© 2024 Maine Public | Registered 501(c)(3) EIN: 22-3171529
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Scroll down to see all available streams.

Civil War Veteran to be Interred at Aroostook County Cemetery

The cremated remains of Pvt. Jewett Williams will be interred Saturday at the Hodgdon Cemetery, 151 years after he mustered out of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment and 94 years after his death.

It has been a long journey for the Civil War veteran, but his descendants in Aroostook County say they are glad to finally welcome him home.

The day was April 9, the year was 1865 and the place was Appomattox Court House in Virginia, where Gen. Robert E. Lee formally surrendered, bringing an end to the Civil War. Also present during that historic moment was the 20th Maine Regiment, led by Maj. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, who famously ordered his troops to salute their former adversaries.

Among the Union soldiers complying with that order was Jewett Williams, a native of the southern Aroostook County town of Hodgdon.

“When he got out of the Civil War he came home, he had an unfortunate time when he got home,” says Eugene Jackins of Houlton, Williams’ first cousin, three times removed.

Jackins says he’d heard his ancestor mentioned a few times, but didn’t know much about him, other than he had returned to Maine, got married and then divorced and moved west.

No one in Hodgdon ever heard from Williams again until last year, when his cremains were discovered in locked shed of the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital for the Insane, along with the ashes of nearly 3,500 other patients.

Jackins says it was unlikely that his cousin was able to tell hospital officials much about his past.

“Because he had some senility,” he says. “In those days, if something happened with you that your head was gone, couldn’t think, he was 78 years old and worked all his life — he went to that insane asylum and he was only there for three months and he died.”

Because it was not known a year ago that Williams had descendants in Hodgdon, efforts were initially made to bury Williams remains at Togus National Cemetery in Chelsea, where other members of the 20th Maine were also laid to rest. Jackins said the plan was to accept an offer last month from the Patriot Guard Riders, a group that attends the funerals of U.S. military veterans, firefighters and police, to relay Williams’ ashes by motorcycle to Maine.

“I think it was an honor to be selected as one of the states that his cremains were going through,” says Dario Bell of the Idaho Patriot Guard. “It’s the ultimate respect that we can do.”

Bell said members felt duty-bound to assist in returning the Civil War veteran’s remains back to Maine.

A formal ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday, when Williams is buried next to his parents with full military honors in the Hodgdon Cemetery. The public is invited to attend and a reception will follow at the Mill Pond Elementary School.