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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 03 Transcript
Sunrise. June 16, 1864. The Siege of Petersburg, Virginia.
“Our Southern friends opening the ball.” That’s how Private John W. Haley of Company I of the Seventeenth Maine Infantry Regiment referred to that morning’s Confederate artillery barrage.
He was being sarcastic.
In fact, Haley was about to get the scare of his life. As the sky filled with ordinance and explosions trembled the ground, Haley chanced a peek over his parapet. A cannonball flew out of the smoke, coming straight for him. Haley froze. Transfixed. The cannonball whistled right by his head, missing him by about a foot.
The cannonball embedded into a tree stump behind him. Haley turned to the soldier next to him, and they stared at each other, dumbstruck. They had come inches from death.
The new Sergeant Albion K. Kennerson of Company K wasn’t as lucky. A Rebel bullet tore through his right ankle, and he collapsed in agony. Stretcher-bearers rushed him to the regimental hospital.
Albion had just transferred to the Seventeenth from Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment after re-enlisting as a Veteran Volunteer for three more years. He had been with the Seventeenth only for a few weeks, not long enough to learn the names of the men in his new company.
Now, he lay on a cot with a shredded ankle.
As the surgeons attended to his wound, Albion might have been thinking about the other volunteers from the Third Maine. They were on their way home. Their three-year enlistments were over. But he was dealing with the real possibility of losing part of his leg.
As his mood darkened, he may also have let his thoughts drift to his younger brother, James. James wasn’t wearing Union blue. He wasn’t fighting with Albion. He was fighting against him. James had joined the Confederate Army. Albion’s own flesh and blood stood with the enemy. James was fighting side-by-side with the Rebels, who had just shot him in the ankle.
Albion was taken to Campbell General Hospital in Washington, D.C. There, he wouldn’t just be fighting to keep his leg. He’d be fighting for his life.
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Welcome back to Company D, a history podcast that brings to life the often-overlooked stories of the everyday soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. Our focus? The soldiers from Company D of the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Men from Bath and other towns along Mid-Coast Maine.
Why Company D? Because this is personal. My great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, was a volunteer in Company D. He enlisted at eighteen, not from Maine, but from Dedham, Massachusetts. Charles had been visiting his older brother in Bath when the war broke out. Caught up in the wave of patriotism, he joined the Third Maine.
And through the diary he left behind, we found the inspiration for the podcast.
I’m your host, George F. Snell III, because as we all know, three is a magic number. Together, we’ll explore the gripping personal stories of the mostly forgotten soldiers who fought in the American Civil War by highlighting one regiment and one company.
We have a compelling story for you today. It dives into one of the most personal and painful divisions of the war: Brother vs. brother. Two men born in Maine. One wore Union blue. The other Confederate gray. One fought to reunite the country and end slavery. The other fought to tear the country in two—to protect the right of men to own other men.
This is a story of betrayal, redemption, and a divided family, broken by a war.
This is the story of the brothers Albion and James Kennerson.
Chapter One: Home Sweet Home
There’s one photograph of Sergeant Albion K. Kennerson from his time with Company D. He looks like a gunslinger in a Hollywood Western.
Albion sent his wife the photograph in 1863. In it, he wears a dark, double-breasted jacket with brass buttons and light-colored trousers with dark stripes running down the sides. His arms are crossed. His brow furrowed. A thick mustache covers his mouth. His jawline is strong. His hair, neatly combed, has a slight wave. He radiates tough-guy handsomeness, even though he’s only five-foot-five. He looks like Tom Selleck in the Australian Western Quigley: Down Under. It's the mustache.
Summer, 1861. Albion was training with the Third Maine Infantry Regiment at Camp Morrell outside Washington, D.C. He felt homesick. Back home in Bath, his wife, Josephine, whom he affectionately called “Phene,” was raising their children alone: Sarah, 6, Annie, 4, and their eight-month-old son, Albion Jr.
In a letter to his brother-in-law Leonard Flint, Albion complained about the camp life. The food? Terrible. The men? All want to go home. But Colonel Oliver Howard had promised the regiment they’d all be home by the end of August.
Maybe, Albion wrote, he wouldn’t even have to fight. He was wrong about that. Very wrong. Despite everything, Albion was still Albion. He asked Leonard to share his fishing trips. Begged him to write back. “Write me all the news!” he pleaded.
Reading his words, one thing is clear. Albion was harboring regrets, and he desperately wanted to go home. In that moment, he didn’t seem so much like a gunslinger. Just a husband and father missing his family.
But there was one thing missing from his letter. He didn’t mention his younger brother, James. Not once. Maybe that was an unspoken rule in the Kennerson family. Don’t talk about James. Don’t mention that he wasn’t fighting for the Union.
That James was a Confederate soldier. That James was fighting for the enemy.
Chapter Two: Life Before
Albion Keith Parris Kennerson was born in Windsor, Maine, on April 24, 1830. He was named after former Maine Governor Albion Keith Parris, who served from 1822 to 1827. Albion was the eldest of eight children born to Moses W. Kennerson, who at various times was a farmer, fisherman, and ship fastener. His mother was Rebecca Hodsdon.
Albion’s brothers and sisters were Sarah, Ellen, Lydia, Nancy, Newman, and Emmagene. And then there was James. Born seven years after Albion. The second son in the family. We’ll get to the curious case of James shortly.
Windsor was a town of 1,400 people located 50 miles north of Bath. But the Kennersons didn’t stay there long. They moved to Bath shortly after Albion was born. Once in Bath, his father worked as a fisherman and a ship’s carpenter. And, like his father, Albion found himself building ships.
Albion was 23 years old when he married Josephine Flint, who was 20. They married on June 9, 1853, in a simple ceremony. No church service. No minister. Just a civil ceremony at Bath City Hall administered by a Justice of the Peace. Maybe they avoided a traditional wedding because Josephine’s immediate family had broken up—her parents separated, and her siblings scattered.
Josephine came from a troubled home. She was born on February 23, 1833, in Thomaston, Maine—a major shipbuilding town 40 miles northeast of Bath. In the 1830s, Thomaston boomed. The population nearly doubled, from 2,600 to 4,200 people. By the 1840s, it hit 6,200. It was a town of wealthy sea captains and a thriving shipbuilding industry. Around 1840, two of the seven recorded millionaires in the United States lived in Thomaston. The town became so big that it was divided in 1848 into Thomaston and East Thomaston.
Josephine’s family, however, didn’t share in the town’s prosperity.
Josephine was the fourth of eight children. In July 1842, her four-year-old brother died. Two weeks later, her baby sister died at just 14 months. And then, just two days after her sister’s death, Josephine’s mother, Charlotte, gave birth to a baby boy. The stress must have been overwhelming. And by 1850, the Flint family had fallen apart. Her father, James Flint, a ship joiner, left. He rented a room in Thomaston, away from his wife and children.
Her mother, Charlotte, took the baby boy and moved in with her own mother. Josephine’s older sisters had married and left. Her older brother, James Jr., moved in with relatives in another part of Maine. And Josephine? We don’t know where she went. But there’s evidence she ended up in Bath—maybe with one of Albion’s relatives. Maybe that’s how they met.
And just when it seemed her family couldn’t splinter any further, her father died in 1854, followed by her older sister in 1855 from consumption.
Josephine probably hoped that marrying Albion would be a fresh start. A new family—a way to escape the dysfunction, the loss, and the grief that had shadowed her whole life. They had two daughters, Sarah and Anne, and a son, Albion Flint Kennerson. But a peaceful life wasn’t in the cards for Josephine. Because a war was coming—a war that would take away her husband.
Chapter Three: Duty and Honor
On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. For 34 hours, Confederate cannons pounded the fort into surrender. In response, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion.
Albion was among the first to enlist. He volunteered for the Third Maine Infantry Regiment and collected a $22 sign-in bonus. Assigned as a private in Company D, he reported to Augusta on May 28, 1861, for training.
The Third Maine’s camp was set up on the parade grounds in Augusta, 80 white canvas tents spread out on the lawn in front of the State Capitol. By day, they trained and drilled. By night, they slept under the canvas, knowing that the war was fast approaching.
On June 4, the regiment was officially mustered into the U.S. Army. On June 5, after bidding farewells to their gathered families, the soldiers of the Third Maine boarded a train for Washington, D.C. Despite his reservations and homesickness, Albion proved to be an excellent soldier. He would be promoted to Corporal and later to Sergeant.
During the winter of 1862, Albion got a surprise. His youngest brother, Newman, enlisted. At just 19 years old, Newman joined the Third Maine and was assigned to Company D alongside Albion. When Albion left home, his brother was a schoolboy; now, he was dressed in blue and carrying a rifle.
Albion, who was 12 years older and now among the Company D leadership, took his little brother under his wing.
Two of the Kennerson brothers fought side-by-side in the Union Army. But there was a third brother who was absent. We’re coming to James’s story shortly. But first comes the Battle of Fair Oaks on June 1, 1862. Two things happened to the Kennersons on this bloody day.
The first, Albion’s bravery would solidify his standing as one of the best soldiers in Company D. The second, Newman was gunned down on the battlefield by Confederate forces.
The Third Maine was cut off—trapped on the wrong side of the rain-swollen Chickahominy River. Regimental commander Colonel Moses Lakeman put it bluntly. “Our position could not have been better for the purposes of an ambush.”
The Third Maine, alongside the Thirty-eighth and Fortieth New York Infantry Regiments, came face-to-face with Confederate General James Longstreet’s crack division. They were badly outnumbered. But they struck first.
"They thought to surprise us,” Lakeman wrote in his after-battle report. “But we turned the tables on them.”
The Union forces pushed the Confederates back. They drove the enemy back through dense wood, into a flooded swamp, and finally into a muddy plain. Lakeman said the enemy fought for every foot of the ground. The offensive cost the Third Maine dearly—one-third of the regiment was killed or wounded.
Among the wounded: Albion and Newman Kennerson.
Albion was shot, but the wound wasn’t serious. He briefly returned home to Bath in June 1862 with two other wounded soldiers from Company D, Samuel B. Merry and Harley K. Dunton. The men were greeted by a large crowd at the train station and celebrated as heroes. Albion must have been delighted to see his beloved wife, Josephine, and their kids. The visit, unfortunately, was a short one.
Newman got the worst of it. A musket ball tore through his hand. Newman was taken to the hospital and transferred to a general hospital in Washington, D.C. The injury was too serious for him to return to duty. Newman was discharged on July 8, 1862, after only four months and 16 days with Company D. Albion’s youngest brother returned to Maine for good.
When Albion returned to Company D, he had only one brother left in the war. James. The Confederate.
Chapter Four: The Curious Case of James H. Kennerson
Okay, let’s finally talk about James Kennerson.
James was born in Bath on July 15, 1837. He was the second son and fifth-born of Moses and Rebecca. Unlike Albion, who stayed home in Bath to build ships, James headed south. In the late 1850s, he traveled 1,500 miles to Baldwin County, Alabama.
Why Alabama? We don’t know for sure. Baldwin County borders the Gulf of Mexico and is close to the state capital, Mobile. It’s a big, sprawling county, larger than Rhode Island. Despite its size, Baldwin County was sparsely populated, with nearly half the population being African-American slaves.
It’s possible that shipbuilding brought James south. Bath had strong ties to Southern ports like New Orleans and Mobile. Bath’s ships ferried cotton, sugarcane, and goods along the coast. The 1860 U.S. Census shows other men from Maine living in Baldwin County, laborers and shipbuilders. So, it’s possible those connections brought James to Alabama. But maybe he had other reasons.
Whatever brought him there, by 1860, James was a laborer in Baldwin County. He was 22 and living on a livestock farm owned by Thomas R. Dean, a farmer who raised pigs, cattle, and sheep. Dean’s wife was Mary Ann Catrett, and nearby, her brother, John Catrett, had a farm of his own. John had a teenage daughter named Elizabeth M. Catrett.
On June 14, 1861, after the South had already split from the United States and his older brother was a member of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment, James Kennerson married Elizabeth Catrett. He was 23. Elizabeth was barely 15.
James signed a marriage bond with Elizabeth’s father, John, who signed with a mark, indicating he was likely illiterate. The bond included a penalty of $200 to ensure the marriage was legitimate before issuing an official license. The marriage ceremony was conducted by a Justice of the Peace and officiated by Judge C.W. Wilkins.
While Elizabeth was a child, it was not uncommon for girls between the ages of 14 and 16 to marry in rural Alabama with parental consent. However, Elizabeth was likely pregnant, as she gave birth to her first child in 1862. The dates are a bit hazy, but pregnancy does seem to be the reason for their marriage.
Because it does seem like a strange marriage on the surface, James was from Maine, and the South and North were only weeks away from the first major battle of the Civil War. James had no property either; he was just a young, nomadic laborer. It must have been an awkward situation for all concerned.
Whatever the reason for the marriage, just three months after taking Elizabeth as his wife, James joined the Confederate Army. James enlisted with Company I of the First Regiment, Mississippi Calvary, Wood’s Regiment, Confederate Calvary. At enlistment, he was five feet six, with a sallow complexion, dark hair, and blue eyes.
James was now a soldier fighting for his wife’s new country: The Confederate States of America. He was given a horse worth $225 and rode off to fight for the South.
What did his family think of this? What was Albion’s reaction to finding out his brother would be fighting against him? That James was betraying his hometown, his state, and his country? He was betraying him. Unfortunately, we just don’t know. But here’s what we do know.
James fought in the Western theater of the Civil War, mostly in Mississippi, while Albion and later Newman fought in northern Virginia. Different states and different armies. James never faced off against his brothers on the battlefield—but he might as well have.
Because by fighting for the Confederacy, he was pitted against his brothers, his fellow Rebels doing their best to kill his own brothers.
Chapter Five: A Hero in the Making
May 1, 1863. Disease, injury, capture, and a wave of desertions, nine men, the highest in the Third Maine, had depleted the ranks of Company D. With just 57 soldiers, they blundered into the Battle of Chancellorsville.
The battle was a Union disaster. A crushing defeat. Some historians called it General Robert E. Lee’s “perfect battle.” Although Chancellorsville spelled the end for one of Lee’s best generals, Stonewall Jackson. In the chaos of the battle, the Confederacy made a deadly mistake. They shot their own general.
But everything else went right for the Rebels. At that point in the war, the Third Maine experienced their heaviest fighting yet. Company D Corporal Charles F. Snell later wrote, “Such volleys of musketry, I had never heard before in my life.”
The regiment was hammered. Four killed, 17 wounded, and 42 missing or captured. But Albion distinguished himself again.
Three weeks later, Major General Daniel E. Sickles presented to Albion and 24 other Third Maine soldiers with the Kearney Cross—a coveted medal of valor created to honor General Philip Kearney, one of the Union’s legendary leaders.
It was a distinguished honor, one of the highest given to a Union soldier. This was not the same man who left Bath in 1861. The reluctant, homesick private—the one who hated camp life and complained about the food. The man who doubted he would ever see combat and begged his brother-in-law for fishing stories. That man was gone. In his place was a battle-scarred veteran. A hero.
Maybe that’s why Albion did what he did next. On February 9, 1864, he reenlisted for another three years. A decision that would cost him everything.
Because four months later, the Third Maine was disbanded. The other volunteers returned to Maine. Instead of going home to his wife and kids, Albion was transferred to the Seventeenth Maine Infantry Regiment.
And that’s when everything fell apart.
Chapter Six: The Confederate Bullet
Private John W. Haley was there when the men of the Third Maine disbanded and got to go home—even as the Veteran Volunteers and draftees joined his regiment, the Seventeenth. He could barely contain his bitterness. “Those who won’t re-enlist are to go home in a few days,” he wrote. “And a happy lot of mortals they are. It makes me positively sick to see them!”
Did Albion feel the same way? Did his old regrets return? If they did—he didn’t have long to dwell on them. Two weeks later. The Siege of Petersburg.
A Confederate bullet ripped through Albion’s right ankle—smashing bone to pulp and ripping away his flesh. At the hospital tent—with the stench of blood and rot filling his nostrils and the sounds of dying men filling his ears—Albion watched a surgeon examine his wound. There was only one option.
Amputation.
Albion was transferred to Campbell General Hospital, a 900-bed facility in northwest Washington, D.C., several miles north of the White House. Albion was in worse shape than anyone back home in Bath could have imagined. He was assigned case number 884. His patient records—written with detached efficiency—hid the true horror of his situation: “Wounded, ankle, severe at Petersburg, VA. Treated June 19, 1864. Amputated right arm. Amputated right leg.”
That’s right. Not just his right ankle. But his entire right leg. Then, his right arm. One by one, pieces of him were being taken away. His body—betrayed by infection, by gangrene, by the war itself. And his family had no idea.
It took 19 days for Albion’s family to learn something was wrong. And the reason they were? Josephine’s letters were piling up at the Seventeenth Maine, but Albion wasn’t there to receive them. Finally, on July 5, a letter arrived for her. It was from Lieutenant Robert H. Mathes, Albion’s superior officer with Company K. A man who had only known Albion for a couple of weeks.
The lieutenant’s words deepened the pain: “I expect you were aware of it. Or I should have written to you before. I do not know what hospital he is in, and you had better not send him any more letters until you find out.”
A hard reality—stop sending us your husband’s letters. He isn’t here. He’s gravely wounded, but we don’t know where he is.
Thankfully, someone was watching out for Albion. Someone cared. That was Sarah A. Sampson, the wife of Albion’s former Company D captain, Charles A.L. Sampson. Sarah was a nurse and a tireless advocate for Maine soldiers wounded in the war. A woman whom Maine soldiers called The Angel.
Sarah visited Albion at the hospital regularly, reporting dutifully back to Josephine. At first, Sarah tried to be optimistic. “He’s cheerful,” she wrote. But that didn’t last long. On July 29, her tone changed. “For days, Albion has been failing,” she admitted. “And this afternoon, I am told by the nurse he is very low.”
Then, the next day, a telegram. Just seven words: “He is very sick. Do not come.”
Albion knew he was dying. He also knew the difficulty and expense Josephine would face traveling from Bath to Washington, D.C., while leaving their children behind. He didn’t want that. Nor did he probably want his wife’s last memory of him to be of a broken man, nearly unrecognizable.
Four days later, on August 4, Albion Keith Parris Kennerson took his last breath. He was 33 years old. He left Josephine a widow. His three children were fatherless.
His hospital records indicated that Albion left no personal effects behind. His most cherished possession—his Kearny Medal for Valor—was nowhere to be found. Lost. Just like the man who had once worn it.
Chapter Seven: Death Do Us Part
Josephine, like many war widows, was left destitute. Without a husband, she had no steady income and three children under the age of eight. The death and dysfunction Josephine had hoped to escape from her troubled childhood had found her again.
She did what she had to do. Josephine converted her home into a boarding house. Eventually, she managed to secure a widow’s pension—$8 per month and $2 per child. A total of $14 per month. The equivalent of $285 today—a meager sum considering her sacrifice.
Josephine did what many Civil War widows did to survive. She remarried. It’s possible she met her second husband, 35-year-old fisherman William D. Seigars, while he boarded at her house. They were married on March 5, 1867, and had a son together. Eventually, the whole family moved to a farm in Alna, Maine, 30 miles northeast of Bath.
Maybe Josephine moved to get away from Albion’s brother. Once the war ended, James Kennerson came home. The Confederate soldier returned to Bath with his Southern bride and their two Alabama-born sons.
Once back home, James told his family and the community that he had been coerced into fighting for the Confederacy, that he had had no choice.
Was James’ story true? He was a young man far from home and likely forced into marriage because of his indiscretions with his neighbor’s 15-year-old daughter. After marrying Elizabeth Catrett, did his new family pressure him into joining the Confederacy?
If so, why did he stay? He fought with Wood’s Regiment for four years—until he surrendered to Union forces on May 5, 1865. Did James really have no other choice? Unfortunately, we only have his word to go by. So, we may never know the truth.
But the Kennerson family eventually came to believe him. Or at least they forgave him. He was welcomed back. This includes his brother Newman, who likely lived with a scarred hand because of a Confederate bullet.
James settled back in, taking work as a ship’s caulker and a fisherman. He lived on the same street as Newman and his parents.
James’s marriage didn’t survive the trip north. His Southern wife—the girl he married when she was 15—didn’t last long in Maine. Maybe Elizabeth was homesick. Maybe she felt like an outsider. Whatever the reason, she left James and returned to Alabama, taking her two sons with her. There is no official record of a divorce.
Back home, Elizabeth claimed to be a widow, which speaks volumes about how much she wanted to sever her ties with James. We don’t know if James ever saw his sons again.
Elizabeth remarried in 1881 to her first cousin, a man 15 years younger than her. She had six children, became a devout Baptist, and spent the rest of her life in Alabama. When she died in 1909 at the age of 62, her obituary did not mention James or her first marriage. It’s like she erased that part of her life.
Newman, the youngest Kennerson brothers, recovered from his wound. He built a life in Bath with his wife, Adrianna Fogg, and raised nine children. He worked on the water his entire life, fishing and caulking ships. He died in 1907 at the age of 65.
Josephine died at the age of 79 in 1912, but not before burying her second husband. She spent her final years living with her son, William Seigars, and his family.
And James? He outlived them all. He became a fixture in Bath—a character. The Confederate Mainer, and a well-known fisherman with stories galore. Hey, didn’t he catch the largest bass ever pulled out of the Kennebec River in 1900? A 56-pound, 4-foot-long monster! He remarried shortly after his Southern-born wife left him. His marriage with Pamelia Jane (Fowles) produced five children.
When James passed away in 1916, his obituary painted him as something of a curiosity. A young fella who went South and got swept up and forced into the Confederate Army (there was no mention of his first marriage or his Southern sons). And he even fought against his own brother, the late James Kennerson. But don’t worry, the obituary seemed to imply, he didn’t really mean it.
There’s no mention of Albion. No mention of the older brother who sacrificed his leg, then his arm, and then his life for the Union.
No mention of the man buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
What happened to Albion didn’t fit into the lighthearted curiosity that was James Kennerson.
His older brother’s ultimate sacrifice was an uncomfortable truth. One best left unsaid.
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That’s it for this episode of Company D. Thank you for listening. If you’ve enjoyed these stories, please subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform.
And please reach out to us.
Company D extends a very special thank you to Tracy Hodges for his tireless research on the Kennerson family. Another thanks goes to Mary Louise Bailey. We want to extend our gratitude to both Tracy and Mary for sharing their research.
Join us next time for another chapter in Company D. I’m your host, George F. Snell III. See you next time. And remember, you can love treason but hate the traitor.
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