Interviewer - So this evening, I'm really happy to present our speaker, Bernie Ready. Bernie has taught 5th and 6th grade at Chelmsford for 35 years. He has a master's in education, but he's also a past president of the Chelmsford Historical Society.

He's on the board of directors of the Historical Society and the board of trustees of the Historical Society. He's a lifelong resident of Chelmsford. And he has such enthusiasm when it comes to the history of our community.

And I could just sit and listen to his stories all night. Unfortunately, we do have to be out of here at quarter to nine. So I need to put that in, because I have a feeling with so many people, that any girl with a high sensibility will come up and he'll use the gun.

So Bernie, if you want to turn on your microphone. Thank you all. Is it working?

Okay, great.

Bernie Ready - First of all, the turnout is fantastic. And I feel bad for the people standing up out there. I hope it's worth your while.

I'd like to welcome all my friends out there I see. And I see a lot of sword people out there too. And hopefully tonight you'll learn a little bit about swords.

Because I'm not an expert. My hope for tonight is that I spark interest in you and show you some stuff. That later on you'll go out and delve in even deeper than I have tonight.

So it's going to be a lot of surface stuff to show you what's out there. And then hopefully you'll get interested and dig deeper. And I'd love to see this huge turnout to talk about the Civil War.

All right. So I'm going to hit the lights.

Interviewer - Yes, you ready? Do you have the clicker?

Bernie Ready - Is this on already?

Interviewer - I just turned it on.

Bernie Ready - All right. To start off the night, this is the symbol of the town. It's in the common.

The inscription on it is that the children died with the size of one. It was dedicated there in 1859 to the soldiers of the Revolutionary War. Now, when I was studying all this stuff about the Civil War, I found out this tremendous fact about this that I just have to share.

It's got nothing to do with Civil War. This was not put on the common randomly. This was put on the common at the spot there was an ash tree there.

And before the Revolutionary War and during the Revolutionary War, the townspeople would meet under this ash tree and plan. So when they came up with this monument, they put it at the spot the ash tree was. This ash tree had a big hollow place in it, and people would leave money there for soldiers that were going to the Revolutionary War.

Can you imagine that? They would leave money, and soldiers on their way out would take it and go. A piece of the puzzle that dawned on me, the Baptist churches across the street, there was a big home there for Colonel Stoddard.

He was the most prominent man in town. The governor of the state would come and visit him, and dignitaries, and there was always big parties there and everything. The problem was, he was a Tory.

And then it dawned on me, the ash tree was right across the street from his house. And then I read where his fences got pulled down, and his house got stormed all the time, and this kind of thing. It was right across the street.

So this monument is right where that ash tree was. And I never knew that. Here I am researching the Civil War, and I found something out about the Revolutionary War.

So that's just a little tidbit I thought I'd throw in. This was dedicated in 1859, as I said. A man named Spalding came to the dedication.

He was 91 years old. His father was credited with firing the first shot at Bunker Hill. And he taught, and he said when he was a little boy, his father went away to the Bunker Hill War, and you could hear it in Chelmsford.

All day long they heard the cannons going off and everything. You can imagine in those days there weren't planes in 495 and Route 3 and all this kind of thing. And I've read articles from scientists that say the loudest event that ever took place in New England was the Battle of Bunker Hill.

And you could hear it all the way from Chelmsford. They waited all day to see if his father would come home, and his father did. So men from Chelmsford have fought in wars from the very beginning.

Indian Wars, the French and Indian War, King Philip's War. All these wars men from Chelmsford fought. And there are monuments in town to them, men and women.

This here is in North Chelmsford. This is to World War I. That little square there is called Vinyl Square, and Vinyl was a man from Chelmsford who was killed in World War I.

Also in that same common there's a monument to the Vietnam War. And I knew two of these soldiers personally, and it's nice to see it there. This is a monument in Carlisle Center.

As you go around that little rotary, this is a monument to the Civil War. And this is a monument at the Cradle of Democracy. This is in Conway, where you think Revolutionary War, but right in the very center of the square of Conway is this monument to the Civil War.

This is a monument to the Civil War in law. Win victory, it's a victory for the Civil War. Now the reason I'm showing you these monuments from other towns is because when I was researching everything, I realized there's nothing in Chelmsford.

We have to the Revolutionary War, the Vietnam, World War I, but nothing on the Civil War. And that kind of strikes me, I don't understand why. And hopefully at the end of this whole thing, you wonder why too.

Because Chelmsford played a very big part in the Civil War. The only thing I can figure out is that the monument to the Revolutionary War was dedicated in 1859. And they had to go around and raise money for it.

And so that was pretty close to the beginning of the Civil War. In 1864, right after Lincoln was elected, they appropriated $288 for a Liberty Pole, which was to be put in the southeast section of the monument. Now whether that's where the flagpole is today, I'm not sure what a Liberty Pole is.

But for $288 back in 1864, it may have been the beginning of the flagpole there, I'm not sure. But there's nothing in Chelmsford for the Civil War. And with all these people interested in the Civil War, who knows, maybe someday there will be.

Now this is in Lowell, right next to Wayne Victory. And this is a monument to the first two soldiers killed in the Civil War. And they came from Lowell, Whitney and Ladd.

And the reason I have this here is because right from the very start, the men from Chelmsford were involved. These two men were killed. William Patch from Chelmsford was wounded.

So we're going right back to April 19, 1861, when this battle took place. And I'm going to talk about what the battle was. I've got a lot of research out of Butler's book.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with it, but General Butler from Lowell was a really big deal. I m

ean, unbelievable what this guy did. And it's nice to have a primary source.

I've read, you know, most of it. And he was a much bigger deal than I ever thought. He was a congressman. He was on a first-name basis with Lincoln, with Grant. If you read this book, according to him, he saved the Union. He had presidential ambitions.

He was a congressman. He was everything. And, you know, he was the law.

Probably that he's the biggest person from Lowell other than Paul Saunders. I mean, but, you know, because so I learned a lot in here. What I learned was this.

Lincoln, when the Civil War broke out and the southern states seceded, Washington was kind of in the middle, almost, of the South. Maryland could have gone with the South. If Maryland had gone with the South, Washington would be in the middle of the South.

So Lincoln immediately called for 75,000 troops to come and defend Washington. Butler and a whole crew from Lowell, he met with the governor and said, We're going to raise the troops. He did.

I never thought of this before. But the governor said to him, Will they fight? And Butler said, What do you mean?

And most of the South was Democratic. Lowell was a Democratic area. They weren't sure that Democrats would fight for a Republican president.

In fact, they were so unsure that Butler came back and told all the troops, Will you fight for a Republican president? And their answer was unanimous, Yes, we will. They wanted to preserve the union.

So off they went. But I thought that was strange. And then I thought back to hanging chads and blue and red states.

And I thought, Wow. What if that Supreme Court decision, look at what a blue state we are. And what if Gore had said, Hey, we're a blue state.

But that's 150 years later. The United States was a relatively new country, maybe 60, 70 years old. They didn't really know whether people had to stick with their states, stick with their parties, stick with what.

So he actually called them to see if they would fight for a Republican. And they said yes. What happened was, this is Baltimore.

They left Lowell. They headed down to Washington. Now, all I can figure out is that it must have been a situation in Baltimore most similar to Boston.

When you can come into Boston in the north station, north train station, and then you have to get off. I mean, how many have ever left suitcases on the T and everything? It's a pain in the neck to get over to the south station.

So there was some type of situation like that. And the troops, they felt they'd do it in the middle of the night. They'd get in there and get across Baltimore.

The reason they were afraid is because Maryland seemed like it was going to secede. They got there. The troops were in the train.

Now, you can imagine these guys from Chelmsford, Lowell. They're put on a train, get down there. They get off in the middle of the night.

And mobs are attacking them. This is where Ladd and Whitney were killed and where William Patch was wounded. April 19th, right at the beginning of the war.

What Butler did, that was the van guy. Butler then went, oh, my goodness, how am I going to get to Washington? He sailed in, went into Annapolis, figured that at the Naval Academy, he would have friendly people there.

He got into Annapolis. He saved the Constitution. The ship was there.

He was afraid the Confederates would grab the Constitution, which even at that time was a big symbol of our country. And he immediately went to the mayor and the governor, and he told them, if you call the legislature together, and you vote to secede, I'll arrest you all. So don't even bring it up.

And they didn't. So right at the beginning of the war, men from Chelmsford were involved. Now, this here is a broadside.

It gives an idea of what they were doing in this town to get men to go. They had patriotic speeches. Prominent men like Robey and Butler taught them to come on, join, and they got people to join.

Towns had quotas. Chelmsford had 250 men go to the Civil War. They were proud of the fact that there was 18 men above their quota, which is pretty good.

If you look here, it says the American House in Lowell is where you go to sign up. And there's C.E.A. Butler, and we'll talk about him later. But Lowell, going up in Chelmsford, I hate to say this, Lowell was a big deal at that time.

Chelmsford had 3,000 people. Lowell had about 38,000. It's kind of fascinating when you think about it.

I think Lowell broke off in Chelmsford around 1828 or 1826 or something like that. Within 30 years, it's now 38,000 people. And it was a manufacturing giant during the Civil War.

It made all kinds of uniforms for the troops. And the men would leave from trains from Lowell. So they would go in there and be recruited.

The town usually paid them somewhere between $125 and $150 bonus to join. And this here is for nine months. This is a broadside that the Historic Society just had refurbished.

I don't know if that's the exact word, refurbished. Conserved. Conserved.

And Judy Fichtenbaum and her husband were nice enough to have it framed for us. So that's at the Historic Society. And that's the real McCoy.

That's the real McCoy. Now this here is McClellan, General McClellan. And I'm showing him because he's involved with the men from Chelmsford Company K.

Now McClellan thought of himself as the Napoleon of the West. He thought he was tremendous. But Lincoln didn't think so.

He could raise an army. He had huge armies. But he didn't use them.

I don't know why. Grant certainly used them. He didn't.

And that's a picture of him. And you will hear in the diaries the men from Chelmsford talking about him. I'm amazed that in these diaries, for instance, they talk about things like this is 1862.

They're talking about the general on the other side is Stonewall Jackson. I mean he already had that nickname in 1862. It was after Bull Run.

But all the troops knew who was on the other side. They knew everything. So basically the troops knew that this guy wouldn't fight.

And you'll hear that in the diaries. Now what his design was, was this. After Bull Run, now you see one of the craziest things is Washington and Richmond are so close together.

I mean they're really close together. By car today, two hours you're there. So they're very close together.

The capital of the north, the capital of the south are very close. So you would think it would be an easy thing just to march right down and take the capital. Well that's what they thought initially.

But Bull Run changed that. They got wiped out in the end. Then McClellan had this great idea.

I'll go down by ship quickly, come in here, and come in the south. This is called the Peninsula Campaign. Now to show the craziness, he spent a million dollars on bypass to quickly shuttle the troops down through this area through locks.

But he forgot to do one thing. He forgot to measure the bypass. They were too big for the locks.

He spent a million dollars on boats and ships for his troops. And he couldn't use them. So this slowed the whole thing down, gave the south time to reinforce, and he got down here to the peninsula.

Now when he made the first thrust, he actually got within like 27 miles of Richmond. They could hear the church bells ringing. They could see the steeples.

That's how close they came. This is very early in the war. They came so close that Jefferson Davis then put Robert E. Lee in charge of the defense of Richmond. And he said to Lee, what do you think? Where are we going to fall back to?

What are we going to do when they take Richmond? Lee said, they're not taking Richmond. I'm not falling back.

What happened was Lee sent Jeff Stewart, Calvary officer, with his band, all around McClellan. They came right around. They rode all around.

They destroyed his supplies. They scared him to death. He had so many more troops than Lee had.

But he was afraid, and he backed off. Then we wound up with a protracted situation right here of back and forth, back and forth, basically throughout the war. Now the three men from Chelmsford that were going to hear the diary were down in here.

This is where they were. And you'll hear what life was like down there the first thing in front of you. Let me just grab a drink of water.

This is Dr. Bobby Crowley. These are five soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts. And that's what we're going to deal with first is the 6th Massachusetts.

Three of them, all three that we're going to deal with were in Company K and went to that peninsula and fought in that engagement. The first person we're going to talk about is Henry Inglis. Now he was a farmer from South Chelmsford.

One of the things that I'm happy about is all three of these men could write very well. And in one of the diaries, I guess in the beginning of this diary, they talk about how well educated he must have been. So being a school teacher from Chelmsford, I always felt good about that.

Even back in the 1800s, Chelmsford's school system was pretty good. Now he talks a lot about the weather. Now if you haven't, I've done a diary.

And in class I used to try and get my kids to write a journal. So I tried to be a good example, I'd write my own journal. The first thing I always wrote was what it was like outside.

I looked out the window, it was sunny. And I wasn't living in a tent. So you can imagine how important the weather was to soldiers.

So they almost always wrote about the weather. It kind of surprises me that coming from Chelmsford, they moaned and groaned about how cold it was in Virginia. But in Chelmsford they were probably living in a house, and in Virginia they were living in a tent.

So they're always talking about the weather. But Ingles is a very positive person. And he seems to like nature and everything.

Bruce, you like this? He talks about eclipses of the sun. He's watching, of course they didn't have TVs, radios, things like that.

They probably watched the stars a lot more. I've read three diaries, and I like this guy. Some guys I don't like, but this guy I like.

He seems very positive. What I did was I went through the diaries. I mean, I could stand here for six days and read diaries.

Nobody wants me to stand there and just read. But what I tried to do was take some excerpts that might be meaningful to you. So here goes.

A lot of times they also talk about being sick. They had dysentery, they were going to the doctors. I mean, you know, they're in a tent, it's freezing, they're sick.

They're marching for days. This is Sunday, November 2nd. Pleasant.

We had inspection this morning. I had with others in the company been to town and went to a meeting at the colored church. It was very amusing.

The colored children sang and spoke pieces and set multiplication tables. These colored people are a queer institution. In the afternoon, wrote two or three letters and went to a meeting.

In the evening, sat in my tent and read. Now, what I find interesting is he calls them colored people. Now, reading the diaries, and you know all the controversies about the n-word, etc.

So when I came across it, it startled me. But in order to be realistic, that's what they call colored people, black people. They call them nears.

And so in some of these diaries, I will read that. And at first, you know, it gives me a very negative connotation. But you have to overcome that because they didn't necessarily mean it, some of them meant it, but they didn't necessarily all mean it negative.

That's what they call them. This is Friday, January 30th. To me will be a long remembered day.

We started from camp at 12 o'clock with three days ration and had not marched more than five or six miles. Now remember, this is on the peninsula. When the rebel pickets fired on us and were driven in, we were ordered to support the Richardson Battery and lay flat on our bellies for two hours, the shells flying thick amongst us and killing some and wounding others.

The regiment had the order to withdraw and retreat about a half a mile and then advance and follow the rebels about seven or eight miles and came back to camp. Arriving about one o'clock midnight, pretty tired and well worn out. This is Friday, April 24th.

Still raining. Was on the second relief. We were going out on a skirmish this afternoon on the Somerton Road.

Started about two o'clock with artillery. We were deployed to the right of the road and marched forward to receive the enemy's fire. We laid down flat and fired at them.

They were in rifle pits and high to dislodge. Fell back slowly and retired about six o'clock. The rebels received reinforcements.

Sunday, April 26th. Pleasant. Am on picket today.

Second post on the right of the reserve. Has been quite long. Could hear the rebels talking and laughing and their band playing.

It's pretty cold tonight. Now, Ingalls served his nine-month duty and then he re-enlisted later on in the war. So, they were in and out all over the place.

I mean, some did three years, some did 90 days, some did 100 days. All kinds of enlisted periods. So, he enlisted, served his time, and then enlisted again.

I'm sad to say, you'll hear later, that he died. His second enlistment, he was guarding southern prisons in the Washington area. There was one disease in the prison.

He contracted some type of a disease, was brought home and died the day before his enlistment was up. So, very sad. I think later on you'll hear it on other people's diaries that he must have been quite a man.

So, I was listening to the music with my wife the other night and she said to me, this music is really sad. And I said, yeah, it is. The Civil War is sad.

618,000 Americans were killed in the Civil War. So, it's hard to have anything wonderful about the Civil War. I mean, it's a very sad period in American history.

But one, we don't seem to pass over or want to give up because it's so interesting to us because it happened in our country. Now, the next thing I'm going to read, and it's not a diary, it's Lettuce Home. This is Botley, Charles Botley, and he writes Lettuce Home.

And he's prolific writer. He writes to his mother, he writes to his father, he writes to his brother. Now, I think I've read all of them.

And what I tried to do is take some of the excerpts that I think you'd be interested in. Now, his family was big wheelers. His father was a prominent doctor.

His grandfather was a big lawyer. In fact, he was born in the Fisk House. You know where the Fisk House is in the corner?

He was born. His grandfather was Joel Adams, who owned the Fisk House at the time. And his father was a prominent doctor in the town.

This is the oldest picture of the Botley House that we could get. Now, the Botley House is right across the street from here. This is where he lived.

And this may be a little after the Civil War, but it's probably what it looked like then. This is what it looks like now. This is what it looks like now.

Now, before I forget it, there's so many ironies in life. This book here, Ames Sword Company, by John Hamilton, is the Bible for Ames Swords. John Hamilton also wrote an article on Robie Swords, which was basically the Bible on Robie Swords, initially.

When he wrote this book, he lived in the Botley House. I mean, how do you think of it? It's just, I don't know whether the house has something in it or what, but he lived in the Botley House right across the street.

Now, Botley, the family donated the land to this library system. And Charles Botley did all the landscaping around it. They also, I believe it was his granddaughter, donated Botley Park and Botley Woods.

So they're a very, very prominent family in Chelmsford. Now, this is his, I put up, this is what his diary and Glenn's home looked like. This is to his father.

What's weird is that one of the things the historic site wants to do is, these started in, I believe, 1862, September, when they first went on. And what we'd like to do, what we're trying to do is, we'd like to, in a patch or one of these electronic newspapers, actually print his letters from the day he sent it and let everybody in town read them. And I kind of feel a little bad, because he kind of liked eavesdropping on somebody's life.

I mean, these are letters that he wrote home to his mother, his father, and his brother. How many of us would like letters we've written home to our mothers and fathers broadcast electronically to the whole town, the whole world? But anyway, it's history.

The other thing is, you know, I've had people email me and stuff and said, were you in the Civil War? No, I wasn't in the Civil War. And I have to thank Greg Marion and Donna Berger for helping me chunk the PowerPoint from slide presentations.

But I wasn't in the Civil War. But I'll tell you something. I taught for 35 years.

And I taught cursive writing. And when we had all these letters, we thought, well, let's get some high school students to translate them into print and then we'll put it online. And we found out we couldn't do that, because high school students today, they're texting and everything.

They don't know how to read cursive. And what's really bad is I didn't reach a single problem. After 35 years of teaching cursive and reading every fifth grade, sixth grade handwriting, I can read them.

I can use really good handwriting. Yeah, it's very good. And you can see that there.

And this is a picture of him right there. Okay? Now, of all the things, I have a hard time with him.

I can't say I don't like him. But, you know, we get into somebody's head. After I read some of the excerpts, maybe you'll see why I'm saying what I say.

Okay? Now, remember, he was a very prominent person in town. His mother, all the ladies in town held all kinds of fairs.

And they made clothes and mittens and everything. They wanted people to send food all the time, regular young guys. You know, especially apples.

I thought that was interesting. They wanted apples. And they wanted mittens, and they used to send them mittens, and they'd leave the trigger finger empty so that they could shoot.

And the whole town was involved in supporting these troops. It really was. Okay, so basically he says he's homesick and this kind of thing.

This is October. Oh, plus, this guy gets married the week before he goes to Harry and Coke. All right?

I guess soldiers do that, right? I mean, you know, he didn't know if he was coming back. But he got married the week before he took off.

All right, October 2nd. Dear brother, how about the draft? Are any Chelmsford folks going to volunteer?

The colonel has authorized Mr. Dupa to recruit for this regiment. Take my advice. Stay at home.

What do Chelmsford boys write about their captain? All right? This is an interesting thing about the Civil War.

All the guys that are away are writing back home to him. They're writing about themselves, and they're writing about all the guys that went with them. So everybody in town must be sharing information about each other.

And you'll see some of this is not too flattering that they write about each other. All right? And he's interested in what they're saying about him.

He's the captain. And they elected their own officers. October 5th.

Dear father, the male population are all in the rebel army. So, of course, the other sex feel really bad towards us. Bad?

They hated them. You can imagine. Talk about an army of occupation.

They were down there, and every one of their brothers and husbands and brothers were fighting on the other side. All right? In fact, Ben Butler, down in New Orleans, had to put an ordinance that any women that acted bad would be treated as prostitutes.

What they used to do is they used to throw their latrine buckets out the windows on Union soldiers, and he put a stop to it real quick because they were arrested as prostitutes. And right away, well, finally, Shawty ended that. But you have to understand they hated the Union soldiers, and it was very hard on young guys.

I mean, these guys were like in their early 20s. I mean, he was married. He just got married a week before.

But the other two we're talking about weren't. Young guys, beautiful women, but they hate you. All right?

That must have been hard. Now, tell the Chelsea boys to come on. We are all ready for them.

I am sick of this kind of life, I assure you. Don't say anything to discourage the boys from coming. But do not let Adams enlist at any rate.

Now, Adams is his brother. So this guy is saying, get him down here. But don't tell him what I'm saying.

Get him down here, but don't let my brother down. All right? He says he could not stand it one month.

What's interesting is his brother did enlist later in the war and went away and actually served with Eagles down in the Washington area. Weird thing about this war, he's always writing home saying to his father and father, father especially, come on down. Come on down and visit me.

I mean, you heard Eagles, right? I mean, there's cannons coming in. There's all kinds of things going on.

But people went and visited the troops. The mayor of Lowell went down there and visited this group. And the officers would bring their wives.

I mean, Ben Butler had his wife through most of the war. When he was down in New Orleans and a big battle was breaking out, he finally convinced her to leave by telling her that if a bomb hit and they were both killed, their children would have no parent. So she left.

But it's kind of weird that people would go visit them. October 7th. And this is where it gets a little hairy, people from the same town.

You should see George Parkos. I don't know if you remember George Parkos, but I wish he was still around so I could say, hey, George. He will sit and look at nothing for half an hour at a time.

He is homesick enough, I tell you. The ties of affection are what knock him high. If I only was out of the Army, he would never catch me in a game.

Draft or no draft. We'd go to Canada first. Now, hey, when I first started on this mission, I'm there.

Captain Bible, you know? I mean, this guy, I expected, you know, swashbuckler and all this stuff. And then I'm reading, I'm going to Canada after nine months.

They haven't touched me again, so that was interesting. November 2nd. Dear Mother, how about the peace proposal from Jane Davis of Richmond?

They don't amount to anything. Our boys are, most of them, shoveling every day. They do not stand as well with the government as the niggers who do not do anything but eat government rations.

November 5th. What is that large army of General McCullen doing? Are they going to keep quiet all winter?

So even the troops, even his troops were saying, what's going on? I mean, what's he doing? November 6th.

Dear Father, the war will never be closed by fighting, and the sooner the trouble is settled by Congress, the better for the country. The soldiers are all disgusted with the whole thing. The rebels are treated better than we are.

You know, this is not a happy man. November 10th. Dear Father, the only way to settle up this trouble between the United States and the rebels is by compromise.

I should think it had been shown that it cannot be done by fighting. The soldiers of the old regiment here with us are as dissatisfied with the way the war has been conducted as they can be. Father Abraham, call him Father Abraham, must look out while the soldiers will take matters into their own hands.

You have no idea what a feeling there is amongst them against the present policy of the administration. Now, Lincoln was in big trouble when he was trying to get reelected in 1864. There was a good chance he might have been defeated by McCullen, who was supposedly the peace candidate.

But Sherman's taking of Atlanta saved him. He got that big victory and it really helped him. The men will fight when they are brought into battle, and the rebels know it too.

The rebels and niggers are better cared for out this way than the soldiers. November 15th. Dear Mother, the soldiers are rather pleased than otherwise with the removal of McCullen.

And hail the appointment of General Burnside as the best thing that could be done. He is very popular with the soldiers. This is November 5th.

You go about a month and a half, he's not very popular with the soldiers. After Fredericksburg. George Parker is still in the hospital, and he will always be there unless he has a little more energy and gets over the habit of looking on the dark side of everything.

Now I'm thinking, if he thinks George Parker is looking on the dark side, how dark is this guy? And interestingly enough, George Parker is reenlisting. And we were talking about that the other day, and with all these letters coming home from all these guys how whacked out he was, I don't think he had any choice.

He had to redeem himself. I mean, I'll meet them home and everybody's going, George sat in the hospital all the time looking at a wall. So he had to go back in.

He did go back in, and I think Fred told me that he did a little research on him and he actually became a town treasurer or something? Clerk? So he can be redeemed.

So George reenlisted. Interesting at Thanksgiving, he talked about they played football. I don't know if it was a football week, dude.

They played football, they played round ball, and horse racing was really big in those days. Horse racing as a pastime. Now this is December 21st.

He says, dear brother, the army will take the thing into their own hands. I hope the opposite, who is to blame for that slaughter in Fredericksburg, will be made to suffer. Now this is right after Fredericksburg.

I mean, you can imagine the morale of the troops. Fredericksburg was a horrible battle. We'll take a look at that.

And it was Burnside. They got rid of McClellan, they put Burnside in, they get slaughtered. The letters continue through April, and the men start counting down their days.

The weirdest thing is, he thinks about reenlisting. And the only reason he doesn't is he keeps writing home and saying, what's Harriet think about it? His wife.

And I guess she put the tie wash on it, and he didn't reenlist again. He never reenlisted. He became a very prominent man in town.

He was a big wheel in the railroad, and very well-to-do. And that's Bob. Now, the next person I'm going to talk about is another prominent person in town.

Now I like this one. After reading about him, I like him. He's the kind of guy you wouldn't mind going off with.

I don't know how many of you know what these are. These are Byam matches. They were made in South Chelmsford.

The Byam family was a Byam school in South Chelmsford. Ezekiel Byam manufactured the first matches that you could strike. And he had a big factory in South Chelmsford.

If you look down the end of Robin Hill Road, there's a little monument there to it. Later on he moved to Boston, and finally he was bought up by the Byam Match Company. So these are from Byam matches.

South Chelmsford. Still there are a lot of Byams. The historic society house is the Byam House.

So he came from another prominent family. And I guess what struck me about this person is, coming from a farm in South Chelmsford, first he goes on the peninsula campaign. He's with Ingalls and with Butler.

And then he re-enlists. He gets shipped out to Washington. And the harrowing experience as this guy goes through, I just can't imagine, you know how they say, how do you keep them down on the farm after they've seen Kareem?

I don't know what this town must have been like, after all these men came back, after what they had seen in life, as compared to, you know, after Spawn. So this is a few excerpts of his. We are now camped on a very pleasant rise, overlooking the Potomac, Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria.

Have not yet received our uniforms. Expect blankets tonight. Comfortably cool.

Went from Lowell right outside of Washington. Friday, April 29, 1864. So, we're about the last year of the war.

Another splendid day. It is very warm in the daytime, but cold at night. Our offices are strict.

One man has a ball and chain attached to his leg, which he has got to carry for six months, and have ten dollars of his pay taken from him. Can you imagine? Walking around with a ball and chain on your leg for six months?

So, Wednesday, May 11th. Another not very cold day. Received a letter home, and one from Emory.

Received pictures of Mary Bean and Sarah Spalding. So, a little romance going in, too. I mean, pictures in those days, when you think back to 1864, pictures were probably pretty expensive little things.

And so, maybe one of these was a sweetheart, I don't know. And like I said, it's all puzzles. I wish I had more time to, you know, maybe delve into who he married.

Did he marry one of these girls? Like I said, I'm just scratching the surface. Hopefully, people in here will say, geez, I'm interested in that fine guy.

Let me see what he did later on. He gave a second lecture. I'm sorry, what?

He gave a second lecture. Friday, May 13th. On God, not very pleasant weather.

For three days and nights, thundershowers all the time. We hear Grant whipping the rebels. Lee whipped at every point.

Bullying. Now, we're seeing a turning point. When we were listening to Bartlett, he was moaning about how they were losing all the time.

Now, with Grant, they're winning. And the soldiers know it. And they're excited.

Thursday, May 19th. The old bugle sounded at 3 o'clock to rout us out. After getting into line and giving three times three for the adjutant, the captain not being anywhere, we started not knowing where we were going.

And in fact, not caring. Glad to get away. Arrived in Washington in season for the first train north.

Took cars on the Baltimore-Ohio Railroad. Changed cars at the Relay House for West Virginia. We got along very well into Cumberland.

Crossed the river at Harpers Ferry. Had to cross in a boat. The bridge having been carried away by a storm.

We left at 9 o'clock within miles of Crafton, 250 from Cumberland and 100 from Wheeling. Now, this experience alone is unbelievable. Just listen to this.

A rail broke and five rare cars were thrown off the track. It was 3 o'clock in the morning. The car I was in rolled over four times, down a bank 30 feet, and fetched up bottom side up in Free Farm Creek.

There were 50 signal corals, boys, in the car that went into the river. It was the only car that went into the water. As soon as it stopped, the water rushed in and very soon filled the car partly with water.

I was thrown against the stove and knapsacks were piled on top and covered with water. I had to struggle to catch my breath, which was hard work. I thought my time had come.

But it was not to be so. The water covered up one side of the car and the other side was up to the windows. The stove in the windows was but the work of an instant.

It seemed like hours. And crawling on top of the bank, those who were injured took the cars for crafting where there was a hospital. Two boys were killed, one from Southwest and the other from Ohio.

I felt something in my hip, so I went to the hospital. Friday, May 20. Now, what was happening is they were shipping him to the Mississippi River, and from the Mississippi River he was going down to New Orleans.

His train accident happened on the way to the Mississippi River. I was taken to the hospital where the water had helped another man. I was wet, completely through, and covered with sand and mud.

The surgeon examined my wound and extracted a piece of glass two and a half inches long and a half inch wide. Besides that, I received other injuries. After the glass was taken, I felt very sick, laid down, felt better, had a very good dinner, and the best of care taken of me by the soldiers.

They were West Virginians, and good boys, had a good supper and tried to sleep. Unbelievable. And this is just the beginning.

Thursday, June 2. Now, he makes it to the Mississippi River. We have heard of rebels with a nine-inch gun battery on the Arkansas side.

We were under the convoy of a gunboat for 50 miles. This is a picture of what a gunboat might have looked like. When we were within three miles of Columbia, a gunboat stopped us and the captain said we must drop anchor as he would not allow us to be down that night.

It was done, but a great many were opposed to it. The excitement was kept up all night. The officers came all tight.

A worst thundershower was never known than was that night. In the morning, we started with the marine boat BJ Adams latched to one side. We came opposite the bend.

They opened up on us with artillery and musketry, solid shot and shells passing through both boats. The excitement was intense. There being a great many ladies on board who fainted and were nearly frightened to death.

I cannot blame them, everybody looking for a safe place behind wood, hay, etc. There were 200 cattle and other government property worth over a million dollars. The reps would have liked that gutter.

There were four men killed on the Adams and a great many wounded. They fought like tigers. They were killed in a shocking manner.

Stopping at Greenville, a high looking place, nothing but walls and chimneys remained. At this place the dead were buried. There were seven boats here.

We leave tonight, have to go past another battery, but we have a stronger convoy. So this guy, just trying to get there, you know, his train kind of goes all over, he's in a boat, they pack it, I mean, I like this guy. This is the 4th of July, the anniversary of our nation's independence.

And we're down here in Dixie with nearly a red, now I don't know what a red is, maybe it's a firecracker, I don't know. Got to pass through the city, pass through the markets, plenty of melons and all kinds of fruit. Went to the city hotel to see Lieutenant Camp.

It's a very large city, splendid houses and streets. Not a pleasant 4th of July. Sunday, August 7th, had a mounted past when all over the city of New Orleans we saw a great many steamers loaded with troops and munitions bound for Mobile Bay, was caught in a terrible thunderstorm, was on Canal Street, the water overflowed the sidewalks, the water was 8 feet deep in the streets, came near being drowned, a great city this, the thunder so heavy it rang the church bells.

I thought this was interesting, New Orleans has been having trouble with floods way back in the Civil War. Saturday, October 1st, we hired a meager cook. There were 10 of us up at a mess.

We live on pumpkin. We draw our 10 days ration, it lasts 8, we starve 2. Monday, November 17th, received a letter home.

I find this section here very sad. This is one of the reasons I think I really like this guy. Received a letter home with the news of the death of my Uncle Daniel Parker.

By the way, reading all this stuff, sounds like a street directory of Chelmsford. Also the death of Henry Ingalls, who had just arrived home with the 100 day man. A comrade who was with me in 9 months campaigning in Virginia in the 6th regiment.

So he just got the news that his uncle died and also his friend, Henry Ingalls. This is Sunday, November 13th. On God's beautiful day, the seaman and champion arrived from New York, received a letter from Daniel.

My old comrade, H. Ingalls, was buried in the village churchyard, under arms. A beautiful man.

Tonight, should like to be at home. So he'd like to be home with his friend buried in Chelmsford. Thursday, November 28th, Thanksgiving, went uptown, went to the Richelieu Saloon, had a gay and festive dinner, but not turkey.

Should like to be home, a gay time in the barracks tonight, several lads were very happy. Sunday, December 25th, is Christmas. Expected this morning quite warm, rather a disagreeable Christmas in the daytime with no money.

But in the evening things went pretty good. Lively and depressive died. January 1st, on God the first day of the year, quite mild pleasant, written to Newell, received a letter from Maynard at Georgetown.

He had bully news from Sherman. He captured Savannah, Georgia. Friday, February 10th, splendid day, rode down to the battlegrounds famous for being the scene of 1812 war, where Jackson fought the British behind cotton bales.

Part of the breastworks are visible, but the greater part are obliviated. Saw the monument that was dedicated to the heroes that fell in that memorial fight. The works show the mark of a military genius that Jackson was endowed with.

Stock at the battlefield coffeehouses, being formed like a Virginia fence so as to protect the flank and rear. Would that Jackson were about now to take part in this terrible strike that is raging all over the land, and that America had many such men

. Now what I found interesting was the Civil War itself.

They all loved Jackson. The South loved Jackson. The North loves Jackson.

Washington's birthday. They all celebrated Washington's birthday. We had the same holidays.

I mean, we were the same people. And I read a book about Jackson, America's Lion, and I really believe, after reading that book, that he had that. Jackson was such a strong president.

South Carolina wanted to secede from the Union. Tried to get all the other southern states to join him. Jackson was a southern.

Very strong president. He said, if you secede, I will come down there and I will hang all at the head of a 300,000 man army. Now, if you've ever read about Jackson, this guy didn't bluff.

The rest of the southern states said, we're not doing this. And so, finally, South Carolina backed down. But I kind of wish, maybe they hadn't.

Because if they hadn't, Jackson might have gone down, put down South Carolina quickly, and then it would have been established that the Union was the Union. Because as I read all this stuff, the people were fighting for the Union. They loved the United States of America.

The South felt stage rights. Of course, slavery was involved. But I didn't really read too much of it in any of these people that they were going to fight to end slavery.

They were going to fight to preserve the Union. And so I wondered if this hadn't happened, just hold on for another 30 years, and it might have been a lot less and less painful. Wednesday, February 22nd, a drizzling rain all day, had nothing to do today, received a valentine from some unknown person.

It was a nice one. So even in those days, people were sending stuff. 55 boatloads of troops are laying down the river opposite the old battleground.

They're at A.J. Smith Command. Salute fire in the city in honor of Washington's birthday. Like I said, they had the same holidays.

The peace prospects seemed to prove a failure. The peace the rebels will get will be at the point of a ban, I guess. And then he talks about Mardi Gras.

They had Mardi Gras down there. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, biggest day of the year, and everyone, dresses in all manners and costumes and masks, promenading the street, had arrived this evening, must have prepared. And it was uptown, big day for New Orleans, anniversary of fire and company.

We're out the first time since the war commenced. More women than one could shake a stick at. And good looking ones, too.

Very raw. Those are the three inside looks at what men from Chelmsford said. I apologize if I haven't read them to you, but hopefully you got some insight into how they thought.

I wanted to talk a little bit about this is Fredericksburg. Burnside took over from McClellan. Union's on one side of the River.

They come across, take the town of Fredericksburg. This is Mary's Heights. See that stone wall?

The Southerners are behind that stone wall. Burnside sends them up, wave after wave. They are mowed down like grass.

If you go there, it's unbelievable. It's a hill right up there. The Southerners could not believe.

They felt bad. I've read excerpts from Southerners. They were mowing down left and right.

They didn't have a chance. A park ranger was there. He was telling us that as they were going up the hill, they went like this.

Like you would in a driving rainstorm. Because the bullets were coming like rain. They were just annihilated.

Four men from Chelmsford died in that battle. Four men from Chelmsford. When I went to visit this battlefield, I didn't know that at the time.

I wish I had done more research. It's a lot more meaningful to me now. I said, why did they do that?

How could they just, knowing that the Southerners were behind these stone walls, just march right into it? He said, you have to understand. Their cousin was next to him.

The kid they went to first grade with was over there. The guy who went out with his sister is over here. The gross is here.

If you didn't go when they said go, they'd be riding home like George Parker. Saying, hey, we charged up the hill, but hurry and stay behind that chicken. That would have to enlist the rest of my life to try and have to live that down.

It was a community thing. You couldn't not go. You had to.

Your town was going. Your neighbors, your brother. They just went right into it and were mowed down.

This here is Gettysburg. I took a tour of Gettysburg and it's a very hollow place. I've talked to people who've done reenactments there.

They say once they get going, marching down the road, it's weird. You feel like you're really there. They talk about ghosts at night and things like that.

This was the southern high water. Lee had pushed and pushed and pushed. He wanted Fredericksburg.

He wanted Chancellorsville. He was coming right up. His goal was to come into Pennsylvania.

If you think of Pennsylvania as Saudi Arabia of the 1860s, all the coal mines were in it. The north, all the trains, the industry was driven by coal. What Lee wanted to do was to get up into Pennsylvania and at the very least set all the coal mines on fire.

No different than Saddam Hussein in Kuwait or whatever and take away a lot of the power of the north. This was a very important turning point in the war. After this battle, the south just slowly went down.

I was talking to a park ranger here and if you heard Butler, he said the southern troops know we won't fight. The southern troops used to charge and they'd yell and the Union would run. At this point, Lee thought he was invincible.

Eight men from Chelmsford died in this battle. Gettysburg was the war where Americans were killed in the Battle of Gettysburg than any other battle in the history of America. When I went there, I didn't know eight men from Chelmsford were killed there.

I was with the park ranger and I said, he said, what the southerners didn't realize is this. If you look at all the monuments, all the regiments that served there, he said, look at them. More than half of them are from Pennsylvania.

He said up until this point, most of the fighting was done in the south. You know, except for Antietam and this country. This was Pennsylvania.

More than half of the troops there were from Pennsylvania. They weren't going anywhere. They didn't care how much the rebels screamed.

They didn't care how much they yelled. It was their bombs. It was their sweethearts.

It was their children that they were defending. This was the turning point right here. That makes sense to me.

People tend to fight harder when they're defending their homes. Let's get it together. Eight men from Chelmsford died there.

Now, this crew here, we're going to kind of leave the Civil War on top. Chelmsford has a lot of facets of the Civil War. This is true battle.

And it's actually a book. History of True Battle. What this is, this is the home guard.

Now, all the men go down to the Union forces. There's no national guard. The governor of the state's getting nervous.

The Confederates start coming down from Canada. They start raiding Vermont. Their idea is to open a second front coming down from Canada.

They raid banks. They take money. They get money and everything.

This sends tremendous alarm throughout New England. They formed True Death, Spaulding Lighthouse Cavalry in Chelmsford. A hundred men.

They were the home guard. Their job was to protect New England from the rebels. Their captain was Captain Roby. He was about almost 50 years old at this time. He had been involved in a cavalry unit out of New Hampshire, so he had some background in the military. And he was the captain. He was elected captain of True Battle. And they were the national guard here. And they were in existence from 1864 to 1906.

And not only that, when they disbanded, they formed a veterans association that stayed until at least 1933 when they commissioned a bull to write their history. So they were a mounted unit. In fact, when they used to parade and this type of thing, they had a band. And then they decided, well, the band should be on Hossback, too. So their band was on Hossback. One of the first mounted bands in the world.

So when they took off, they all went running down the pit. There they are in action. Alright?

You can see the cavalry. And you can guess what kind of swords they were all equipped with, can't you? Captain Roby was the captain.

And I love the flag. Look at that flag. It's pretty tattered.

But this crew did all kinds of things. They had encampments all over the place. They actually escorted four presidents when they came to the area.

One of the times, the statue of the minute man at Concord was dedicated in 1875, I guess. And Grant came to Fitchburg by train. He came for the dedication.

Truebath headed out to Fitchburg. It was very cold that day. Snowflakes and everything.

They were out there in their full uniforms. They were freezing to death. They got Grant, brought him to Concord, and the guy said, you know, we're freezing to death but I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

It was so great escorting the President of the United States. So, we have a lot of history. This book is full of all the names and who was the captains and everything.

All from Chelmsford and surrounding towns. Westford, Carlisle, Kingsborough. But mostly from Chelmsford.

In fact, 18 of the original 100 came from Roby's Factory. I wonder why he had a lack of captains. And there he is.

Christopher Rowe. He's quite a man. He came to Chelmsford and he worked in West Chelmsford making tools.

Worked his way up. This is an actual tool from Roby's Factory before the Civil War. Right?

This is what they made. West Chelmsford was a side village and they made tools. Unfortunately, a lot of his customers were from the South.

And what happened when the Civil War broke out? Do you think his customers in the South paid him? They went, see you later.

So, his company was like Rob Peter to Faith Paul. He did a tremendous job and made all kinds of money during the Civil War. But he was always behind the eight ball trying to make up for what he owed.

When the Civil War ended, his company went bankrupt. But he was quite a man. He was a postmaster in West Chelmsford.

He was a selectman. He was a representative to Boston. When he died, he left his whole estate to West Chelmsford.

Just a really good man. That's the house that's in West Chelmsford right now. Go there and right along Main Street in West Chelmsford are all the houses of his workers.

They have their names on it and you'll see his manager right along Main Street. Ironically enough, when my wife and I were first getting married, we were looking for a house in Chelmsford to buy. I actually went in this house and didn't buy it.

This was before I started collecting Roby's stuff. I could kill myself on it. The ultimate is to own.

Imagine if I owned Roby's house. Never mind a Roby's sword. To own the guy's house would be really something.

Then later on I find out I collect Roby's stuff. I could have bought his house, but I didn't. That's water under the dam, I guess.

This is where the factory was. If you look here, this was his factory right here. His house is right over here.

All his employees and everything were right in there. This was the Bill Pond and this was where his factory was. This is an actual picture of it.

Kind of hard to see, but you can see the railroad track right here running and they shipped out the swords. That's a little better picture. That's a picture from Main Street looking over of the factory.

This is from the 1880s. It's 15 years later, but I figure by the looks of it they've been doing a lot of upgrading from the Civil War time to now. It must have looked pretty much like that.

There's another view of it. You see the pond and they got all the power from the water power. That was Roby's factory.

He turned out about 48,000 swords for the Union. Now, anywhere in the world you go, people collect Roby's swords. I don't care if it's England, you name it, people collect Roby's swords.

They're very well made swords, very sought after. They're very good swords. I love this picture.

This is a crew. I would imagine that some of these guys were in Spalding Lighthouse, Calvary. You see this little boy here.

I actually taught, there was a man, I interviewed a man named Fred Burns who lived in West Chelmsford Center. He grew up in the Roby house. When he was a little boy, he actually taught with the men who had worked there.

He knew men that worked. This is as close as I could get to Roby. He actually taught to Roby's sister-in-law.

I said, what did she say to you? She said, she told him Roby was always broke. He was always broke.

And it burnt down. That's what happened to it. It burnt down.

Now where is it? This is our Stonehenge. This is it.

You want to see something fantastic? Go look at it. Go before the poison ivy sees you.

If you go down, it's a small street I believe. Stan's train shop used to be in that building. Here's the door if you remember.

If you go down the tracks right this way, you'll come to these ruins. They're still there. I've been down there.

I've walked there. You go down. Huge granite ruins and there's openings that go right to the railroad tracks where they used to put the swords in.

Now this here sword that was made in Chelmsford is actually Bobbitt's sword. We have Bobbitt's sword. I wish I liked them a little better, but we have Bobbitt's sword.

I think Roby will like it. Anyway, it's an officer's sword. You can tell it's got a shot skin handle.

It's decorated on the blade. We don't have the scabbard, but it's a very nice sword. If you know who owned a sword and you can document it, that makes it worth so much more.

So much more. As a matter of fact, I don't know if Mr. Jim Saltner here. Jim, the reason I'm calling on him right now is he just donated to the Stuart Society a sword just like Bobbitt's sword.

Jim, can you tell us a story? This was found in a wall or something? It was found in a wall in upstate New York.

It was inside a wall with a rifle and a sword. And Jim has donated it to the Stuart Society. One of the things that we found is that within the last few years, we've been very fortunate.

People are starting to donate swords to the Stuart Society. Bob and Barbara Mack donated three or four swords. We had a person from Westfield donate a sword.

They first brought it to the Springfield Museum and they said, we have this groovy sword. Would you like it? And they said to him, I think that's better than Chumstead.

They called us and they brought it here. So this is a display that we have at the Barrett Biome House, the Stuart Society. Judy Thurdenbaum was kind of spearheading the displays down there.

She's the curator at the Barrett Biome House. Our goal is to have a whole area on a robe because, you know, the Stuart Society doesn't collect anything. They only have so many spinning wheels and so many jars and things like that.

Everybody has that. We have robe. Every town doesn't have robe.

So what we'd like to be is the best, biggest robe place in the world. If you go down for instance to Gettysburg and you go into the museum down there, next to the cemetery, right on the wall you'll see robe sword, West Chumstead Mass, right there. So we're trying to become the place people will want to go to see robe swords.

And we hope that, you know, continues and we get donations and we'll continually try and upgrade. This here, for instance, is a one of the things that Hamilton talked about robe was it must have been quite a leap from making this to making a sword. His craftsman must have really had to upgrade you know, to get the sword making and that's what that's one of the things that you look for in a robe.

So it says see robe, West Chumstead Mass. Alright? While I've got that there, that comes from this sword right here.

This is a cavalry sailor. And this is 1864. That's on here.

And George Armstrong Custom had an 1864 robe cavalry sailor. George Armstrong? No.

Somebody said if you die with it, it's a little big on you? I don't know. City Bull can have it now.

So Custom had a robe sword. I just learned that in that book, Civil War Cavalry Sailors. And then you know, you have different types of sword.

Different ways it was written. See robe, West Chumstead. You get fancy swords.

Swords. On the Antique Roadshow this week, there was a Confederate sword on there. It was a cavalry sailor.

And it went for like $30,000. So everybody goes, ah! Well, Confederate swords were worth a lot more than Union swords.

And they're very rare. Because one, they just didn't have the manufacturing that the North did. When you look for a sword, you want it to be in pristine condition as you can get it.

If you look at this sword, the blade almost shines. This is from 1864. The scabbard is very important too.

They say a scabbard can be worth as much as one-third the value of a sword. So if you have a scabbard, that's really important. Now, the reason scabbards are so rare is you take this sword here.

This is a musician's sword. A lot of the scabbards were made of leather. Almost every scabbard is damaged now.

This scabbard has been repaired right here. Leather doesn't last hundreds and hundreds of years without falling apart. So scabbards are very important to have with your sword.

You know, about one-third the value. Now, he made a lot of decorative swords. This here sword, this is a general sword.

This is a presentation sword. This sword has a silver handle. Robey made swords with silver handles.

If you look at this sword, even the scabbard, look at how ornate the designs are. The whole blade is all designs. And the thing about this sword is that we know whose sword it was.

It says Christopher Robey, but it was presented to Charles Albright. The story behind this, the reason I'm showing you this is because you never know where history will take you. You just don't know.

That's what I'm saying. I hope that I throw out enough stuff here today that some of you might say, I'm going to learn about this guy. I'm going to find out about this guy.

I just happened to be in an antique shop down in Byford about 20 years ago. And I walk in there and I see this sword in an antique case. And I walk up.

First of all, I know it's way out of my price range because I can see it's got a silver handle. It's an officer's sword. I said to the woman, can I see that?

Will you open that up? I hope it's not a rogue. She opens it up.

It's a rogue. And that started my quest. It was given to Charles Albright, the 202nd Pennsylvania Infantry in 1864.

My wife and I went down to Pennsylvania. We went to hotels where he made speeches often.

Interviewer - You've got to tell him you bought it.

Bernie Ready - I bought it.

Interviewer - How could I turn it down?

Bernie Ready - I mean, I had to buy it, right? But anyway, we went down there. His house, he was a congressman.

He was a big lawyer. He was a general. He fought mostly.

His lieutenant wrote a book. I could follow all the battles he was in. It's unbelievable.

I've got his book, his military book. I found it in Iowa. He was just a lawyer.

He sent away and got himself a little military book so he could figure out how to command troops. He was a big wheel in Mt. Chuck, which is now Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

The interesting thing is when we went down there, it's still like it was back then. We were in a I guess you'd call it an Irish bar or something. We were telling people, hey, I've got General Albright's suit.

They weren't reacting very good. I found out that he, after the Civil War, hung the Marley Maguires. Four men.

In the museum there, there's still a scaffold where he hung them. They still hold the brush pens. The Civil War isn't over in a lot of places, but that was his sword.

That's a picture of him. It's unbelievable what you can find out about people. I sent away to Washington.

They sent me pictures of him. They sent me letters that he wrote. We went to his grave.

You can just keep going and going and going. I hope today that I've given you a little surface stuff that maybe people will dig up a little more. This is the main one.

To me, Washington and Lincoln are the greatest presidents. I think Lincoln completed the American Revolution. After Antietam, he freed the slaves.

Coming from Chelmsford and thinking, what is the Civil War in Chelmsford? What do we think about it today? We don't have any monuments to it.

Does anybody think about it anymore? We're always talking about Robie's swords. How about the other aspects of it?

If you're looking at Chelmsford this is one book. How many of you have read these two? I found them to be very hard reads.

I've also read her book, College Crossing, which I found to be a hard reader too. Not page turns at all. This is a sad book.

Like I said, the Civil War is sad. I found this to be a sad book. This book I found to be disturbing.

It disturbed me in the fact that it was written around 1995. What it is, is he goes to the south and finds all this hatred. They're still fighting the Civil War down there.

My daughter lives in Charlotte. I get down there all the time. I don't see that.

My daughter went to the University of Virginia. My son went to Virginia Commonwealth. Down there all the time.

I don't see it. I'm reading this book and I'm going, at least this was 17 years ago. We have a black president now.

Maybe it's over. You know when you're tuned into something? I'm reading The Wall Street Journal last month.

This pops up there. In Texas. In Texas.

I guess I covered my mouth. In Texas, there's this big monument in the middle of a road. A black man driving a van loses control.

He knocks down the monument. It falls and ruins his van. They have $400,000 insurance on it.

The town is now 40% black. They don't want the monument put up. The daughters of the Confederacy say, okay, we'll put it in the cemetery.

Do you think everything is alright? No. I don't know what you call them.

Right wingers, whatever they are. They went crazy. They want it back up there.

The Confederate people want it back up there. The whole town is full of pop. Then, yesterday in the Globe, I see an article.

A girl in Tennessee goes to a prom. Her dress looks too much like Confederate flag. They borrow it from the prom.

So, I'm saying to myself, we're around here with the Civil War today. I don't think, having grown up in the town of Chelmsford, it isn't racially diverse. It wasn't when I lived here, when I grew up here, when I taught here.

I don't think we have the problems they have down here. The problems in the South they have is that half the people don't like anything to do with the Civil War. Like honoring the people who fought for the South.

There's a bunch of people who want to do it. So, I guess, they're still fighting it down here. Luckily, we're not fighting it here.

Chelmsford devoted a lot. Before I want to say anything. So, I don't really know where we are, except that I don't think we have the trouble up here that they have down South.

I think you'd all agree with me. I don't think we have that problem. The thing about swords, before I leave, is that this was the last war that swords were used, basically, as weapons.

Even during this war, they became obsolete. Now, Randy Whitehead brought a gun with him, a rifle, a Civil War rifle. Maybe you want to say why it's obsolete.

Why the swords became obsolete. He's on the spot. He hasn't prepared this.

He's a man of no touch.

Interviewer - How about if I put the light on? Okay, yeah.

Bernie Ready - You know, if you ever saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, did you ever see that guy going like this, and he goes like that, and the guy goes up? That's it. You know, this is Springfield Rifle.

This is a great historical and important rifle. It's a Springfield Rifle manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts at the Armory out there, of course. I'm standing close to him so the mic will pick him up. I don't really like him.

Interviewer - It will not shoot.

Bernie Ready - Okay. It was manufactured in 1862. Right in the middle of the war.

Now what makes it so significant is that as far as I know, it was the first breech loader ever manufactured. A breech loader means you open the chamber and this guy has got to do something wrong with it. He has a hard time with Comcast, too.

I do, I do. Anyways, this opens up, just open it up, put a bullet in there. Close it up, cock it back, shoot.

Rather than do what? Rather than a muzzle loader, which, of course, you have to put a powder in it, a patch in the gun, and a ball in there, and it takes a long time to have a firing mechanism here. It takes a long time between shots.

But with a muzzle loader, with a breech loader, you can fire longer, you can fire more accurately, and most importantly, you can fire rapidly. And this was a game changer. So you wouldn't want to be charging him with soil.

Yes. Really? Now, this is the bayonet.

Just curious, was there a model number for that Springfield? There must be. I'll look.

This is the bayonet that went with that rifle. In case the guy with the swords got to you. Yeah.

In case you ran out of bullets. With the scabbard, which is metal. It's not nice.

Is it a triangle bayonet? Well, no. The bayonet simply goes over the barrel, and there's a little device that allows it to go over the sight.

And then you just turn it, and it's locked in place. Whoops. I would have got him with the sword on that one.

Richard McClure thinks I was in the war. But I really am not that old. But anyways, that's how it works.

And it was, as you can see, that's pretty nasty.

Interviewer - How heavy is it? It's pretty heavy. How many pounds? 20 pounds? 10 pounds?

Bernie Ready - You know, I knew someone was going to ask that. I was going to weigh it, but I forgot. What do you think? 25 pounds? 20 pounds? No, maybe 20. Maybe 20 pounds. Alright, well, thanks Randy. And I appreciate you all coming out here.

I don't know if you're hot, but you're a great audience.

Interviewer - Hopefully you'll go out and maybe someday we'll have a stage in the Circle of Life this time. Who knows? The fans, I mean, it's somewhat disturbing.

I've been a resident for 20 some odd years here. I didn't grow up here. But I came from Lexington.

There's monuments everywhere. It's very disturbing to think that there's not a monument.

Bernie Ready - It's hard for me to believe. Almost every New England town you go to, there is a monument to the Civil War, with the exception of Chelsea. And you can see, we certainly were involved in the Civil War.

Interviewer - We're part of a historical society that is trying to make that a specific drive, effort, in order to raise money, or do designs, or something like that. This could be the opening cell. I understand, but it's just crazy when you mention that.

Bernie Ready - It is.

Interviewer - I know it's like any other group. If you want to do something about it, start your own committee. I also think this kind of program is a monument to the Civil War.

It's wonderful to have something here, but to have people talking and thinking, and what lessons can we learn? I think that's the real monument.

Bernie Ready - And I see a lot of people here brought their swords and stuff. Well, those people gave their ultimate lives.

Interviewer - I mean, they gave the ultimate sacrifice up here for this little plaque that could be on somewhere, that they gave their lives.

Bernie Ready - Well, maybe the town's worth it. But thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.