A Town Mourns a Hero

Two days after the death of Col. J. Parker Gould, wounded in the Battle of the Crater, a group of citizens gathered outside the post office to plan his funeral. They included Capt. John H. Dike, who at the start of the war had been shot in the leg in Baltimore, and Leander F. Lynde, his first lieutenant, part of the first regiment to reach Washington in response to the president’s call.

The funeral was scheduled for the following Saturday in the Congregational Church. It would be a public service with full military honors, including an army band. Officials from the Commonwealth, Masonic lodges and area churches would attend. The pall bearers would be fellow soldiers from Stoneham.

On Saturday morning, Col. J. Parker Gould was borne in procession to the Church, packed with townspeople and guests. A reporter from the Stoneham Sentinel wrote: “The church was appropriately decorated with mourning emblems and the national flag and the vacant pew of the deceased was draped in mourning. The coffin was placed beneath an arch of evergreens in front the pulpit and the national flag, and his sword and belt placed upon it.”

The service opened with a selection from the choir, “Blessed are they who die in the Lord,” followed by a reading of scripture. Prayer was then offered by the Rev. S. H. Tolman of Wilmington. Unmarried at the start of the war, Colonel Gould had become engaged to Rebecca Eames of Wilmington, “my intended bosom friend,” the colonel had written in his will. Rev. Tolman was her pastor.

Rebecca Eames was likely there, along with Gould’s brothers and sisters and his “beloved Aunt Hannah,” who with Deacon Silas Dean would be executors of his will.

After Rev. Tolman’s prayer, the Rev. Swift Byington, Stoneham’s congregational minister, recounted the life of J. Parker Gould, his singular achievements, his civic and educational contributions, and his faithfulness to the church. In 1858, Rev. Byington recalled, Gould “was chosen deacon by every vote except one, which was his own. The office he declined, either through modesty, or because he felt an older man should be appointed.”

Colonel Gould was “strongly attached to his faith,” Rev. Byington said, “but held it in such a genial and charitable spirit as not to render himself odious to men who held other views.”

For an hour following the service, mourners filed by Colonel Gould’s casket. Then the funeral procession proceeded down Montvale Avenue to Lindenwood Cemetery where the colonel was buried with military honors.

There, in the new cemetery consecrated just weeks before his death, J. Parker Gould lies today, memorialized along with 53 other Civil War soldiers who died in battle, from wounds, from illness, or in Confederate prisons—as well as hundreds of the 404 men who served but made it home. Stoneham veterans would later name their association, Post 75 of the Grand Army of the Republic, in Gould’s honor.

In August of 1864, the outcome of the War of the Rebellion was still in doubt. Union armies, although making headway in their drive to cripple the Confederacy, had taken a terrible beating. At home, already strapped towns had the additional burden of carrying for widows and wounded. Single parents struggled to feed their families. Orphanages were formed to care for children.

If we put ourselves in this time, we can more easily sense how brave an act it was for the people of Stoneham—and towns throughout the nation—to keep going.

To press on during those last agonizing months of the war must have taken great courage. I like to think Stoneham’s people were strengthened and inspired by J. Parker Gould, a shoemaker, teacher, engineer, legislator—the Grey Eagle, the Fighting Major—a Stoneham man of enormous heart and talent, who gave himself for his country.

Note: The Historical Commission received a grant in 2013 from the Massachusetts Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission to restore Col. J. Parker Gould's gravestone in Lindenwood Cemetery, Linden Ave, Lot 178, Grave 8.