A hundred and fifty years ago this week, on the first Memorial Day, an old soldier named James Larkin, late of the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers, led the Edward E. Sturtevant chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic into Concord’s Eagle Hotel. Each member carried a wreath or bouquet and wore a black ribbon with red, white and blue trim. After a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, the soldiers and the city’s schoolchildren rose and sang “America.”
Because Mark Travis and I wrote a book about Larkin’s regiment nearly 20 years ago, I have been acquainted with him for a long time. But there is always more to know.
Businesses were closed in Concord that first Memorial Day. The Grand Army, the largest organization of Union Civil War veterans, had been around for two years. The local chapter had been named for Sturtevant, a Concord printer, the first New Hampshire volunteer and Larkin’s first company commander. He had been killed at Fredericksburg in 1862.
After a meal at the Eagle, the veterans, children and other spectators marched in procession to the Old North and Blossom Hill cemeteries. There they laid wreaths at the graves of 25 men killed in the war. I’d like to think Larkin’s two children, who were 9 and 7, marched with him.
An ornamental painter before the war, Larkin left a remarkable record of his military service in letters he wrote from the front to his family in Concord. Jenny was his wife’s name, and he called the children Belle and Bubby. In speaking about the Fifth to various audiences, I can’t count how many times I have read aloud the letter Larkin wrote on the eve of his first battle. I do know it still makes me tear up.
It begins: “As the contending armies seem now to be on the eve of a fierce battle, and many a brave form will be layed silent in Death, and Thousands of homes will be called to mourn for loved ones slain, it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may be among the number who shall fall on that day. Still I have no fears. On the contrary I feel I shall come out safe & be restored to your loving embraces once more.”
Miraculously Larkin was never wounded, but he paid a physical price for three years of long marches, bloody battles, driving rains and nights in the cold. Thirty-four years old when he came home, he suffered from rheumatism and other problems. He could not resume work as a painter, but a string of government jobs kept him solvent. At the time of the first Memorial Day he represented Concord in the Legislature. Soon after, he became the city’s postmaster. At 54, he began receiving a federal pension of $20 a month.
On Belle Larkin’s 14th birthday in 1872, her father wrote her: “You can never know until you have children of your own how closely your life and happiness is interwoven with ours.” He sent her a ring, hoping she would “live long to wear it” as a reminder “of the never-ending love of your affectionate father.” She died at 25.
In 1903, when Larkin was 71, he asked to have his pension doubled. By then, according to doctors, cataracts had nearly blinded him, his wartime malaria had come back and he was “virtually a physical wreck.” His hands were useless and he couldn’t sit down or stand up without difficulty.
Larkin had succeeded Colonel Charles Hapgood as commander of the Fifth after Hapgood was shot in the arm in 1864. Now, in a letter supporting Larkin’s pension request, Hapgood wrote Congress that it need not worry about paying him for long. He expected “to hear of his death at any time.”
Larkin got the extra money, but Hapgood was wrong about his longevity. He survived his wife Jenny, who died in 1907, the year of their 50th anniversary. Judging by his letters to her, this must have been a shattering blow. Two years later, he was still waging an old soldiers’ argument with General Nelson Miles about which regiment had retaken a lost artillery battery during the battle of Ream’s Station.
My research long ago taught me that after the Civil War, many, many veterans did not live happily ever after. Larkin seemed to be a prime example, but I had no idea how bad his life became. Nor, beyond the date of his death, did I know how it ended.
According to his death certificate, he was 79 years, 2 months and 2 days old when he died. By then he lived on Linden Street in Everett, Mass., where, on Aug. 7, 1911, he turned on the gas and took his own life.
Over the years I have often driven past the Larkins’ house on Thompson Street in Concord. This Memorial Day, I will be thinking about their sacrifices as a family in war and peace.
I will also ponder the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation at the city’s first observance of the holiday. To me, it shows that while young men like Larkin went to war to preserve the Union, they were also proud to have fought for liberty and at least the promise of equality. A century and a half later, I wonder how they would weigh our progress on that promise.
(I am grateful to Dave Morin, a relentless researcher of New England soldiers, whose fine blog, “The Yankee Volunteer,” features many of their photos and stories. An early member of the Fifth New Hampshire re-enactors, Dave has a particular interest in the regiment. Often he shares his finds about these men with me. Last winter he sent several Larkin papers, including the death certificate.)
(Mike Pride is the editor emeritus of the “Monitor” and the retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He lives in Bow and Goshen.)