Masonic Lodge In Cornish Honored A Heroic Brother Adapted from “Maine at War”

by Brian Swartz

John C. Wadsworth arrived in Cornish on Wednesday, November 18, 1863 to be greeted by his Masonic brothers from Greenleaf Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons. Born in Hiram circa 1838, he was the son of John and Mary Wadsworth. The elder John died about 1845, leaving Mary a widow with six children, according to the 1850 census. Hiram borders Cornish to the south. Sometime during the late 1850s or early 1860s, John C. Wadsworth joined Greenleaf Lodge. He was still a member before joining the 5th Maine Infantry Regiment as a private on Au- gust 5, 1862.

A 24-year-old clerk, Wadsworth was single and working in Portland as a clerk when he enlisted. He stood 5-6 and had blue eyes, light hair, and a light complexion. He mustered into the 5th Maine in August. He came home a hero, killed while fighting at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Mourners gathered at the Riverside Cemetery on Maple Street (modern Route 25) on November 19 to listen to Reverend Albert Cole perform Wadsworth’s funeral.

Assisted by their brothers from three other lodges (including Carroll Lodge in Freedom, New Hampshire), the Greenleaf Lodge brothers performed Mason ceremonies at Wadsworth’s graveside. His stone still stands in Riverside Cemetery. Meeting at their lodge on Friday night, November 20, the Greenleaf brothers resolved that concerning Wadsworth, “Falling where heroes fell [at Gettysburg], his memory shall be cherished where heroes still live [the United States] — one among the many noble martyrs to liberty — he holds a hallowed place in every heart which patriotism urges to quickened pulsation.

“We who knew him in social and fraternal life, bear cheerful testimony to his worthwhile living,” Greenleaf brothers agreed.

Ironically, Wadsworth had vanished from the 5th Maine Infantry almost as soon as he joined it. That he died at Gettysburg was certain; a Portland newspaper and a Riverside Cemetery record concur he was killed there on July 2. But, in arriving at Gettysburg late that Thursday, the 5th Maine engaged in no fighting and suffered no soldiers killed during the battle. The next 5th Mainer to die in combat would be Pvt. Franklin Bean of Rumford, killed near Hagerstown, Maryland later in July.

While the 5th Maine Infantry needed every warm-bodied man it could recruit, Wadsworth transferred to the 17th U.S. Infantry Regiment at Augusta on November 24, 1862. Why he transferred will never be known, but 17th Infantry recruiters were working the Pine Tree State that fall.

Wadsworth signed up for the balance of his three-year enlistment with the 5th Maine. Assigned to Company B in the 17th U.S., he probably shipped promptly for the war zone.

Company B belonged to the regiment’s 2nd Battalion, and at Gettysburg Lt. Col. James D. Greene commanded the 17th U.S. Infantry. A Massachusetts native, he graduated from Harvard and later invented the Greene rifle, a bolt-action rifle used by some troops during the Civil War.

Like Wadsworth, Greene had joined a state regiment (the 5th Massachusetts Infantry), then soon transferred to the 17th U.S. At Gettysburg his regiment served in the 2nd Brigade (Col. Sidney Burbank) of the 2nd Division (Brig. Gen. Romeyn B. Ayres), V Corps.

Ironically, the 17th U.S. Infantry crossed paths, at least indirectly with the 17th Maine Infantry, at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Late that afternoon the Mainers had defended the Wheatfield against Confederate infantry and had lost many men there.

Greene, Wadsworth, and the 17th U.S. Infantry piled into the Wheatfield fighting at 6 p.m. Engaged in combat for some two hours, “the regiment suffered severely from the fire of the enemy,” Greene later reported.

Among his men killed at the Wheatfield was Corporal John C. Wadsworth, whose body lay beneath the hot Pennsylvania sun for a day or two until Confederate troops withdrew from the area. Someone (perhaps his 17th U.S. comrades) buried Wadsworth near where he fell and adequately marked his grave so he could be identified.

As the Gettysburg National Cemetery coalesced on Cemetery Hill that fall, Pennsylvanian Samuel Weaver oversaw the freed blacks hired to exhume soldiers’ bodies scattered across the battlefield. Weaver’s employees reached Wadsworth in late October or early November. By practice, Weaver (cont. on page 12)

(cont. from page 11) was present, watching his men remove Wadsworth from his grave. Weaver would have confirmed the body as being that of a Union soldier, and he found sufficient on-site evidence to identify Wadsworth.

Why the Maine hero was not buried in the national cemetery is not known. Friends and relatives back home in Cornish and Hiram learned he had been found; someone lobbied to have Wadsworth sent home for burial, and his coffin traveled by train to Maine.