My thanks to Kathie Gow for the encouragement to jump back into this blog ! I'd be thrilled to hear from anyone else in and around Hatfield, or anywhere else, who can shed some light on the history of Hatfield in the Civil War.
By the fall of 1861 Edwin Graves's immediate family was not yet in the fight, but a number of Hatfield men certainly were. Members of militia units throughout the state had responded to the first call to arms after the firing on Fort Sumter. Hatfield volunteers were quickly incorporated into the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment: the recruits included several familiar Hatfield and Hampshire County names, including two Warners and one Abbott, Bardwell, Evans, Harris, and Morton. A special town meeting was convened on May 6th "to act on matters relating to the war" (according to William Schouler's 1871 "History of Massachusetts in the Civil War"), mostly to raise support for the members of the Massachusetts 10th.
A committee of seven was appointed to arrange the financing of support for Hatfield soldiers and their families. The committee included George W. Hubbard, well on his way from youth as a Hatfield farmer, to attorney, to founding treasurer of Smith College and president of the Smith Charities, to founder of the Hampshire Mutual Life Insurance Company. The committee was "authorized to borrow on behalf of the town not exceeding five thousand dollars, to be expended by them as they might deem expedient 'on such soldiers from this town and their families as shall be mustered into the United States service, during the continuance of the present war.' It was also voted to furnish each volunteer with a uniform, if necessary, and a sufficient amount of money to make his monthly pay twenty-six dollars. 'Voted that the town will provide liberally for the families as such that volunteer.' "
"After giving three cheers for the star-spangled banner the meeting adjourned for two weeks. "
Two weeks later, on May 20th the town instructed the committee to pay each volunteer in the Tenth regiment for time spent in drilling - presumably time spent in drilling locally, before the regiment was formally organized. The regiment would be organized in Springfield in June, and later shipped off to Washington to the accompaniment of the Hatfield Brass Band.
As time permits I continue to do some research into the local militias and their absorption into the Civil War U.S. Army. As it happens the Edwin Graves family had something of a distinguished history with the Hatfield militia, although I have no evidence as yet to suggest how active Edwin himself was in the militia. Edwin's great-grandfather Perez Graves had been a captain of the Hatfield militia and had led a group of Hatfield militiamen in response to the Lexington and Concord Alarm in April 1775. (Perez and the troop got as far as Ware before learning that the British had been repulsed and there was no need to go further.) Perez also served as a member of the Board of Selectmen and of the Hatfield Committee of Correspondence during the Revolution. Edwin's father Thaddeus apparently also served as a captain of the militia in Hatfield, and was known as Captain Thaddeus before he died in 1831 at the age of 37 when Edwin was seven.
Hatfield selectmen would continue to raise funds for Hatfield soldiers and their families throughout the war. Much of the expense was reimbursed by the state at various points, but it is clear from the historical sources that raising and distributing support to soldiers and families was a major preoccupation for the town's leaders. These days many Massachusetts towns have held police, firefighter and other municipal jobs open for service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, as they are required to do,and local veterans agents serve returning veterans. But it is difficult to imagine any town officials being drawn into the war effort in quite the way that Hatfield's leaders were beginning in the spring of 1861.
