Harriet Packard, a 2nd great-grandmother

The Packard surname carried down through the generations ended with the marriage of Harriet A. Packard, to Lt. George Studley, grandmother of my grandmother, Alice Packard Studley, Harriet undoubtedly got to hold her grandchild, Alice, but died when Alice was two years old. Our Packard ancestral line in America extends from the Packard immigrant in 1638 to Hingham, Mass., traversing through Maine for several generations, and ending with Harriet’s death, a full circle back to Massachusetts in 1893.

Harriet Packard (1827-1893) was a 5th generation immigrant whose grandparent ancestors lived in Massachusetts until they left the security of settled Easton for new lands in New Hampshire and finally Maine. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Packard (1751-aft. 1810), was a Revolutionary veteran of the Battle of Rhode Island before his move to the north. Her grandmother, Bethiah Waters, was a Mayflower descendant of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony.

This photo was likely taken in the 1880s while living in the Hyde Park area of  Boston. She is wearing pierced earrings, a large cameo brooch, and a double lace collar.

Harriet was born in the coastal town of Thomaston, Maine, in 1827, in that section set off to form East Thomaston in 1848 and a subsequent name change to Rockland in 1850. She was the second of four children born to Samuel Packard (1788-1866), a farmer, and Harriett Young (1800-1856), second marriages for both. Her dad was already 39 years old when Harriet was born.

The town of Thomaston itself was a prosperous lumbering, shipbuilding, marble, lime center in Harriet’s day, and Maine had been admitted to the Union only seven years before her birth.

The famous Revolutionary War hero, General Henry Knox, retired to Thomaston in 1795 - just a few years after our Packards moved to the area - and built a magnificent four-story mansion named Montpelier. General Knox was coincidentally the son-in-law of the heir holder of the Waldo patent for the area,. The irony is not lost that General Knox's grandfather-in-law and original holder of the patent was a Crown sympathizer. The general’s mansion was razed in 1871, but reconstructed by the community in 1929, still standing and worth a visit. He is buried in the Thomaston cemetery. Such a small town, likely Harriet and her dad hob-knobbed with the general at the early 19th c. town establishments.

In 1845, 18 year-old Harriet married 21 year-old George Studley in Thomaston, a marriage that lasted 48 years and produced six children.

Part of Thomaston was set off to be East Thomaston in 1848 and renamed Rockland in 1850. The 1850 Rockland census showed Harriet’s family living in Rockland. Harriet, George, their two young children, George’s brother Benjamin, and 4 other young men also carpenters were living in some type of group living, perhaps a tenement house.

By 1860, Harriet and George are living in Camden, the next town up from Rockland, with their six children and George is farming.

In August 1862, George enlisted in the 19th Maine Infantry and went off to war. He quickly rose through the rank to the level of lieutenant. His brothers Benjamin and John, also enlisted in different Maine regiments. George fought in many of the eastern campaigns, including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse.

Meanwhile, back home, Harriet had been pregnant when George enlisted, and she delivered their youngest and last child, Sidney, our great-grandfather, in February 1863. Many of the officers were given leave during the wintering of 1863-64, and George likely went home to Maine to see his newborn son.The oldest son, Albert, would have just turned 18 and soon after George’s visit Albert enlisted in the 6th Light Artillery. Both he and his dad were at the Battle of the Wilderness, but Albert didn’t see action until a few days later at Spotsylvania Court House. He was killed there at the Bloody Angle, on the same battlefield as his father, only 18 years old.

How do parents cope with the loss? Harriet had been left to raise six children ranging from toddler to teenagers, and to take care of the farm by herself for the three years George was away. Her mother died eight years before and her father was elderly, living close by with another son, Samuel. Indeed, the 1860 census shows several Packards nearby. Several other family members and men in the community were away at war. Likely, the remaining women banded together for support. We can just hope.

Just a month after Albert’s death, George was fighting at Gettysburg as an officer and all the way to Appomattox. He and his two brothers survived the war, and five years later the 1870 census shows the family had moved to the Chelsea area of Boston, a blue collar neighborhood. He and his 21 year-old son, also named George, are working as carpenters, and the four younger children are still in the home.

In the 1880 census, two of the children have married and moved out, Alice is working as a seamstress, and 17 year-old Sidney, our great-grandfather, is working as an express clerk.

Over the next decade, three more children were married, including Sidney’s marriage to Martha Borden Hathaway. Sidney relocated to Fall River as a 21 year old in 1884 and worked his way up through the grocery business to owning his own store.

The Boston Herald noted Harriet attended the 250th anniversary and reunion of the Packard family held in Boston in August 1888.

Harriet died in Boston in January 1893 with an “abdominal tumor, probably carcinomatous.” They were living at 2 Brookside Avenue in Boston at the time of her death. No cemetery or headstone has been located for either George or Harriet, nor is burial mentioned in Harriet’s obituary. Very likely they were both cremated; Forest Hills Crematory was established in Boston in 1893 around the time cremations were beginning to take off in the US.

Sixty nine year-old George remarried within the year to a 33 year old-daughter of Catholic Irish immigrants, Harriet Sweeney, but moved shortly thereafter to a disabled veterans home in Camden, Maine, his hometown, and remained a resident until 1898. After returning to Boston, by this time in his mid-seventies, he fathered two more children, both of whom died as infants.

Harriet and George’s children:

Albert E Studley, b. 1846 in Rockland, enlisted at age 18 in the 6th Maine Light Artillery, tragically killed in his first battle at Sportylvania Court House during the Civil War.

George Leslie Studley, b. 1848 in Rockland, died 1931 in Boston; a carpenter and house joiner like his father.

Aramenta Dormer Studley, b. 1853 in Rockland; twice married, the first to a man who ran off to Canada; worked as a housekeeper; died in 1940 in Malden, MA, age 87.

Alice M Studley, b. 1856 in Hope, ME, a very small town inland from Camden/Rockport. She married an older guy, a Boston merchant, and by 1900 they moved to Parsonfield, Maine, where they were farmers. By 1910, she was divorced, living with her sister, Aramenta, and working as a dressmaker. She made lovely dresses for her niece, my grandmother, Alice. She died sometime after 1930.

Lisette Studley, b. 1860 in Camden, ME; twice married with one chlld, and died after 1930 in Chatham, MA.

Sidney Elmer Studley, b. 1863 in Camden, ME; married Martha Hathaway Borden in Fall River, two daughters, died in 1941.

Next installment: The ancestral Packards, 1638-1827

Lieutenant George Studley, 19th Maine Infantry, the First Year

Sometimes, oftimes, in searching for family history, a story comes to light that makes us wonder how we could have missed it. Such is the story of 1st Lieutenant George Studley, Civil War veteran and combatant in the 19th Maine infantry. With the Army of the Potomac, he served through campaigns that took the regiment from Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, to the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Appomatox.

Why didn’t we know this story? 
 
Veterans who survive the tragedy of war and return to civilian life speak seldom to family of the trauma. What could be worse than losing half your regiment in a battle?  Perhaps to lose your own boy to the war, in the same battle you are fighting. This is the story of our second great-grandfather, George, and his son, Albert Studley.

George Studley in Maine  

George Studley was born Lincolnville, Maine, in 1824, the sixth of seven children of John Studley (1790-1826) and Pearn Lang (1797-1882). 

John had also been born and raised in Lincolnville, a growing rural-coastal frontier town on the western side of Penobscot Bay. In his day, inhabitants made a living by subsistence farming, lumbering, or fishing. John served during the War of 1812 defending against British invasion of Maine. He married Pearn in 1813, when he was twenty-three and she was sixteen.

John died in 1826, when George was about two, only thirty six years old. Pearn, thirty years old, was left a widow with seven children under the age of thirteen. When George was about seven, she married Robert Dodge, a farmer, and three more children joined the household. 

In 1845, twenty-one year-old George married Harriet A. Packard, an eighteen year old from Thomaston, several towns south of Lincolnville. By1850, they were living in coastal Rockland with their sons Albert, age four, and George Leslie, age two. George’s brother, Benjamin, was also living in the house.  Both George and Benjamin were carpenters, as were four other young men in the house, so this may well have been a boarding house for young men working in Rockland's shipbuilding trade.

By 1860, George and Harriet had moved to Camden, farther along Penobscot Bay. Their household now included Albert, age 14, George Leslie,11, Arrametta, 6, Alice, age 4, and Lisetta, 6 months old.  George was working as a farmer.

While George’s life was likely not been easy to this point, it would soon be turned upside down. After firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 militia.  The conflict proved more costly and longer than anticipated. By July 1862, Lincoln called for another 300,000 volunteers. Maine provided more soldiers for its population than any other state in the Union, and with this last call George, now age thirty-eight, volunteered to join them.  

Harriet was left to care for the teenagers, Albert and George, three daughters under ten, and she was pregnant with Sidney, our great-grandfather.  How did Harriet make do for the three years George was gone?  Did she stay on the farm with help from the two boys?  Did the grandparents help out?

From Bath to Washington

George went to Bath, Maine, where the 19th Maine Infantry mustered into service on August 25, 1862. He entered Company A as a private. Two days later, the regiment left Maine, traveling by rail and boat to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and finally Washington. What a trip this must have been for George who had likely never been away from the coastline of Maine!

Washington at the time had no paved streets, most buildings other than government were wood, and the town was heavily armed and fortified. 

While the Maine men were approaching Washington, the Second Battle of Manassas was being fought in nearby Virginia. According to John Day Smith, author of The History of the Nineteenth Regiment of Maine Volunteer Infantry, the recruits could hear the battle in the distance.

Another second great-grandfather, Abraham Dillow, and his two brothers, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington Dillow, were fighting at Second Manassas while George and 916 men of the 19th Maine were making their way to their camp in Washington. The regiment was assigned to forts around the city. Company A went to Fort Greble south of the city, now Congress Heights.

Fredericksburg

An error in not assigning the 19th as a “new regiment” resulted in evacuating the Washington fort in late September, heading on foot to Harper's Ferry, then across Virginia. By late November, the Second Corps was encamped at Falmouth on the bluffs across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg. To move supplies by wagon, the 19th Regiment was put to work building “corduroy roads”, a process involved cutting down trees for logs. John Day Smith recalls the Mainers' amusement at watching New Yorkers struggle to fell trees:
 
“... the men from Maine knew how to handle an axe.  It was rich entertainment to watch the New Yorkers in our brigade trying to cut down a tree.  They would hack a circle about six inches wide around the tree and keep at it, hitting as near the center of the circle as they could, until the tree yielded.  It was still more entertaining to see some green, officious Lieutenant of our Regiment, from the city, instructing some lumberman soldier as to the proper way to do this work”.

As a result of delays building pontoons to cross the Rappahannock, the Union Army failed to start across until General Robert E. Lee’s men had a chance to occupy the heights above Fredericksburg.   

On December 11, 1862, Union soldiers crossed the Rappahannock under fire  and fought Confederate defenders block by block through the town, first major urban combat in American History. George’s brigade had the high risk task to be second to cross the pontoon to take the town of Fredericksburg. “It has been affirmed that this pontoon bridge crossed by our Regiment was laid in as hazardous a place as any position used for such crossing during the war”, reflected an officer of the 19th.

After fighting their way through town, the 19th Maine was assigned to the extreme right flank the next two days while the slaughter of the Union Army attempting to take Marye’s Heights was toward the center and left flank. The battle was a devastating Union defeat. The 19th escaped casualties, but the Union Army had approximately 12,600 casualties. George survived his first major battle, but the regiment's hardest months lay ahead.

Winter at Falmouth

The Regiment retreated back across the river and wintered in miserable winter conditions. According to Smith,

 “... our Falmouth camp was our Valley Forge of the civil war...during the winter, the Regiment lost about one hundred men by sickness (10 of these from Company A), and the burial of the comrades was a pathetic sight.  The expiring comrade “wrapt the drapery of his couch about him, and that drape was the army blanket.  In this he was buried, and his only headstone was a piece of a hard bread box.  The signal of the burial was given by the muffled drum, the power pathos of which went through all the camp.”

Vintage drawing of Falmouth camp, winter 1862-1863

John Day Smith was a member of the 19th Maine, named "Frying Pan Regiment." The name came from an incident at winter camp in which the men tried to cook bacon in a frying pan supported over the fire with live artillery rounds. One can imagine how that went.

The Chancellorsville campaign, another Union defeat, began in late April 1863.  On May 3, while Lee was diverted to Chancellorsville, Union troops crossed the Rappahannock in the second battle of Fredericksburg, and captured the Confederate position at Marye’s Heights that had proved so deadly the previous December; the 19th Maine suffered no casualties.  

By late May, the Second Corps had a new commander, General Winfield Scott Hancock. In mid-June, the 19th finally left behind its Falmouth Camp and marched north ... heading for Gettysburg.

Principal source: John Day Smith, The History of the Nineteenth Regiment of Maine Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865, 1909.