante-bellum days.

Funeral Services for Cephas were held in Chelsea. But for burial he was brought back to Stoneham, interned in the Civil War memorial lot at Lindenwood cemetery. Was there an honor guard present, as there often is for veterans? No mention is made.

Looking back at the demise of Charles Cephas, we are left with questions. Why did his brutal murder in Charlestown receive so little attention? Was there no police report? Was there no attempt to apprehend and prosecute his killers?

I was able to find the Chelsea coroner’s report, filed a week after his death. The cause of death was listed as “acute fibrinous pneumonia consequent on hemorrhage and laceration of the brain sustained under circumstances unknown, probably those of an accidental fall.” Accidental fall? Really?

Back in 1891, when Cephas was still living in Stoneham, the Independent reported that “People on the outskirts of town complain of dry wells. Will it ever rain in earnest?”

In that same issue was the news of Charles Cephas digging a 35-feet-deep well, “the deepest in Woburn.”

When I think of Charles Cephas, I like to think of this.

Charles Cephas came to Stoneham looking for a place he and his family could call home, and in doing so, he helped build our town. Although his story is complicated by factors we can only partially understand, it challenges us to look honestly at history and ourselves.

His story is part of our history. It is our story as well.

Gravestone of Charles Cephas in Lindenwood Cemetery

Notes: The Cephas, Reed and Yancey families are featured in an exhibit at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum, titled “150 Years of Service.” You can see the online version at https://stonehamhistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/150-years-of-service-the-cephas-reed-and-yancey-families-online-exhibit/

Thanks to Joan Quigley, historian and archivist at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum, and Dee Morris, Medford historian, for their help in researching the Cephas family.

Ben Jacques is the author of In Graves Unmarked: Slavery & Abolition in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stoneham Then & Now. Both are available at the Book Oasis on Main Street. He also writes essays, poems and articles, many of them found on his blog at benjacquesstories.com.

Happy Juneteenth!

As we celebrate our newest national holiday, the day enslaved folk in Texas finally learned of their freedom, we recall our own history of slavery and abolition:

1754—A census of enslaved people in Massachusetts that year shows there were eight slaves above the age of 16 in Stoneham. They were among at least three dozen slaves in our town during the Colonial period—men like Cato, belonging to Deacon Green, and women like Dinah, a slave of the teacher James Toler, “who waited upon him to the end of his days” (Silas Dean). And they were children, like the unnamed 8-year-old mulatto purchased by Captain Peter Hay in 1744, the same year the Rev. James Osgood paid £75 for a woman named Phebe.

1775—Six Black men from Stoneham, three enslaved and three free, fight in the Battle of Bunker Hill, joining white colonists in the struggle for freedom from Great Britain.

1780—Four years after the Declaration of Independence, Massachusetts voters ratify the Massachusetts Constitution, authored mainly by John Adams.

1781—A slave called Mumbet (Elizabeth Freeman) and another named Brom sue their Sheffield owner for their freedom and win. This and other court cases bring about the eventual freedom of all slaves in Massachusetts based on the Massachusetts Constitution.

1790—The first federal census lists no enslaved people living in Stoneham.

1823—A former slave from Virginia named Randolph is seized in New Bedford. The state Supreme Judicial Court upholds the property rights of his owner, and he is returned to slavery.

1837—After an abolitionist meeting in Stoneham, a fight breaks out in the street, and a Stoneham man, Timothy Wheeler, is knifed and killed. He leaves a wife and four children.

1838-9—Sarah Richardson Gerry leads 27 women in founding the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Stoneham. The men also create a chapter.

1839—Church deacons pass a resolution calling on all ministers of the Gospel to “bear faithful witness against the sin of slavery.”

1850—A thirty-year-old minister of First Congregational Church, the Rev. William Whitcomb, preaches a fiery sermon against the federal Fugitive Slave Act, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. He calls on his parishioners to aid all fugitives, even at the expense of their property and lives.

1850—Deacon Abijah Bryant’s home on Main Street becomes a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering fugitive slaves and enabling their safe passage to Canada.

1854—Anthony Burns, a 20-year-old former slave from Virginia is arrested in Boston and brought to trial. Thousands of abolitionists attempt to free Burns from the courthouse, but fail. In a widely reported trial, Burns is convicted and ordered sent back to his owner. Thousands line the streets as Burns is led in shackles to the docks and shipped back to his owner.

1861—Hundreds of Stoneham men join Massachusetts regiments responding to President Lincoln’s call for a voluntary army to defend the Union.

1864—54 Stoneham men die in the War of Rebellion: 11 killed in battle, 9 from wounds, 9 while in Confederate prisons, 25 from disease. These include Col J. Parker Gould, with others buried in Lindenwood Cemetery.

1862—Rev. William Whitcomb, is commissioned as a chaplain in the Union Army. He serves in hospitals in North Carolina until his death from malaria.

Over time we have learned to extend the human rights we hold so dear, those spelled out so eloquently in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or gender. From our Constitution we read:

“All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

Happy Juneteenth!

First Blood in Baltimore

It happened on Patriots’ Day, April 19, 1861

Soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry

By Ben Jacques

When President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1861, called for a voluntary army to protect the nation’s capital, the first to arrive in Washington were the Massachusetts Sixth Voluntary Infantry. Although the men came from all walks of life, most were mill workers and farmers.

One of them, Luther Crawford Ladd, was a 17-year-old worker in the Lowell Machine Shop. Another from Lowell, Addison Otis Whitney, 22, worked in the Number Three Spinning Room of the Middlesex Corporation.

Down river in Lawrence, Sumner Henry Needham, a 33-year-old lather, was also quick to enlist. Others came from Acton, Groton, Worcester, Boston and Stoneham. Of the 67 volunteers from Stoneham, 51 were shoemakers. One of them, 19-year-old Victor Lorendo, played in the regimental band.

Summoned to Boston by Governor John Andrews, the Sixth was a regiment of “patriot yeomen,” wrote Chaplain John W. Hanson, who chronicled the Sixth Massachusetts through three wartime campaigns.

What a sight they must have made as they mustered on the Common, each company in its own uniform. Privates Ladd and Whitney from Lowell wore grey dress coats, caps and pantaloons with buff epaulettes and trim, while Corporal Addison from Lawrence wore a dark blue frock and red pantaloons, “in the French style.” Company A volunteers sported blue frocks and black pantaloons with tall round hats and white pompoms.

Unifying their appearance somewhat were the grey woolen greatcoats issued to all. Standard blue uniforms would come later, including the signature forage caps. The men were also issued Springfield rifles and pistols for the officers.

At the State House on April 17, Governor John Andrews addressed the recruits:

“Soldiers,” he said, “summoned suddenly, with but a moment for preparation…. We shall follow you with our benedictions, our benefactions, and prayers.” He then presented the regimental colors to Colonel Edward F. Jones, the regimental commander from Pepperell.

The next morning, April 17, to the ringing of bells, band music, gun salutes and the cheering of thousands, the 700-plus men of the Sixth Massachusetts boarded a train bound for the nation’s capital.

At each stop, Worcester, Springfield and Hartford, crowds cheered them on their way. Reaching New York that night, the men were feted with dinner and speeches. The next day they crossed by ferry to Jersey City, then by train to Trenton. Arriving that evening in Philadelphia, the troops received their most enthusiastic reception. Wrote Chaplain Hanson: “So dense were the crowds that the regiment could only move through the streets by the flank.”

That night in Philadelphia the officers “were entertained sumptuously” at the Continental Hotel, while the soldiers were quartered at the Girard House. Weary from travel and excitement, they were grateful for the chance to sleep. Their rest, however, was cut short when roll was called and they were ordered back to the train station. At 2 a.m, the Sixth Massachusetts left for Baltimore. It was Saturday, April 19, 1861, four score and six years to the day after Minutemen marched to Lexington and Concord to fight British Red Coats.

While the soldiers were sleeping, Colonel Jones had met with Brig. General P. S. Davis, sent ahead to arrange transport. Davis told him that pro-slavery agitators in Baltimore planned action against the Massachusetts infantry. Jones also met with the president of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad, who sent a pilot engine ahead to scout for obstructions on the tracks. Insisting that they must push on to Washington, Davis hoped to arrive in Baltimore before a crowd could assemble.

In the spring of 1861, Maryland was still a slave state, although it had not joined the Confederacy. While the mayor of Baltimore had promised safe passage of the Sixth Massachusetts, many Maryland citizens viewed their passage as an intrusion, if not an invasion.

Because steam engines could not pass through Baltimore, trains from Philadelphia had to stop at the north depot and the cars uncoupled. They would then be pulled by horse teams along tracks to Camden Station, the south depot, where they would be hooked to another engine headed south.

Arriving in Baltimore about 10 a.m., the Sixth Massachusetts at first faced little trouble. Wrote Hanson: “As soon as the cars reached the station, the engine was unshackled, horses were hitched to the cars, and they were drawn rapidly away.” So far, they had caught protesters unaware.

By the time the seventh rail car began its course, however, a mob had gathered and begun hurling insults, bricks and stones. It got worse the further they went, and three times was car was knocked off the tracks, then set back.

Fearing violence, officers had earlier issued 20 cartridge balls to each soldier and ordered their rifles loaded and capped. But they were not to fire unless fired upon.

After the seventh company reached Camden Station, Mayor George Brown signaled that “it is not possible for more soldiers to pass through Baltimore unless they fight their way at every step.” Yet there were still four more companies, two from Lowell, one from Lawrence and one from Stoneham, waiting to cross. Included was the regimental band.

Thousands now blocked the streets, tore up paving stones, and dragged debris onto the tracks. Unable to move the last two cars, the four companies disembarked and began to march. Lt. Leander Lynde from Stoneham would later write:

*Companies from Lowell, Lawrence and Stoneham are attached by a pro-slavery mob in Baltimore.*

“What impressed me most at the time was the terrible fury of the mob…. Not content with hurling flagstones, bricks, hot water, flatirons and every conceivable thing, the mob hissed us, called us names and taunted us with monstrous vocabulary. Even the women hurled things at us from windows.”

Lynde himself was struck in the head by a brick. “I fell stunned for a moment. The boys picked me up, thinking that I was dead, but I soon recovered and marched on with them.”

Leading the four companies was Captain A. S. Follensbee of Lowell: “Before we had started, the mob was upon us, with a secession flag, attached to a pole, and told us we could never march through that city. They would kill every ‘white nigger’ of us, before we could reach the other depot.”

As he stepped down from the train, Corporal Sumner Needham of Lawrence told a fellow soldier: “We shall have trouble to-day, and I shall never get out of it alive. Promise me, if I fall, that my body shall be sent home.”

Falling in, the companies pressed forward through a sea of rioters. Showered with missiles, the men doubled their pace. “We had not gone more than 10 rods further before I saw a man discharge a revolver at us from the second story of a building, and at the same time a great many were fired from the street,” wrote Lynde.

One of the first to fall was Lynde’s company captain, John H. Dyke, shot in the thigh. Wrote Lynde, “I decided it was about time for me to take the responsibility and ordered my men to fire upon the mob. The men in the other companies at once joined in with us.”

Especially vulnerable was the color guard—Color Sergeant Timothy A. Crowley of Lowell—who carried the flag, and his aides, Ira Stickney and W. Marland. Another company chaplain, Charles Babbidge, remembered: “Paving stones flew thick and fast, some just grazing their heads and some hitting the standard itself. One stone, as large as a hat, struck Marland just between the shoulders, a terrible blow, and then rested on his knapsack. And yet he did not budge. With a firm step, he went on, carrying the rock on his knapsack for several yards, until one of the sergeants stepped up and knocked it off.”

When they reached the Pratt Street Bridge, they found a crowd had pulled up the planking, so “we were forced to creep over as best we could on the stringers,” wrote Lynde.

Arriving finally at Camden Station, the last four companies found the doors of the waiting cars locked, but used their rifle butts to gain access. Now in charge of Company L, Lieutenant Lynde saw his company and the color guard safely aboard. They were surrounded, however, by another huge crowd brandishing guns, knives and clubs. Running ahead, the mob placed telegraph poles, anchors and stones on the tracks.

Slowly, with rifle muzzles sticking out the windows, the train began to move. The engine stopped and men jumped out to clear the obstacles. The train started again and stopped. A rail had been removed. It was replaced, and again the train was in motion.

“The crowd went on for some miles out,” Chaplain Hanson wrote, “as far as Jackson Bridge, and the police followed removing obstructions; and at several places shots were exchanged.” At the Relay House, the train was held up until a train coming north had passed. Then it continued, unobstructed, to Washington.

On the train, the officers counted their casualties and the missing. Dozens had been wounded, and dozens more missing, including the regimental band.

Unarmed, the musicians had refused to march through the city. However, this did not stop the attackers. One musician, A. S. Young of Lowell, recalled: “We fought them off as long as we could; but coming thicker and faster . . . they forced their way in.” Fleeing the cars, one band member was urged by a policeman to “run like the Devil.”

Seventeen-year-old Victor Lorendo of Stoneham escaped by diving under the rail car, then racing off. Tearing the stripes off his pants so he wouldn’t be recognized, he somehow made it back to Philadelphia and eventually Boston. He then walked the last ten miles to his home town. He had been reported dead.

Not all citizens of Maryland were hostile. In several cases, shop owners and housewives sheltered and cared for wounded soldiers. Fleeing the mob, a number of the band members were rescued by “a party of women, partly Irish, partly German, and some American, who took us into their houses, removed the stripes from our pants and we were furnished with old clothes of every description for disguise,” wrote Young. Sheltered and fed, the musicians returned two days later to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, the soldiers on the train wondered what kind of reception they would have in Washington. It was dark when, just four days after the President’s call, the locomotive steamed into the capital. To their relief, they found a crowd cheering their arrival. Among them was a Massachusetts woman who worked in the Patent Office. Her name was Clara Barton and she had come to the capital to organize nursing and relief services. As the injured left the train, she and her assistants dressed their wounds and arranged transport to area homes.

The rest of the regiment marched to the Capitol, where they bedded down in the Senate Chamber. It was a strange scene. “The colonel was accustomed to sleep in the Vice President’s chair, with sword and equipments on,” wrote Hanson. “The rest of the officers and men were prostrate all over the floor around him, each with sword or musket within reach ; the gas-lights turned down to sparks, and no sound but the heavy breathing of sleepers and the hollow tramp of sentinels on the lobby floors.”

On Sunday morning, April 20, the Sixth Massachusetts marched “in open order” up Pennsylvania Avenue, giving the appearance of a full brigade, so as to “intimidate the secessionists.” At the White House they were welcomed by a grateful President Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward.

Over the next few days the Sixth Massachusetts cheered the arrival of the Seventh and Eighth Massachusetts as well as regiments from New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Setting up defenses around Washington, they prepared for a Confederate attack.

Back at the Capitol, the soldiers had time to write letters, and the officers to submit reports. Describing the ambush in Baltimore and casualties to his company, Lieutenant Lynde wrote:

“Captain Dyke was shot in the thigh…. James Keenan was shot in the leg, and Andrew Robbins was shot and hit with a stone, hurt very bad. Horace Danforth was hit with a stone and injured very severely, but all were in good hands and well cared for.”

What happened to Capt. John Dyke after he was shot was told later by Chaplain Hanson. Hobbling into a tavern, he was met by a Union sympathizer, who carried him to a back room. “He had scarcely left the barroom . . . when it was filled with the ruffians, who, had they known his whereabouts, would have murdered him.” Nursed and cared for, Dyke remained there for a week before being sent, disabled, back home.

Of the 67 in the Stoneham company, 18 had been wounded by gunshot, bricks or paving stones. The volunteers “had been worked very hard for green soldiers,” Lynde wrote, “but the men have done well and have stood by each other like brothers.”

Also attacked were the companies from Lowell and Lawrence, which, like Stoneham, had been forced to cross Baltimore on foot. Lowell’s Company D, marching on the exposed left side of the column, was especially hard hit. Nine men were injured, including Sgt. William H. Lamson, wounded in the head and eye from paving stones, and Sergeant John E Eames. From Lawrence, Alonzo Joy had his fingers shot off, and George Durrell was injured in the head by a brick. Three others were wounded.

From the two mill cities, four were killed. The first was the 17-year-old mechanic from Lowell. Having grown up on a farm, Luther Ladd had followed three older sisters to work in the textile industry. “He was full of patriotic ardor,” Hanson wrote. “When the call was made for the first volunteers, the earnest solicitations of his friends could not induce him to remain behind.” Marching along Pratt Street, Ladd was struck in the head and shot, the bullet severing an artery in his thigh. He is considered the first Union soldier killed in the Civil War.

Also in Company D, Addison Otis Whitney, the Lowell spinner, was shot and killed. Born in Waldo, Maine, he was 22. Before enlisting in the Sixth Massachusetts, he had joined the City Guards.

The third soldier in Company D to perish was Charles A. Taylor, of whom little is known. Taylor enlisted at the last minute, wrote Chaplain Hanson, “and represented himself as a fancy painter by profession, about 25 years old, and was of light complexion and blue eyes.” A bystander later reported that Taylor, having fallen, was beaten to death by ruffians and his body thrown in a sewer. As Taylor wore no uniform but the regimental coat, his death was not confirmed until a bystander later returned the coat to a Union officer.

After the war, Col. Edward Jones made several trips to Baltimore to find Taylor’s body and return it to Massachusetts, but the burial site was never found.

The fourth fatality was Corporal Sumner Needham of Lawrence’s Company F, who had voiced a presentiment of his death in Baltimore. Struck by a paving stone, Needham fell to the ground, his skull fractured. A surgeon tried to drill a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure, but in vain. The 33-year-old corporal died a few days later. In December, eight months later to the day, his wife, Hannah, gave birth to a son.

On May 2, Needham’s body, along with Ladd and Whitney, were returned to Massachusetts, where they were viewed by thousands at King’s Chapel and eulogized at the State House. They were then conveyed by train to Lowell and Lawrence. Needham lay in state in Lawrence City Hall before burial in Lawrence’s Bellevue Cemetery. The inscription on the granite memorial reads, in part, “[Needham] fell victim to the passions of a Secessionist Mob, during the passage of the Regiment through the streets of Baltimore marching in Defense of the Nation’s Capital.”

Meanwhile in Lowell, throngs turned out to receive the bodies of Ladd and Whitney, who, like the others, were mourned as martyrs in the cause of freedom. For the funeral, residents crowded into City Hall to hear clergy from seven churches officiate.

On June 17, four years later, Governor John Andrew dedicated a 27-foot-high obelisk memorial, honoring “the first soldiers of the Union Army to die in the great rebellion.” On it are the names of Ladd and Whitney. Later a brass plate with the name of the Charles Taylor was added.

Although the Sixth Massachusetts volunteers were the first to arrive at the nation’s capital, they did not participate in the humiliation of Bull Run, which took place on July 12. By this time, they had been ordered back to Maryland, as the state was now put under martial law. Taking control of its forts, ports and rail lines, the Sixth would in three months complete its first campaign and return home. Most of the men would re-enlist, either in the Sixth or other Massachusetts regiments, engaging in conflicts through the end of the war.

In the April 19 ambush in Baltimore, sometimes called the Pratt Street Riot, the yeoman soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts faced bullets, stones, and the hate of a pro-slavery mob. It was not Manassas, Antietam or Gettysburg, but it was the beginning. The volunteers from New England were attacked not by Confederate soldiers, but by fellow American citizens whose lust for insurrection would fuel a long and bloody war. The ambush was vicious and it took the lives of four Union soldiers and twelve civilians. It wounded, many severely, thirty-eight soldiers and dozens of rioters.

The battle in the streets was the “first blood” of the War of the Rebellion, a cataclysm that raged across our nation for four more years and took the lives of three quarters of a million. The scars are with us today.

Sources include:

Hanson, John W., Chaplain. A Historical Sketch of the old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers during its Three Campaigns. Lee and Shepherd, Boston, 1866.

Hurd, D. Hamilton, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. J.W. Lewis & Co, Philadelphia, 1890.

Stevens, William B., History of Stoneham, Mass., F. L. & W. E. Whittier, Stoneham, Mass., 1891.

“The Pratt Street Riot,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/fomc/learn/historyculture/the-pratt-street-riot.htm, updated Feb. 26, 2015.