The Marlborough/Hudson company band. The entire band enlisted into the 13th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War.
By Brett Peruzzi, Contributing Writer
REGION – Marlborough and Hudson’s Civil War history and service records were lost to a fire over a century ago. But a local author made sure the sacrifices of these community’s soldiers wouldn’t be forgotten.
Author recreated historical record more than a century after loss
Tom A.C. Ellis, Jr. of Medway, author of Marlborough & Hudson’s Civil War Service, laboriously researched this history for his book, which was published in 2017.
With 2021 marking the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, Memorial Day this year will be all the more notable.
Seventy-six soldiers from the community (Hudson was part of Marlborough during that time) died in battle, while 46 succumbed to disease, which during that era was often a greater threat than combat.
The Marlborough Civil War monument at the junction of Mechanic and Main Streets
The Civil War records were destroyed when town hall burned to the ground on Christmas Day in 1902. So, Ellis had to rely on numerous other sources, including the US Census, regimental histories, local historical accounts and cemetery records.
One of the main regiments that Marlborough and Hudson men belonged to was the 13th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which included Company F.
“Company F had the honor of being the oldest chartered company in the regiment,” Ellis noted. “It was organized in 1819 as the Marlborough Rifles, and continued its organization without interruption until it became a part of the 13th Regiment. During all this time, its armory was located in the town of Marlborough.”
Local soldiers earned many accolades and were involved in decisive battles
Lt. David L. Brown, one of the soldiers responsible for capturing the John Brown Bell
The regiment would contain several hundred Marlborough and Hudson men during the war, and fought in numerous key battles, including Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg.
The Thirteenth Regiment’s Company I, which contained 19 Marlborough firefighters, was responsible for capturing the famous “John Brown Bell” in 1861 from the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Abolitionist John Brown had made an ill-fated attempt to seize control of the guns there in 1859 and inspire an insurrection of the area’s enslaved people, by ringing the bell to call them to arms.
Part of the soldiers’ motivation was simply that their firehouse back home in Marlborough needed a bell. It was buried for safekeeping when they were called away to fight in another battle. It remained there until 1892 when a group of Marlborough veterans visiting Washington, D.C. ventured to Harpers Ferry to retrieve it.
The bell was shipped to Marlborough, where it adorned the GAR hall for many years, until it was moved to a specially constructed tower on Union Common on Main Street.
The John Brown Bell at the Union Common on Main Street in downtown Marlborough
The most notable Civil War soldier associated with Marlborough was John M. Tobin, an Irish immigrant. He was from Boston but was recruited and provided with equipment and family aid by Marlborough, according to Ellis.
During the battle of Malvern Hill in Virginia in July 1862, Tobin, by then a captain, voluntarily took command of his regiment after the commanding officer was killed. He twice retrieved the regiment’s battle flag under fire when its bearers were shot down and regrouped his unit to defend against the rebel attack. For his actions on that day, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
After the war, Marlborough, in 1869, built a Civil War monument at the junction of Main and Mechanic Streets to honor its 91 men who gave their lives to the Union cause. The Maplewood Cemetery on Pleasant Street is the final resting place of the most Union soldiers in Marlborough. In Hudson, which became a separate town the year after the war ended, in 1866, the same distinction is true of the Main Street Cemetery.
