A brief look at the life and military career of Lieutenant Frederick Beecher, a member of the celebrated Beecher family, who gave his life for his country.
Frederick Beecher,
the heroic soldier of Gettysburg, was born to the Rev. Charles Beecher and Sarah Coffin Beecher on June 22,1844, at New Orleans, Louisiana. A member of the celebrated Beecher family , Frederick received his education at Bowdoin College, graduating with an AM degree in 1862. He joined the army and became a second lieutenant in the the 16th Maine in 1862 and a first lieutenant in 1863.
Beecher enlisted in the 16th Maine June 2,1862, before his graduation from college. They were mustered in on August 2 and his regiment reached Washington, D.C. on August 21.Shortly after they were required to take a severe march across the battlefield of Antietam. On that march they were without tents to protect them and were given insufficient or unfit rations and they became ill.
George E. Edwards,a classmate of Beecher's was with him in the army and they kept one another as cheerful as possible through the rigors of war. October 28 found the regiment at Brook's Station, near Fredericksburg, where, on December 13, Beecher was shot in the thigh and Edwards would never recover from his wounds. Beecher's father, the Rev. Charles Beecher (Who Was Charles Beecher) came to the battlefield to take Frederick home to Georgetown, Massachusetts, where he would recuperate until the following April, when he returned to the front on crutches.
The Battle of Chancellorsville
saw Beecher serving in spite of severe pain from his wound.He later marched with his regiment to the battle of Gettysburg, entering on the first day of the fight. They were left with only forty men and Lieutenant Beecher took over and led the tiny force for the next two days. It was said about him that ' he showed great coolness and courage.' However on the second day a shell exploded and shattered his right knee. After hearing of her son's accident Sarah Beecher went ot the site to bring her boy home. He spent a good deal of time in the summer of 1864 recuperating at the home of an uncle, Professor Smyth, in Brunswick, Maine.
General Whittlesey,
Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureauat Raleigh, North Carolina, summoned Beecher in June and he stayed there for some time working for the Negroes, for whom he felt a deep personal and patriotic interest. He accepted a second lieutenancy in the 3rd Infantry, U.S.A. in 1866, and in the spring of that year he reported to Fort Riley, Kansas. His work consisted of construction of buildings on the Fort Wallace Army Post, which was about five miles from the Colorado border on the south bank of Smoky Creek. Work was often stopped by Indian attacks on the site, forcing many of the men to leave the construction sites to watch for and forestall any other attacks.
Longing to make one more visit home, in the spring of 1868 he had just made plans to do so when he was ordered to take part in a campaign which ended Frederick Beecher's life. His last letter home was dated August 30, and sent from Fort Hays, Kansas, just 18 days before his death at what became known as the Battle of Beecher's Island.
One can only wonder how difficult it was to continue on for the parents, who had already experienced the drowning of their daughters Edith and Esther and apparently had a retarded child, Helen, at home.
Sources: Interview with Judge James Shaw, greatgrandson of Charles Beecher. 2008
Booklet Published in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1862, Bowdoin College, 1912.
For further information on the Beecher family see:
