The North Haven Historical Society is putting on an extensive exhibit beginning the weekend of July 4th and continuing into September to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. While the war took its toll on the community, with 33 men serving, one dying of disease, several being wounded, and about 12 settling elsewhere after the war, a remaining 20 men returned home. Today approximately 60 islanders—17 percent of the year-round residents—are descendants of Civil War veterans.

North Haven Historical Society (NHHS) President Nan Lee says, “We are making a special effort to make some aspects of the exhibit understandable to children, and will have materials especially for them, including reproduction bounty payments that can be filled in with their names, and copies of the Gettysburg Address.” Lee says that in addition to the history of the war itself, the event will show what life was like on North Haven with 33 young men gone: “That part of the exhibit will focus on school, farms, church and fishing, and selectmen paying bounties and offering support for families of Civil War soldiers.”

The death of Edward Waterman was the island’s greatest loss. Letters sent from young Waterman to his parents John and Eliza before he died will be made public for the first time this summer; Civil War historian and A Vast Army of Women author Lynda Sudlow will reflect on these letters during an evening program on August 5. Sudlow is currently researching Washington, D.C.’s Carver Hospital where Waterman succumbed to disease on February 5, 1864. On August 21, living history buff Hank Lunn will portray 20th Maine Regiment infantry volunteer Myron Harris, a 24 year-old farmer from Littleton who fought at Gettysburg under the command of Joshua Chamberlain.

According to local historian Lydia Brown, like Edward Waterman the majority of North Haven men who served grew up on island farms: “While the farms ranged in size and production, the absence of the young men off at war was surely felt by each family as they continued on with laborious daily management of a farm,” she writes in a NHHS report. This sacrifice corresponds with other parts of Maine and neighboring states. Author Howard S. Russell writes in A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England, “From the point of view of rural well-being the most striking aspect of the war was the departure of the finest young men of the villages, many of them called in the haying season. A disheartening number were never to return.” As tough as it was, North Haven appears to have fared better than average with one man out of 33 dying as a result of the war, even as records indicate up to five fought in the brutal Battle of Gettysburg. Resident Samuel H. Beverage observes, “My guess is that the larger number [of the island’s Civil War veterans] were in the Navy which outnumbered the South Navy and served more as a Blockade Enforcement than they did in pitched battles.” Isle au Haut-based author Peter Scott concurs, “I think your North Haven men survived in such numbers because they were blockading at sea.” Scott is in the final stages of writing In Deer Isle, Maine, historical fiction focusing on the war and home lives of Company K, Penobscot Bay area’s 16th Maine Volunteer Regiment.

North Haven’s Agricultural Census of 1860 reveals 80 working farms with a total of 6,117 acres before the war began. Brown observes that while family farms sorely missed sons going to war, not all was gloom for these businesses: “A big thing for farms is that wool prices went up because the North didn’t have access to cotton. The Army needed a lot of cotton for uniforms and blankets. This was a big boon to farmers.” Sheep were the most plentiful livestock of the time, with 71 of the 80 North Haven farms owning one to 80 head. Farming will be a major subject during the exhibit.

Kate Taylor is a freelance writer who lives on North Haven.