1st Regiment Vermont Heavy Artillery Descendants Association

1st Regiment Vermont Heavy Artillery

Descendants Association

Soldier's Notes

Prior to his enlistment in the 11th Vermont (which was later re-designated at the 1st Vermont Heavy Artillery), Sergeant Charles Edgar Merrill of Company L served in the United States Navy aboard the U.S.S. Port Royal. He was injured from the explosion of a shell in 1862 at St. Mary's Bluff, Virginia, and thereafter medically discharged. The U.S.S. Port Royal was a 1163-ton, double-ended, side-wheeler steamboat acquired by the Union Navy and converted into an armed gunboat. Below is a contemporary sketch of the U.S.S. Port Royal during an action at Fort Darling.

Sergeant Merrill was captured at the Weldon Railroad on June 23,1864 and sent to Andersonville, Georgia. He was paroled on November 11, 1864, mustered out on May 13, 1865, and granted an invalid pension in 1866. Charles Edgar Merrill was described in an article in The Medford Mercury of February10, 1909 as a prominent Grand Army man with a splendid record in war and peace. He was a member of GAR Post #66 (S. C. Lawrence) in Medford, died December 6, 1909 after a long illness with Bright's Disease, and buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery at Medford, Massachusetts. Mary (nee Marie Emma Cook) E. Merrill was granted a widow's pension from Massachusetts in 1909.

Wagoner Francis Xavier Felix, Company I, was a Fench Canadian from Montreal, Quebec. His photograph, probably taken in 1863, is shown below.

Private Levi Lewis Goodrich, Company B, died from wounds on 27 September 1864 during General Phillip Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

Private George Emery, Company F, joined in Morrisville, Vermont on August 6, 1862 and was captured at the siege of Petersburg,Virginia. He was first sent to Libby Prison and then on to Andersonville Prison where he died on September 15, 1864.

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