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Charles Bragdon, U.S. Civil War Veteran Cemetery #161, Bragdon Lot, per Vital Records of York, Maine by Bragdon & Frost
In late August 1862, Charles enlisted in the 13th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was assigned to Company K. His service record calls out Portsmouth, Rockingham County, NH, as his residence and his age as 44, although his actual age was 50.
Charles, the son of James Bragdon and Alice Webber, was born in York in February 1812. In 1850, he was living in Cape Neddick with his parents, next door to his soon to be wife, Hannah Webber, his 1st cousin. Charles and Hannah married on 19 October 1852
Charles, a possibly pregnant Hannah, and 2 young children were living, as a family of very little means, in Newburyport, Essex County, MA at the time of the 1860 federal census.
What might have prompted Charles to enlist is not known. Perhaps he was caught up in the early euphoria for the war, perhaps he truly felt a patriotic need to fight for the preservation of a unified United States but most likely it was primarily a financial decision. Like other Union volunteers at this time, Charles was promised a federal enlistment bounty of $100.00, to be paid at the end of his term of service. He also received a payment of $50.00 from the State of New Hampshire. Most enticing, however, was the bounty offered by the City of Portsmouth. Just days before he and 4 other men from York enlisted in the 13th NH Infantry, a notice appeared in the Portsmouth Journal on 23 Aug 1862, reporting that the local City Council had voted to raise the bounty to $400.00. As a comparison, York was offering $230.00 to those enlisting on its behalf. It is safe to assume that the $400.00 bounty applied to Co. K, 13th N.H. Infantry, since it was made up of men from Portsmouth and surrounding localities, such as York. Portsmouth, like all towns and cities in the North, needed to fill its State designated quota and used the bounty to pull in volunteers. In any case, as noted above, Charles enlisted in late August of ’62 and proceeded with his unit by rail, steamer and on foot to the fields of battle.
Prior to going into actual battle, he and his fellow soldiers would experience some hardships that would affect them the rest of their lives, if they survived the war. In the regimental history of the 13th, S, Millet Thompson notes that, after a 4 hour march, they arrived at Camp Chase “..at 6 P. M., and spending the frosty night upon wet ground and without tents or cover” A paragraph later, he writes “..December 6, and bivouacked without tents or cover, in deep snow, and in weather below zero, at ‘Camp Freeze-to-Death’”.
These were certainly not the only times that the soldiers had to endure such hardships and it is easy to imagine that these conditions contributed to the fact that most casualties of the war were caused by disease.
Charles was affected by these conditions and probably by the outbreak of smallpox that occured in June, 1863, and, due to “general debility”, was transferred to Co. 28 of the 2nd Battalion, Veterans Reserve Corps (VRC), after having spent the prior 17 months as “sick in quarters” or at a convalescent camp.
The VRC (in the early days it was known as the Invalid Corp) was created to make use of soldiers who had been rendered unfit for active field service due to wounds or disease contracted in the line of duty, but who were still fit for garrison or other light duty: the 2nd Battalion was made up of men with serious disabilities. The need for soldiers was so great at this stage of the war that the Union kept men with serious disabilities on their rolls, thus enabling the them to send the able-bodied men to the various fronts.
Charles was discharged from the service in July, 1865. In early 1867, he filed for an Invalid Pension due to issues arising from his service, i.e. pulmonary difficulties from sleeping on damp and wet ground and paralysis of his right side.
Why it took 1-1/2 years for him to file for a pension, for which he was certainly qualified, is not apparent from the paperwork in his pension file obtained from the National Archives.
We do know that he and his family needed assistance since the Town Reports for York, beginning in the 1867 fiscal year, show that he received a tax abatement “for being sick”, had received supplies and cord wood and also indicated that he received medical attention, all paid for by the town as “outside aid”, i.e. aid provided to the poor who were not residing in the town owned “poor farm”. Since it was more preferable to have federal pension dollars flowing into the town instead of using the local dollars to care for disabled veterans such as Charles, one can assume that town officials assisted him and others in applying for, and obtaining, pension benefits.
The inability to earn enough money to support his family was perhaps the unfortunate result of his ill health and the reason why, in 1870, Charles, his wife and 3 children were “Inmates of the Alms House”, also known as the Town Farm or Poor Farm, on Long Sands Road in York.
All members of the family were eventually able to move back into the small, Bragdon family house, situated on the “Post Road leading from Cape Neddick Village to Portland”, a house they shared with Charles’ brother Rosewell and his wife Sarah.
In the 1880 census, Charles is shown as having “no occupation”, with a further complication of being “palsied”. He died on 3 January 1881 and is buried in a private cemetery, reportedly with his wife, who died in August 1891
There are no visible headstones on their graves; only a Grand Army of the Republic medallion and US Flag mark his grave.