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Company D brings the American Civil War to life through the eyes of citizen-soldiers. One Regiment. One Company. Countless stories of courage, sacrifice, and betrayal—exposing the human toll of a war that transformed the United States.
Company D
Episode 02: Nobody Likes You, Woodbury
Once a thousand strong, the Third Maine Infantry was now a shadow of its former self. Two years into the American Civil War, they had lost nearly 80 percent of their men—cut down by disease, injury, capture, and death. Now, just fourteen officers remained. Only 197 soldiers were left.
What remained of the regiment slogged through thick mud, the rain pouring down on them as they marched 14 miles into south-central Pennsylvania.
At twilight, the rain tapered off, and they ended the march in a quiet town of 2,400 people, featuring a tavern, a shoemaker, and a bank. A town surrounded by low hills, open fields, and rocky ridges.
Gettysburg.
Captain Alfred S. Merrill and First Lieutenant Woodbury Hall were in command of what was left of Company D.
Just 21 men.
The remnants of Companies B, H, and I, units so battered that they no longer had any officers, were placed under their command. They could hear the deep rumble of artillery fire, like a distant thunderstorm in the late afternoon. The fighting had already begun.
But it was late. That evening, the Third Maine set up camp along the main Union line at Cemetery Ridge, driving stakes in the soft earth while the low buzz of insects hummed through the fields. The rain had stopped, replaced by a thick, oppressive humidity.
Sitting near the orange glow of a cooking fire, 31-year-old Woodbury Hall opened his diary and scribbled a note. A weather report. The night had turned warm and sultry.
He also wrote in his clipped, detached manner: “I walked, walking very warm, shells coming very near the whole way.”
Around him, his exhausted and anxious company settled in. Private Charles Snell sat reading his tattered pocket Bible. There was Private David Ring, who had lied about his age to enlist. Next to him was Private Jeremiah Wakefield. Sgt. Henry H. Shaw scribbled a letter—probably to his father.
Names that, by this time tomorrow, would be written into history. Men who didn’t like Woodbury. Men who had protested against his promotion to lieutenant. At least his uncle, William Higgins—his biggest rival and the source of most of his problems—was far away in a Washington, D.C. hospital. Injured, recovering from a gunshot wound to the leg.
As Woodbury reflected on the men in his company, he had no idea that in less than 24 hours, half the regiment would be gone.
That their blood would be soaking the dirt of a peach orchard less than a mile away.
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Welcome back to Company D, a history podcast that tells the forgotten stories of soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. We’re not telling the stories of Generals or Politicians. Those stories have already been told.
We are looking into the lives of individual soldiers—the men who slogged through the mud. The men who marched through dust and snow. The men who fought on the battlefields. To bring these individual stories to light, we have chosen to spotlight the members of Company D of the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, men mostly from Bath and other towns along Mid-coast Maine. Carpenters. Fishermen, and farmers.
Why focus on this one company in this one regiment? It's simple, really. My great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, was eighteen when he volunteered with Company D of the Third Maine. He was from Dedham, Massachusetts. When the war broke out, Charles was living with his older brother in Bath, and his diary from his time with Company D served as a starting point for this project.
Our inspiration.
I’m your host, George F. Snell III. Yup—there were three of us.
Today’s episode is about the complicated character of Woodbury Hall. Woodbury was an officer in Company D, and by all accounts, the most unpopular and disliked man in Company D.
An officer, his own men labelled, “Obnoxious” and “Incompetent.”
Yet, Woodbury had ingratiated himself with his superiors. He had impressed them with his military bearing and his detached, methodical approach to soldiering. There’s a bit of Eddie Haskell in Woodbury Hall. You might remember Eddie Haskell, the arrogant and duplicitous character from the cult TV show, “Leave it to Beaver.”
Eddie was known for being a sycophant, a suck-up to authority figures, while being a conniving wiseass to everyone else. Was that Woodbury Hall? Beaver Cleaver described Eddie best when, after putting a voodoo curse on him in Season One, he tells Eddie, “I don’t like ya, nobody likes you, Eddie. Not even Wally and he’s your best friend.”
In Company D, Woodbury Hall faced the same problem. Like Eddie—nobody liked him, either. Not even his own Uncle. His own flesh and blood—his mother’s younger brother: William H. Higgins. In fact, Uncle William would become Woodbury’s biggest nemesis, the largest thorn in his side.
But it’s possible Woodbury Hall was just misunderstood, a stoic, duty-focused officer who had a terrible bedside manner with his own men. Let’s find out. One thing is clear: Woodbury would lead Company D and the Third Maine through the most crucial battle of the Civil War.
Gettysburg.
Chapter One: Soldiers All
The Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12, 1861, leaving the fort in shambles. Mortars burned the barracks down. Cannons battered the five-foot thick walls. The headline at the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier said it all:
“Fort Sumter Surrendered! Preparations for Defense of Washington. The President calls for 75,000 Men and Convenes Congress!”
No one died, but the American Civil War had begun.
Like tens of thousands of others, Woodbury Hall answered Lincoln’s call for volunteers to quash the rebellion. Woodbury was 27 years old, working as a ship’s carpenter in Woolwich. He had a wife and three children, including a two-month-old daughter.
But swept up in the patriotic fever spreading like wildfires across the North, and convinced the war would be over within weeks, he enlisted. He joined the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. Company D. But Woodbury didn’t join alone.
He enlisted with two family members: his uncle, William Higgins, and his brother-in-law, Stephen Dodge.
William Higgins was Woodbury’s mother’s younger brother. His mother and uncle had grown up on a farm in a family with twelve children in Phippsburg, Maine, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec River, just south of Bath.
Uncle William was a middle-aged ship joiner, married with three children. Big hands. Big voice. His uncle was known as a loudmouth. Uncle William was 43 years old, just two years shy of the Army’s age limit of 45. But he lied about his age anyway, shaving off five years and claiming to be 38. Uncle William was appointed Fourth Sergeant of Company D.
Stephen Dodge was Woodbury’s wife’s younger brother. At the age of 25, Stephen worked as a schoolteacher in Woolwich. He was unmarried and living with his parents and younger siblings. Unlike Uncle William, Stephen was no boisterous carpenter. He was an idealist. A true believer in the Union cause. He was convinced the South had lost the moral high ground and would soon be crushed. He enlisted as a private.
And Woodbury?
He was commissioned as a corporal. There’s a photograph of him, taken years later after he became First Lieutenant of Company D. He’s lean and long-limbed, slumped nonchalantly in a chair, wearing a slouch hat with the number “3” pinned to it. It’s set at a rakish angle on his head. His eyes are very pale. Under his hat, his hair is curly. There’s smugness to his expression, cocky and self-assured.
Study the photograph long enough, and you begin to realize why some people might have taken a dislike to Woodbury. He has that look. Imagine a young Gene Wilder playing Willie Wonka, and you’ll get an idea. A lot of manic energy and mystery bubbles inside his calm exterior.
The war had barely begun, and tragedy struck before Woodbury even left for battle. One month after Woodbury enlisted, his younger brother Charles died. Charles was just 20 years old, living at home with his parents, helping on the farm. He was buried at Nequasset Cemetery in Woolwich.
Woodbury wasn’t the only Hall brother to answer the call to war.
His younger brother, 25-year-old Thomas Hall, enlisted in the Twenty-Eighth Infantry Regiment as a private. His youngest brother, 17-year-old George Hall, was too young to enlist right away, but he eventually joined the Seventh Company Unassigned Infantry Volunteers in 1864.
The Hall, Dodge, and Higgins families watched their sons, brothers, and fathers march off to war.
No doubt, they worried. But they also believed the war would be over in a matter of weeks. Certainly no later than Christmas. They’d all be home soon. As Woodbury marched off with his uncle and brother-in-law, he had no idea what was coming.
That in six months, his uncle would turn against him and become his fiercest rival in Company D, working to sabotage both his career and reputation. And six months after that, Stephen Dodge would lie dead on a muddy battlefield.
None of them would be home for Christmas.
Chapter Two: Thank you, Uncle, for Being Just You.
Think of all the great uncles in popular culture. There’s Uncle Buck, the lazy, carefree bachelor with a heart of gold, from the John Hughes movie. There’s the weird, wacky, and strangely humorous Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. And, of course, the cranky, but lovable Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince.
Uncle William Higgins was not one of those uncles.
He’s kind of like Uncle Stanley. Or like Uncle Scar from The Lion King. He might be family—but watch your back.
Within months of joining Company D, Woodbury Hall was promoted to Second Sergeant. He leapfrogged over his uncle, who was Fourth Sergeant. Uncle William was not pleased.
But Woodbury was impressing his superior officers, particularly Major Charles A.L. Sampson and Captain Henry H. Watson. Sampson wrote a glowing recommendation to Maine Governor Israel Washburn, urging the governor to promote Woodbury to Second Lieutenant.
“Mr. Hall is a young man of unexceptionable character and habits, and would, I believe, make a valuable and efficient officer,” Sampson wrote.
Watson, in particular, admired Woodbury. Watson saw something in him, a natural leader, a man with poise on the battlefield. He wanted Woodbury to be part of the company’s leadership team.
By the winter of 1862, the war had stalled into a stalemate. The Confederate Army hunkered down in Centerville, Virginia. The Union Army set up winter quarters across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia—blocking the Rebels from Washington, D.C.
But for Company D, the war wasn’t the focus. Because inside the camp, a bitter leadership crisis was brewing. The company needed two lieutenants to serve under Captain William Watson: A First Lieutenant and a Second Lieutenant. The process turned ugly. Pettiness. Backstabbing. Tempers flared. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes politicking. From Washington to Maine.
Four men were in the running:
- Second Lieutenant Alfred S. Merrill—a near lock for one of the positions.
- Sergeant Woodbury Hall—young and rising fast
- Sergeant William Higgins—demanding and ready to fight
- Corporal Henry H. Shaw—a politically connected upstart with a pushy father
Captain Watson was clear about where he stood. He wanted Merrill and Woodbury. He wrote several letters to his superiors, pushing for his choices. But there was a campaign afoot to smear Woodbury’s character.
So much so that Watson felt the need to write to Governor Washburn to defend his choice of Woodbury—he was a good soldier, fearless in battle, and he had an irreproachable moral character. Woodbury—he assured Washburn was the right man for the job. Watson believed in Woodbury—but the soldiers of Company D did not. They were adamantly opposed to Woodbury’s promotion. In fact, they organized against him.
The men wrote their own letter to Governor Washburn, making their position clear. They despised Woodbury. They called him incompetent and obnoxious. They urged Washburn to ignore Watson’s recommendation and appoint William Higgins to the post of First Lieutenant.
And Uncle William made no secret of his own ambitions. In a letter to his brother, Higgins bragged that he was already doing more work than any of the captains or lieutenants in the entire Third Maine regiment. He claimed Colonel Henry Staples, the regimental commander, had praised him as the best sergeant he had ever seen. Uncle William scoffed at the idea of his nephew being promoted over him.
It came down to an election. Captain Watson’s superiors ordered him to hold a vote. The men of Company D would decide on who would lead them. They gathered around the campfire, 51 active-duty soldiers, and cast their ballots.
The result wasn’t even close. Higgins won in a landslide. Merrill finished a distant second. Woodbury barely got a handful of votes. Probably his own. And Watson’s. More than likely, his brother-in-law, Stephen Dodge, voted for him. But that was it.
The men of Company D had spoken. They wanted Higgins, and they rejected Woodbury Hall. The results were sent up the chain of command. And then they waited for Governor Washburn’s decision. After a few days, the promotions were announced: First Lieutenant: Alfred S. Merrill. Second Lieutenant: Woodbury Hall.
The governor had decided to ignore the election. Instead, he accepted Captain Watson’s judgement and gave him the two lieutenants he wanted from the start. The decision stunned Company D. The soldiers were furious about the results, and they made Washburn aware of it. They felt like they had been ignored, treated as badly as the Southern slaves they were trying to free. It was an unfair, an unjust result.
But it didn’t matter. Alfred Merrill was named First Lieutenant, and Woodbury Hall Second Lieutenant. As for Uncle William? He must have been outraged—his promotion ripped from his hands and given to his nephew—a nephew he couldn’t stand.
Chapter Three: The Schoolteacher
At the time of his enlistment, Woodbury Hall’s brother-in-law, Stephen Dodge, stood 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall. He had a pale complexion, hazel eyes, and brown hair. At just 25 years old, he had already worked as a farmer, a bricklayer, and a schoolteacher. When he enlisted alongside Woodbury Hall and William Higgins, he was still living at home with his parents.
Stephen was a true believer. Union victory inspired him. Defeat cut him to the bone. He believed in Lincoln. He believed the war would reunite the country. In the winter of 1862, Stephen wrote an impassioned letter to his father outlining his convictions. He spoke of hope. Glory. Personal sacrifice. The war, he said, had given him clarity.
“This war,” Stephen declared, “is for our survival.”
He dreamed of triumphant victory, of the Confederacy crumbling. “I can feel it in my bones,” he wrote. “This war is nearing its end.”
He believed that. Until September 1, 1862. Until Chantilly.
The Union Army was battered and bleeding, having just been crushed—again—at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Federal forces were retreating toward Washington, D.C. But the Confederates wanted to deliver a death blow. The Rebels struck the Union flank, trying to cut off retreat.
But thanks to some timely intelligence, the Union hit first—at Chantilly.
But the Union assault faltered. The Third Maine was part of a rear guard push to bolster the front line. It had rained all day. Now, as the afternoon dwindled, a violent thunderstorm erupted. The battlefield turned into a mud puddle. Men slipped and fell. Gunpowder turned to paste—making it nearly useless. The Third Maine holed up behind a broken-down fence.
“It was so dark,” Captain Watson wrote later, “that we could not distinguish the enemy except by the flash of their guns.”
They ran out of ammunition and fixed bayonets. Lightning flashed overhead, casting eerie white flickers over the chaos. In the dark and rain, soldiers struggled to know if the enemy was still there. The men gave three cheers—screaming into the storm—to let the Rebels know they were still there.
On that dark field—in the wind and rain—Stephen Dodge was killed by a Rebel bullet.
The schoolteacher who believed that victory was within reach now lay lifeless in the mud of Chantilly. One of the few men in Company D that Woodbury could trust was now gone.
Chapter Four: Pitzer Woods
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The morning of July 2, 1863.
Pitzer Woods was located just west of Seminary Ridge, where the bulk of the Union Army was stretched out in a long battleline. It was a dense woodland off Emmitsburg Road. The terrain was rolling with shallow depressions and low ridges. The trees were mostly second-growth oak and chestnut. In the underbrush were thickets of dogwood and spicebush. It wasn’t the woods themselves that were dangerous, but what was hidden inside.
Company D, now with the combined units of Companies B, H, and I, was being led by Captain Merrill and Lieutenant Woodbury Hall. The Third Maine had new orders. They were being detached from the brigade and assigned to cover one of the deadliest companies in the Union Army: The First U.S. Sharpshooters.
The sharpshooters, under the command of Colonel Hiram Berdan, were ordered into Pitzer Woods on a reconnaissance mission to assess the Confederate line.
The First U.S. Sharpshooters were an elite force in the Union Army. Every soldier was a marksman. To qualify for the regiment, a recruit had to fire ten shots into a ten-inch paper target from 200 yards, and every shot had to be clustered within five inches of each other. Many of the men carried their own custom-made long-range rifles.
At a quarter to noon, as the temperature soared to 80 degrees, the sharpshooters crossed Emmitsburg Road. A young boy waved them down and warned that the forest was crawling with Rebels. The sharpshooters scoffed at the notion; the woods were too quiet to conceal that many enemy combatants. They dismissed the boy’s story as the wild imaginings of a child.
They plunged into Pitzer Woods with the Third Maine following. The trees provided relief from the heat.
They ran directly into three Alabama regiments—the Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh—well positioned among the trees. Colonel Berdan ordered his men to charge firing, with the Third Maine moving forward to fight side-by-side with Berdan’s men.
The air filled with bullets, slamming into tree trunks, snapping through oak leaves, and whacking into the ground. The fighting became furious, the sound of gunfire deafening in the dense woods. But it wasn’t just the Alabama regiments in the woods; it was an entire brigade, thousands of Rebels.
It turned out that the Confederates were using Pitzer Woods as a staging area for an attack on the Union left flank at Round Top on Seminary Ridge.
And the sharpshooters and Third Maine charged right into them with 300 men.
Sergeant Hannibal Johnson of Company B, but now fighting with Company D, couldn’t believe the number of Confederates in the woods. “The odds were a thousand to one,” he recalled.
Taken by surprise, the Confederates regrouped and attempted to encircle the sharpshooters and the Third Maine to cut off their escape route back to the Union line. Colonel Berdan ordered a retreat, and the Union bugles shrieked over the gunfire, signaling the command to fall back.
As Johnson fought his way back, Private Nathan Call took a bullet to the hip. Crying out, he fell. Johnson and Corporal John Jones grabbed Call. Sitting him across a rifle and, with Call’s arms wrapped around their shoulders, they tried to rush the wounded man off the battlefield. As they ran, Jones was shot in the back of the head, and all three sprawled to the ground.
They were surrounded by Confederates. The Rebels left behind the dead Jones and wounded Call and took Johnson prisoner.
The fight in Pitzer Woods lasted a ferocious 25 minutes. The Third Maine lost 48 men killed, wounded, and captured, the majority, like Sgt. Johnson, taken prisoner. But the fight delayed the Confederate forces attack offensive by nearly 45 minutes.
Woodbury Hall later wrote in his diary in his detached, stoic voice: “Had severe stand at Gettysburg. Sharpshooters well posted. A great many killed and wounded.”
Confederate General James Longstreet claimed that the skirmish in Pitzer Woods, which caused the Union to reposition their troops, prevented the Confederates from a successful attack, which he believed led to the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.
Union General Daniel Sickles concurred. He suggested that sharpshooters and the Third Maine—which he referred to as Colonel Berdan’s “dauntless little band”—interfered with the Rebel forces and provided much-needed intelligence on Confederate positions.
If they are correct, Pitzer Woods represented a turning point, a disruption that altered the course of the battle, brought about by an elite company of sharpshooters and a weathered regiment of battle-hardened Mainers. Because Gettysburg itself—a huge Union victory—changed the outcome of the war.
Chapter Six: The Peach Orchard
But the day wasn’t over for the Third Maine. Later that afternoon, Major General Daniel Sickles, the commander of the Third Corps, made a controversial decision. He ordered the Third Maine—and three other regiments—to move off the Union line. Their new position was a peach orchard set on a bluff in front of Seminary Ridge.
Sickles wanted the higher ground. But the maneuver created a major problem. It weakened the Union’s main defensive line and created a deadly salient—a bump in the line that could be attacked from multiple directions at once.
This put the Third Maine and the other regiments in an extremely vulnerable position.
At the time, Sickles's decision was considered reckless. Some historians still think so. But others argue that this move also changed the course of the battle. Because it didn’t just surprise Union leadership—it shocked the Confederates, too.
They planned to set up artillery in the orchard, and they weren’t expecting Union troops to be holding it. Just like the delay the sharpshooters and Third Maine caused the Rebels in the woods, the troops in the peach orchard altered the Rebel attack plan.
Unable to take the orchard—they bombed it instead. The Third Maine hunkered down. One New Jersey battery fired 1,342 shots—a record for the Civil War—in the responding fire.
Now, the Third Maine was down to 162 men. They stood nearly alone on the southwest side of the orchard. That’s when the Rebels attacked with an infantry charge. A brigade from South Carolina slammed into the front of the Third Maine. At the same time, Mississippi regiments struck from the rear and right flank.
The Confederates were overwhelming them. The Third Maine pivoted fast, turning to face Emmitsburg Road, trying to stop the enemy from breaking through.
All around Woodbury Hall, men from Company D were falling. A bullet tore through the left thigh of First Sergeant Ebenezer Allen. Sergeant Henry Shaw collapsed. Corporal George Farnham clutched his foot, blood pouring between his fingers, screaming in pain.
Woodbury glanced to the right flank and watched in horror as the entire color guard of Company K was cut down, including 26-year-old Captain John Keene.
Keene, a shoemaker from Leeds, Maine.
As the Third Maine collapsed under the Confederate assault, they fell back from the orchard. They regrouped. They fixed bayonets and, with the help of reinforcements, charged back into the orchard. And for one brutal hour, under relentless musket fire, they held their ground. But the Confederates came again. This time, they broke through. The Third Maine was forced to retreat, for good.
That night, Woodbury tallied Company D’s losses in his diary: “We lost about four men killed.” Then, he went back—crossed out four. Wrote five. Later, he crossed out five. And wrote six.
Of the 162 men who had fought in Pitzer Woods and the Peach Orchard for the Third Maine, only 97 were left at the end of the day. A 60 percent casualty rate from just one day of fighting.
The Second New Hampshire, which had stood at the Third Maine’s right flank in the peach orchard, suffered just as terribly. They had gone in with 353 men. By the end of the day: 47 dead, 136 wounded, and 36 missing. They had 24 officers when they entered the orchard, and just three by the end of the day.
After Gettysburg, when the Reverend Joseph Sherfy returned to his peach orchard, the place was unrecognizable. His barn burned to cinders. His house was riddled with thousands of bullet holes. Dozens of corpses were hastily buried in shallow graves. And forty-eight dead horses rotting in the summer heat.
A 12-pound artillery shell was still lodged in the trunk of a cherry tree in front of his house.
The next day—July 3, 1863—was the final day of Gettysburg, the battle was a huge victory for the Union and a turning point in the war.
But for the Third Maine, the fight was over. They were assigned a supporting role away from the main battlefield. They heard the distant thunder of artillery and the crack of gunfire echoing in the Pennsylvania air.
Woodbury Hall and his men stood listening. The Battle of Gettysburg raged on. But for them, the battle was already over.
Chapter Six: One Last Indignity
Over the next several months, Woodbury was shuffled from company to company—a result of the Third Maine’s scarcity of officers. From September to December of 1863, he was placed in charge of Company F, and then Company I. He remained with Company I through the spring of 1864.
In May 1864, the Third Maine fought savagely at the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Spotsylvania. Spotsylvania is where they lost Captain Alfred S. Merrill. You can hear about Captain Merrill’s ordeal in Episode One.
In the aftermath of Captain Merrill’s disappearance, Woodbury took command of Company D as the acting captain. Two years earlier, he had been rejected by the soldiers of Company D. They called him incompetent. They insulted him as obnoxious.
Now, he was their leader. One hopes he felt redemption, but unfortunately, that feeling would be very short-lived.
June 1, 1864, was the first day of a battle at Cold Harbor. Captain John Moore, commander of Company C of the Third Maine, accused Woodbury of abandoning his picket line post. He was charged with desertion.
Moore, a 32-year-old sash maker from Gardiner, Maine, filed the court-martial orders on the back of an envelope. Then, he had Woodbury arrested. After three years of fighting, Woodbury must have been incensed. Arrested by an officer of his own regiment. What a slap in the face.
Was Woodbury guilty? Or was this a petty vendetta? We don’t know. But Moore did have ties to Woodbury’s old nemesis, his Uncle William. Either way, nothing came of the charges. The case was dismissed. Still it must have stung.
On June 28, 1864, Woodbury Hall was honorably discharged. The war was over for him. For the most disliked officer in Company D, this was how ended:
With a failed court-martial hanging over his head.
Chapter Seven: Second Thoughts
After the war, Woodbury left Woolwich. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of living so close to his Uncle William. Maybe he just wanted a fresh start. Whatever the reason, he packed up his family and moved 50 miles north to Vienna, Maine, a quiet, rural farming village.
He left carpentry behind and became a farmer—like his father and grandfather before him. He bought 122 acres nestled along a creek near Parker Pond. He grew potatoes, corn, oats, and barley. He raised milk cows, oxen, and sheep. It wasn’t a grand or prosperous life.
But it was quiet and steady. He and his wife, Mary, expanded their family. They had three more children—Fred, Isabel, and Thomas—joining their older kids, Marietta, Edgar, and Lizzie.
As he aged, Woodbury suffered from asthma and heart disease. He blamed the war for his conditions. At 56 years old, he applied for a veteran’s disability pension from the U.S. government. He spent his final years on his farm, slowing down and watching his family grow.
His uncle, William Higgins, died at the age of 83 on June 21, 1900. One wonders if Woodbury bothered to make the 50-mile trek to Phippsburg to attend his uncle’s funeral.
Then, on February 6, 1903, at the age of 70, Woodbury Hall passed away from heart disease.
In the TV show “Leave it to Beaver,” Beaver and Eddie Haskell never became friends. But in later episodes, they do become closer, and at times, Beaver shows a begrudging respect for Eddie. Maybe Eddie Haskell wasn’t all bad.
The summer after Woodbury’s death, the surviving members of the Third Maine Infantry, including men from Company D, held a reunion. The old soldiers gathered to celebrate. During dinner, they raised a glass in Woodbury’s memory. They saluted him and held a moment of silence.
Maybe the men of Company D never liked Woodbury Hall, but in the end, maybe they came to appreciate a man they never quite understood.
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We hope you enjoyed the second episode of Company D and invite you to join us for the next one. Please subscribe to Company D on your favorite streaming platform.
Our website has more information about the podcast and Lt. Woodbury Hall, including a photograph of him.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, George F. Snell III. See you next time.
And remember—if you take the war out of Civil War—you’re just being civil.
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