OK, now this is cool and made cooking in the 103° sun today worth it!
I wasn’t looking for this particular grave, but I am very happy I found it.
The inscription on this stone, “Minute Man of ’61,” refers to the men of Massachusetts who answered Lincoln’s first call for volunteers in April 1861, kicking off the American Civil War.
At the time, it was a respectful nod to the first Minute Men: militia expected to be ready to fight at a moments notice. The patriots who commenced the opening salvo of the American Revolution in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord also in April 86 years prior.
Fast forward 164 years, and today, the Minutemen of 1861 are themselves a significant moment of history. Names like Philander Thayer here were the first of what would amount to nearly 2 million volunteers during the war, according to Spartacus Educational.
Thayer enlisted on April 22, 1861, and would miraculously survive the war, mustering out in September 1865. While his headstone is the first I have seen that references the Minute Men of 1861, there is another that supersedes them all!
Edward Winslow Hincks’ headstone at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts proudly boasts he was THE first Union Volunteer!
