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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 05 Transcript
A sharp wind snapped American and regimental flags. Thousands of soldiers stood on a grassy field next to the gurgling waters of Potomac Creek in northern Virginia.
Mud caked their boots. Their blue uniforms were faded and torn. Most of the men hadn’t shaven in days. A few were so young—they didn’t need to shave at all. They had fought at Chancellorsville three weeks ago. A battle that left the Union Army with greater losses than any battle preceding it. In just days, they would march north, to Gettysburg.
Today, the men needed to put Chancellorsville behind them. It was Major General Daniel E. Sickles’s job to make that happen. Sickles was a wealthy New Yorker and no stranger to scandal and controversy. Today, he would play the role of showman. Of cheerleader. His job was to boost the morale of his troops in the Third Corps.
Today, he would be at his most flamboyant. Today, he would live up to his nickname, “Devil Dan.” Around him, dignitaries and Army officers stood in a tight circle. Journalists clutched their notebooks. Before them, men from the Third, Fourth, and Seventeenth Maine Infantry Regiments. Battle-hardened veterans.
The ceremony got underway.
Sickles raised his booming voice. One by one, he called the names of the soldiers being honored. One by one, they stepped forward. He pinned the Kearny Cross of Valor to their chests, a medal for courage, for acts of extraordinary bravery at Chancellorsville.
Twenty-five men of the Third Maine received the honor that day. Among them was Corporal Henry Harrison Shaw of Company D.
In the next few days, the people of Maine would read about the ceremony in The Daily Eastern Argus. The newspaper would declare this a victory for the Maine regiments.
For the men of Company D of the Third Maine, it was a moment of recognition. Validation for their honor and duty.
Henry Shaw traced the sharp edges of his new medal, the red ribbon flashing in the sunlight. He hoped his father would be proud. He had earned this.
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Hello, and thanks for joining us for the fifth episode of Company D, the history podcast that uncovers the forgotten stories of the everyday soldier in the American Civil War.
We have chosen to examine the experiences of the men who served with Company D of the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. These men were mostly farmers, laborers, and ship carpenters from mid-coast Maine and the city of Bath. Ordinary men who found themselves in an extraordinary war. Why the Third Maine? Because this history is personal to me. My great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, volunteered with Company D at the tender age of eighteen. He wasn’t from Maine—he grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. But when the war broke out, he was visiting his older brother in Bath. In a moment of patriotism, he joined the Third Maine. His diary from those years became the foundation and inspiration for this podcast.
I’m your host, George F. Snell III.
Today, we uncover some fascinating history, the lost origins of the first black township in the United States. And the Union soldier who played such a crucial role in that forgotten story. We meet Henry Harrison Shaw. An earnest farmer’s son. A young man seeking his father’s approval, hoping to meet his Great Expectations. Here was a man who would earn his place on the battlefield. A son who would become a Republican operative in the occupied South. A man who would shed his past and reforge himself, from a Union soldier to a Southern gentleman.
But Henry had another role—one that is underappreciated and nearly forgotten—a mere footnote in a much larger legacy. Through his efforts, Henry helped to establish the very first African-American township in the South. A community of former slaves who, through perseverance and sheer grit, carved out a community of merchants and tradesmen, churches and schools, and homes and farms, much of it on land that once belonged to Henry.
But first, let’s go back in time a bit.
Chapter One: Daddy Dearest
As we’ve learned-leadership in Company D of the Third Maine was never simple. But it became complicated in the winter of 1862. Newly appointed Captain William H. Watson faced a challenge—choosing his First and Second Lieutenants. It should have been straightforward. Instead, it became a mess of infighting, political maneuvering, and outright backstabbing.
Letters flew between the ranks, then across state lines—to the desk of Maine Governor Israel Washburn himself. In the end, Captain Watson got his way. Alfred S. Merrill and Woodbury Hall were promoted. Sergeant William H. Higgins was passed over despite being elected by the men.
But there was a fourth name in the mix. A 21-year-old corporal. Henry Harrison Shaw. He was a candidate for one reason. His father. George Washington Shaw was a landowner in Woolwich, Maine. A prosperous farmer from a well-respected family. George Shaw was no-nonsense, a temperance advocate who forbade alcohol in his home. By 1862, he was 46years old and had already buried two wives and two children.
Henry was his oldest son, and he wanted him to be an officer. George Shaw had the will and the political connections to make it happen. So, when he heard Company D needed two lieutenants, he was going to pull every string to ensure Henry was one of them. George Shaw persuaded Woolwich town officials to flood Governor Washburn’s office with letters of recommendation. Then he wrote the Governor himself. And when that wasn’t enough? He wrote directly to Captain Watson. Watson knew exactly what was happening.
In his own letter to Governor Washburn, dated February 5, 1862, he laid it out plainly. “I have received letters from different parties in Maine with references to the office of Second Lieutenant. The last one was from Mr. Shaw, who it seems is very anxious that his son Henry H. Shaw should have the place. Mr. Shaw is a young man of excellent moral character but has not the requisite qualities for a military man. I do not think the well-being of the Maine troops would be benefitted by his appointment.”
A blunt rejection. Henry Shaw was passed over. But George Shaw wasn’t done yet.
Chapter Two: A Grief-Filled, Chaotic Childhood
Henry Harrison Shaw was toddling around his house, just learning to walk at 17 months old. And then—his mother was gone. Louisa (Walker) Shaw was just 32 years old when she died on February 24, 1842. Two weeks earlier, she had given birth to a baby girl—Henry’s sister, Louisa A. Shaw. Whether his mother died from complications of childbirth or a lingering illness—we don’t know. She was buried at Nequasset Cemetery in Woolwich, and little
Henry was left without a mother.
For a few months, Henry still had his baby sister. Then, on August 11, 1842—just six months after their mother’s passing—she was gone too. Louisa A. Shaw never saw her first birthday. Mother and daughter—reunited in death. Henry was left alone with his father, George Shaw.
But he wasn’t completely alone. The Shaws and Walkers were large families. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins—were all close to his father’s farm. Two years passed. Henry turned four years old. That’s when his father remarried. His father’s new wife was Sophia P. Greenleaf, the second of fourteen children in a sprawling farm family from Westport, Maine. And as it turns out, Sophia had a connection to Captain William H. Watson.
They both attended the Wesleyan Seminary School—now known as Kents Hill School. Maybe that’s why George Shaw felt comfortable writing to Watson all those years later. They were practically family. For a while, it seemed like Henry’s life had found stability. Sophia and George had three children together—Susan, Henrietta, and George William. But grief and loss weren’t finished with him yet.
In April 1847, his half-sister Susan died before her first birthday. And seven years later, in 1854, his stepmother, Sophia, followed. Henry was 14 years old—and had already lost two mothers and two sisters. His father married again in 1856. His third wife was Eleanor “Ellen” Brookings, a 36-year-old woman who had lived with her parents until she became George Shaw’s wife.
She would give him three more children—Nellie, Arletta, and Edward. And somehow, outlived her husband.
By 1860, Henry was 19. He was still on his father’s farm in Woolwich. Living with his second stepmother and two infant half-siblings. And two more from his father’s second marriage. He had spent his whole life surrounded by loss. He must have been ready for change. And there’s no greater change than a Civil War.
Chapter Three: Nearly Bulletproof
April 25, 1861. At 20 years old, Henry stood five feet eight inches tall. Dark hair. Blue eyes. He raised his right hand and took the oath. “I, Henry Harrison Shaw, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” He maintained a strong and steady voice, concluding with: “So help me God.” He had just enlisted in Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment.
Then came the Battle of Fair Oaks in the spring of 1862, a few months after Henry learned he wouldn’t be promoted to lieutenant with Company D. The Battle of Fair Oaks. Also known as the Battle of Seven Pines was one of the bloodiest engagements of the Peninsula Campaign. A disaster for the Union. The Third Maine faced its worst fighting yet, losing nearly a third of the regiment to death and injury.
Colonel Henry J. Staples recalled the moment he ordered his men to charge. “The regiment, cheering continually, rushed on the enemy with such impetuosity that they broke and fled at the first onset. Our brave boys, still advancing, threw themselves upon the ground halfway up the hill and fired upon them steadily. The Rebels returned our fire with terrible effect at this point, and most of our casualties took place here.” Henry was one of them. Shot in the arm. He spent months in a general hospital in Washington, D.C.
His father wasn’t about to let a war wound go to waste. George Shaw wrote yet another letter to Governor Washburn on August 8, 1862. His argument was simple. Henry had fought. Henry had bled. Henry had done his duty. Now, George wanted his son promoted.
“He has been steadily in the service and been wounded in battle…,” George wrote. “I claim for him a promotion to Lieutenant in some of the companies now being raised.”
And then George name-dropped. He claimed that former Third Maine Colonel Oliver O. Howard—now a brigadier general—was backing Henry’s promotion. What George might not have realized is that Howard had been severely wounded at Fair Oaks, too. Shot in the arm, just like his son. But in Howard’s case, his right arm had to be amputated.
When no promotion came, George wrote Washburn yet again on November 26, 1862. He reminded Washburn that they had discussed Henry in person and urged the Governor to give his son a chance. Then, he added a curious line. “I will reward you for any extra trouble if there be any,” he wrote. Was he implying a bribe? Giving the governor a financial incentive to promote his son?
Regardless, Henry was back with Company D in the spring of 1863 and still a Corporal. Henry arrived just in time for the terrible defeat at Chancellorsville. He participated in the Third Maine’s midnight charge—an offensive so dreaded by his fellow soldiers that many of them wrote farewell letters to their families and pinned them to their uniforms. The Third Maine lost its regimental flag.
Along with four dead, 17 wounded, 42 captured or missing. This was where Henry distinguished himself. This wasn’t the boasting included in his father’s letters. This was real. This was Henry showing grit and courage on the battlefield.
His actions at Chancellorsville caught the attention of his superior officers and Major General Daniel Sickles. That’s why he was awarded the Kearny Cross for Valor. It wasn’t a promotion to lieutenant, but it was one of the most distinguished honors bestowed upon a Union soldier in the Civil War.
Henry could rightly be called a hero. The Kearny Cross of Valor seemed to be the spark Henry needed. He was finally promoted—but not to Lieutenant. To First Sergeant. We don’t know if his father was happy with that.
Then came Gettysburg. The most intense battle of the war—and a turning point for the Union. Henry was among only 21 soldiers left with Company D. The once one-hundred-strong Company D had lost 80 percent of its men to death, disease, injury, desertion, and transfers. Company D was combined with the remnants of Companies B, H, and I—units so decimated they no longer had any officers.
The Third Maine experienced a double whammy at Gettysburg. Fighting at Pitzer’s Woods and then the gauntlet that was the Peach Orchard. A battle where the Third Maine was attacked from two sides simultaneously—and where an entire company—Company K—was completely vaporized. And Henry was shot again. His time in the shoulder. A local Maine newspaper listed his wounds as severe.
He was hospitalized for more than three months. On December 28, 1863, Henry reenlisted for another three years. He was a hardened veteran by this time with a reputation for mettle on the battlefield. He was only 22 years old.
He was shot and wounded again at the Battle of Spotsylvania on May 11, 1864, shortly before his time with the Third Maine came to an end. It was again a serious wound, and one of the newspapers back in Maine reported him killed in action. The mistake must have sent chills through Henry’s father and family back in Woolwich.
While recuperating in the hospital on June 4, Henry was officially transferred to Company A of the Seventeenth Maine Infantry Regiment. Four months later, on October 8, 1864, he was discharged because the Seventeenth Maine had too many sergeants and no place for a wounded veteran among its ranks. It’s unclear if he ever reported for duty with the Seventeenth. Regardless, Henry was honorably discharged and left the Union Army without ever becoming an officer.
Later in his life, Henry said that he was wounded four times in the war. He was shot once in the left leg and once in the right. And shot twice in the left shoulder. One hopes his father was proud of his son. One thing is for sure, Captain Watson’s assessment that Henry didn’t have the qualities of a military man, that was dead wrong
Chapter Four: A Sort of Homecoming
Henry went home. Woolwich, Maine. After more than three years of war. After four gunshot wounds. After fighting at Fair Oaks, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania, Henry Harrison Shaw was back on his father’s farm. The same fields. The same crops. The same people. But Henry wasn’t the same.
His father, George Shaw, still ran the land, now with Henry’s half-brother, George William, at his side. His second stepmother, Eleanor, still managed the household. His younger half-siblings: Henrietta, Nellie, Arletta, and Edward, were growing up, but the rhythms of farm life had barely changed. Maybe that’s why he decided to leave. Or perhaps it was to get away from his father’s impossible expectations. He didn’t go to another farm. He didn’t even stay in Maine.
He ended up in Tarboro, a town in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, more than 820 miles away from his father’s farm. Edgecombe County helped fill the ranks of the Seventeenth, Thirtieth, and Forty-Fourth North Carolina Infantry Regiments. A place where the wounds of war had barely begun to heal. The state was under territorial control by the United States. Republican William W. Holden was named the Provisional Governor of North Carolina as Reconstruction began.
Reconstruction was a period of extreme turbulence following the Civil War when the U.S. government sought to reintegrate the former Confederate states and to establish rights and protections for millions of newly freed Black Americans. Tarboro was a town of just over a thousand people along the Tar River in the heart of North Carolina. Before the war, Tarboro thrived on cotton. Plantations in the upland region stretched for miles. The town’s economy was built on the backs of enslaved laborers.
But after the war, Tarboro changed. Now, its population was majority Black—newly freed men and women fighting for their place in a hostile South. The town was occupied by the Union Army, and Northerns like Henry moved in to help govern during the occupation.
It’s unclear what brought Henry to Tarboro. However, he was likely a member of the Union League, an organization founded in 1862 that, after the war, played a significant role in organizing Black political participation and protecting the rights of freedmen in the South. Governor Holden was the head of the Union League in North Carolina.
Tarboro was simmering with tension, resentment, and divided politics, and Henry Shaw, the decorated Union soldier, was about to step into the middle of it.
Chapter Five: Southern Change Gonna Come At Last
They opened a shop near the Tarboro Courthouse on May 5, 1866, and called it McCabe & Shaw’s. They sold dry goods, groceries, hardware, hats, boots, lamps, farming equipment, and even cologne. All of it—they claimed—“very cheap!” It was owned by two “carpetbaggers” from the Union League: Henry and his partner, Alexander McCabe. The partnership seemed to be an odd match from the start.
McCabe was a fiery 27-year-old New Yorker who married 24-year-old Mary Ann Moore, a Tarboro local, on December 6, 1866. He became the leader of the Republican party in Tarboro and was even appointed the town’s mayor in 1868 by Governor Holden. McCabe was a rough-and-tumble politician—a charmer and talker but a man who wasn’t afraid to get physical to get his way. His infant son died in 1867 at the age of two months, which may have led to a drinking problem, which he struggled with his entire life.
Henry, on the other hand, grew up in a temperate household and was a pious Episcopal.
McCabe was elected Chief of Police in 1881, but was later permanently discharged after accusations that he would often be so intoxicated he couldn’t perform his duties. He died of consumption at the age of 38 in 1883.
McCabe & Shaw’s didn’t last long; they were out of business before 1870. But by then, both Henry and McCabe were knee-deep in Republican politics in Tarboro. Henry bought land in Tarboro, most likely financed by his father. But he also joined the fight for Reconstruction. He joined the Collectors Office of the U.S. Internal Revenue for the Second District of North Carolina. In the spring of 1868, he was the collection agent for Edgecombe County. That same year, he was appointed by Governor Holden as one of Tarboro’s Republican town commissioners.
Governor Holden was despised by the white citizens of Tarboro. He was called a “Judas” by the local newspaper, The Tarborough Southerner. The Tarborough Southerner was openly hostile to Reconstruction and published vicious attacks on Black political power, the federal occupation, and Republican reforms—often dripping with racism and white supremacist rhetoric.
Surprisingly, The Tarboro Southerner gave the benefit of the doubt to Henry’s appointment despite having misgivings about his motives and loyalties. In the fall of 1868, Henry returned home. Not for good, but for a wedding. On October 19, 1868, he married Mary Ellen Hawes, a 24-year-old farmer’s daughter from Winslow, Maine. She was the only daughter of four children born to Ebenezer and Sophia Hawes. They didn’t remain in Maine for long.
They were soon back in Tarboro. But when it was time for their first child to be born, Mary went home to Maine. Their son, Howard, was born in Winslow in 1869. A decade later, their daughter, Annie, was born, also in Maine.
Upon his return to Tarboro, Henry was appointed Deputy Postmaster of the town, another political appointment. He moved the post office into the former storefront once belonging to McCabe & Shaw’s. Somehow, the Union soldier was turning into a Southern gentleman.
Chapter Six: Southern Man Better Keep Your Head
By 1870, Henry wasn’t just living in Tarboro. He was part of the town’s fabric.
He lived with his wife, Mary Ellen, and ten-month-old son, Howard, in a town still wrestling with the ghosts of war. And in his home, he had two unexpected guests.
The first was his brother-in-law, George S. Hawes. At 24, George was a tinsmith, a skilled trade that involved crafting everything from pots and kettles to lanterns and gutters. Henry’s former Company D Captain William H. Watson—the man who passed him over for lieutenant—was also a tinsmith.
But before Tarboro, before the tinsmith shop, George had been a soldier. But not the same kind of soldier as Henry. At 18, George enlisted as a corporal in Company G of the Twenty-Fourth Maine Infantry Regiment. A nine-month recruit. He was sent to Louisiana. He was part of the Siege of Port Hudson and saw firsthand the brutal fight to control the Mississippi River. But the Twenty-Four saw little combat, only losing one soldier in battle.
But the Twenty-Fourth suffered mightily from disease, losing 190 men to various illnesses.
Something happened to George. By the time he was discharged in August 1863, he was no longer a corporal. He had been reduced to private. Non-commissioned officers could lose their rank for many reasons. Neglect of duty. Misconduct. Disobedience. Or sometimes, for no reason at all, just routine administrative reshuffling. What happened to George? We don’t know.
After the war, he moved to Tarboro to live with Henry and his sister. He would stay there for more than a decade, with his wife, Ellen, joining him from Maine. They had a daughter, Grace, who was born in Tarboro. George eventually returned to Maine. We know that he respected his brother-in-law immensely, so much so that he named his firstborn son Harry Shaw Hawes.
Mary Hammond, a 34-year-old Black woman born in Virginia, was also living with Henry at that time. She couldn’t read or write—like so many freed people after the war. There’s no record of how long she stayed. No trace of where she was before or after her arrival with the Shaws. Only this: She worked as a domestic servant for the Shaws in a town where Black labor had once been forced. Yet, she continued to serve a white family. What it meant to be free in Tarboro in 1870 was very complicated.
But maybe Mary Hammond was partly responsible for what happened next in Henry’s life. Maybe her presence and influence—however subtle—changed Henry’s perceptions of the black community in Tarboro.
Chapter Seven: The Rise of Princeville
It started with the collapse of Reconstruction. By the late 1870s, the Democrats, mostly former Confederates, were back in power. The federal government withdrew its troops, leaving Republicans and freedmen in a vulnerable position.
For Henry, for years a political fixture in Tarboro politics, this meant he was on the outs. He lost all of his appointments: tax collector, school examiner, and town commissioner. He was able to cling to his role as Deputy Postmaster, but only for a few more years.
This would have been a time for Henry to leave North Carolina, to return to Maine. But he didn’t. Instead, he transformed himself. He went back to what he knew, farming.
He bought large tracts of land along the Tar River, once owned by the heirs of John Lloyd, on the other side of the river in the swampy southern district of the town. In 1865, right after the war, many freedmen fled to the area for protection because it was close to the occupying Union Army encampment. As more former bondsmen flocked to the area, clearing out large swaths of the land to build one- and two-room shacks, a community emerged. The residents called it Freedom Hill. At first, the white citizens on the other side of the river supported Freedom Hill, not wanting to intermingle with the black population but wanting them close enough to work on their farms and in their shops.
In the late 1870s, Henry owned a sizable amount of land in Freedom Hill. He subdivided the property and began selling lots to the black residents. The parcels were transformed by the residents into homes, farms, shops, churches, and a school. By 1885, the town changed its name to Princeville, named after a prominent citizen, and incorporated, becoming the first independently owned African American community in the United States.
Black residents of Princeville included:
There was mayor and Republican operative Orren James, who owned his grocery store and a saloon and who The Tarborough Southerner reluctantly admitted in 1906 was “well-to-do.” There was Robert S. Taylor, the community’s first schoolteacher, who became a justice of the peace and later a two-term state senator. And Henry C. Cherry, who was the first black legislator to serve in the North Carolina legislature.
After a decade of government service, Henry hadn’t made much difference in Tarboro. But with these land sales, whether he knew it or not, he was enabling the foundational bedrock of what would become a vibrant black community in Tarboro. Land ownership in Princeville gave the former bondsmen a small amount of the power and political clout that vanished with the end of Reconstruction. It was a start, a new direction forward for them to carve out a life for themselves in the growing hostility in the South.
All because of a former Union sergeant—a man shot four times in the war by the Confederates who were not back in power.
By the end of the 1880s, Henry entered a new stage of his life. He became active in the Calvary Episcopal Church and opened Shaw's Market, a butcher’s shop in town.
He had a daughter, Annie, and his half-sister, Henrietta traveled south to live with him, likely there to help his wife with the new baby.
The Shaws weren’t carpetbaggers anymore. Back in Maine, Henry’s father, his demanding, hard-charging old man, was fading. On February 17, 1893, George W. Shaw died of tuberculosis. He was 78. His father was buried in Nequasset Cemetery in Woolwich, alongside his first two wives. Henry likely made the trip home for his father’s funeral, the cold winter winds whipping off the Gulf of Maine were there to remind him that he was now more North Carolinian than Mainer.
Chapter Eight: The End isn’t Easy
Henry spent decades in Tarboro, living there longer than he did in Maine. He witnessed the town transform and contributed to the emergence of a thriving Black community that blossomed out of a muddy swamp. A Union soldier turned Southern gentleman, but a Republican to the end.
In 1905, at the age of 65, Henry fell ill. At first, the discoloration on his face seemed minor.
But then it spread. A rare cancer—eating away at his face. The doctors said he needed immediate surgery. The local newspaper reported, “This infection did not make its appearance until a few months ago when it assumed a most malignant character.”
Henry traveled to Baltimore Hospital in Maryland for surgery.
Doctors removed the infected portion from his face. But the cancer had already burrowed deep. Into the nerves. Into the tissue. Into the brain. Nothing could be done. He lived only a week after leaving the surgeon’s table. Henry Harrison Shaw died at Baltimore Hospital on September 22, 1905.
The Tarboro Southerner, the former Confederate newspaper, wrote his obituary.
They didn’t remember him as a former enemy. They remembered him as one of their own.
“We venture the positive assertion that during his residence here of two score of years, no person has ever heard him utter an unkind word about his neighbor.” His funeral was held at Calvary Episcopal Church in Tarboro A crowd gathered. The church overflowed.
A Union soldier was buried in a Southern churchyard. Shot four times in the war. And yet, he died a beloved citizen of the South. Honored and respected—even by the men who once tried to kill him. And maybe at some point, his father realized Henry had lived up to his expectations. And was proud.
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That brings us to the end of another episode of Company D. Thank you for joining us.
Remember to subscribe to the show on your favorite streaming service. We invite you to visit our website to get more information about the men of Company D or to follow us on social media. I’m your host, George F. Snell III. See you next time.