Weather and years have taken their tolls on Gorham’s 156-year old Civil War monument, one of the state’s oldest.
Gorham’s Civil War monument erected in 1866. Robert Lowell / American Journal
At the urging of a University of Southern Maine history professor and Gorham Historical Society President and Town Councilor Suzanne Phillips, the town is stepping in to help.
The monument stands 24 feet tall on College Avenue in front of the USM art gallery, once the town’s meeting house. But many of the 57 soldiers’ names, dates and unit information are beginning to fade and are becoming illegible.
“It’s stood the test of time but needs a little help,” Libby Bischof, the professor, told the Gorham Town Council last week.
The council unanimously agreed to spend $4,000 for a structural analysis of the memorial. Bischof said the university will partner with the town on whatever needs to be done on the monument.
The monument is protected under the town’s historical preservation ordinance, which means the Gorham Historical Preservation Commission would have to approve any relocation of it, according to Bruce Roullard, chairperson of the commission, responding to an American Journal question.
A Gorham benefactor, Toppan Robie, donated the monument that cost $3,060 to the town in 1866. The marble and granite monument topped with an eagle, is, if not the oldest, among the oldest Civil War monuments in Maine, according to Bischof.
Its base says, “Erected by Toppan Robie – To the memory of the sons of Gorham who sacrificed their lives for their country in the great rebellion of 1861.” Robie’s son, Col. Frederick Robie, a union troop paymaster and later Maine governor, donated an ornamental iron fence around the monument in 1872.
Names on the Gorham monument are fading away. Robert Lowell / American Journal
The town agreed to accept Robie’s gift in November of 1865 and the soldier’s monument was dedicated in a ceremony on Oct. 18, 1866. Fifty-seven guns were fired on South Street prior to the observance, and Maine’s Civil War hero Gen. Joshua Chamberlain delivered the keynote address.
Names etched on the monument include, according maine.gov/civilwar, Capt. Almon Fogg, who died from mortal wounds after being shot in the abdomen on the second day of battle at Gettysburg July 3, 1863. Fogg, 24, died on July 4. He was a company commander in the 17th Maine Regiment.
Fogg was one of 57 Gorham soldiers who gave their lives in the Civil War. Another, Joseph Small, 21, 1st Maine Cavalry, died in a Confederate prison.
Bischof, who said she has held class in front of the monument, said in written report to the town council that the monument must be preserved “to ensure that Gorham’s citizens, for the next 150 years and beyond, can continue to honor and recognize those who fought to preserve the Union and to end slavery in the 1860s.”
Gorham Historical Society and the university plan a re-dedication ceremony next year.
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