Local Medal of Honor Recipient Waited 51 Years

Quartermaster Daniel Stevens was awarded the medal of honor fifty-one years after his gallant and meritorious services on board the Union ironclad “Canonicus” during the naval bombardment and invasion of Fort Fisher near the end of the Civil War.

Shells had twice swept away the ship’s flag and while under deadly fire, Stevens “crawled to the stern, unafraid of the bursting shells, and replaced Old Glory in defiance of the Rebels.”[i]

After long years of delay, the highest U.S. military decoration was presented to seventy-six year old Stevens, a resident of Holten Street, in 1916. The gift bestowed by Congress included an added pension of ten dollars a month, which he began to collect in 1916.

Beginning after midnight on January 13, 1865, fifty nine ships in Admiral David D. Porter’s command bombarded Fort Fisher, which was occupied by nearly 2,000 rebel soldiers and guarded with 47 guns. The forbidding rebel coastal citadel that sealed the harbor of Wilmington, North Carolina was the last haven of the war for rebel blockade runners, fell three days later following a heavy infantry assault.

Stevens served a total of forty-five months during the Civil War. For the last eighteen months of his tour of duty, he served on board the Canonicus, which was built in South Boston.

Born December 19, 1829 in Tennessee and later relocated to Alabama, he was able to join the Union army because his father, a physician, settled in Boston to take over his father’s medical practice.

Stevens moved to the city after marrying Peabody native Mary Ophelia Stevens, whom he met in East Boston. She was a former school teacher and served as a nurse in the Civil War.

Quartermaster “Dan” Stevens died on election day 1916. Desiring to cast his vote for President, Stevens collapsed while getting ready to ride down to the town hall.

His funeral was held at the South Congregational Church and presided over by Rev. Trickey, who served on the monitor with the deceased veteran. Stevens is buried in Walnut Grove cemetery.

[i] Peabody Enterprise, 18 August 1916, p. 1/2-3.

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