Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1916-05-19
One Village
And the FLAG

@AA0 - 1CSFR
Down in the southwestern part of
New Hampshire, in Cheshire county,
there is a village called Nelson. 1t has
POI inhabitants. When the war of Sc
cession was going on, however, it sent
124 men to the front. There is a law
yer here in New York named Henry
Melville, says the New York Times,
and awhile ago it seemed to him-he
was a Nelson man-that it might be
just as well to present to the village a
tablet concentrating It's rather I'M
usual record In the time of war. SO
he did, and it was unveiled not long
ago neal q little old Yankee church.
Not many folks there, most likely.
Melville could not have got from 1t
the satisfaction of having a big crowd
and a hurrah. Any pleasure he got
from it must have been internal.
But he or somebody else in Nelson
was not content with this celebration,
and a pamphlet was published show
ing the record of these New Hamp-
shire soldiers. Easy enough to do, for
there were only 124 of them. Nelson,
though, had given its best, its young
men and its old ones, and there were
husbands, fathers and maybe grand
fathers in that list. "Born In Nelson
is the brief sentence appended to al
most all of these biographies. There
was one man not with a Yankee name.
He came from Patagonia, Of all places
in the world, and his name was
Castone. Nelson is rather proud of
him. He was its foreigner. Gle was
not very strong, but he could knock
men down as fast as they came to him
till he had them in a pile" says Olin
N. Wardwell, his camp buddy" WHO
writes a few regrettably brief lines
about him for the record.
Even Castone enlisted from Nelson.'
There was a boy from Harrisville, but
he ran away from home so that he
could enlist, being under the legal age,
and picked Nelson out as a place where
nobody would know him. Andrew
Jackson Beal his name was. The Con
federates added him to their bag when
they took Harpers Ferry in 1862, but
the boy was exchanged or escaped, for
he stayed in the army, was promoted
and was not mustered out until two
months after the war was over.
"Born In Nelson is true, too, of
Thaddeus Angelo Barker, not a war
rior, but a musician. Still, guns go off
just the same when musicians are ad-
vancing at the head of their compa-
mics, and there was a day In the Will
derness when they ordered Thaddeus
Angelo Barker to the operating table.
He would not go. He lay there in the
scrub oak all day long with his broken
hand In a brook and after all did not
lose it. But it was never of much
use"-a right hand, much needed by a
musician. There was Granville S. Der
by, 'born in Nelson" who was one of
the men who ran down Cemetery ridge
after Pickett's lines collapsed and
chased the C~onfederates across the
stricken valley. Something a little
apologize has to be said about Joseph
N. Day. He was not born in Nelson"
He was an alien from Massachusetts,
but he had taken the blame off by liy-
ing in Nelson "for many years" He
was shot and severely wounded the
day that Sheridan made that celebrat-
ed ride to Cedar creek.
Sergeant Partridge was shot II day
in September, 1864, and Private J. f.
Foster, "enlisted from Nelson hap
pened to be "near by" SO he took
hold of him to give him a lift" he
says. Giving the sergeant a lift was
dangerous, and the Confederates came
across the field and took Foster prison
err. Foster tells of 1t without any emo
tion or any apparent comprehension
that there was anything out of the or
binary about this lift giving.
Grave, serious minded men they
we're. When the Sumter news came
10 Nelson George G. Hardy turned to
Edwin 2. Hunt and said, zone of us
will have to GO" There was nothing
light minded about the way Nelson
went into the war with its 124 men.
Hunt was the first man to enlist from
Nelson. He was young, but Hardy
was middle aged and married. Hardy
went, just the same, and died in the
GNI1