The Bristol County Regiment

Wiilliam Hanna's brilliant History of Taunton is one of the sources for today's blog. Published in 2007 the book is available at the Old Colony Historical Society in Taunton. Other material comes from the survey of North Easton properties that was paid for by CPA funds and a state matching grant.

Secretary of War Simon Cameron gave Massachusetts Governor Andrew permission to raise six three year regiments in early May. They were designated the First, Second, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Massachusetts Regiments. The Seventh Massachusetts was soon named the Bristol County Regiment because eight of its ten companies came from there. Company C was the Easton regiment with 39 of its approximately 100 men from our town. Captain Ward L. Foster and all his subordinate officers and non-commissioned officers came from Easton. Foster was a married man of 37 with two children including a daughter called Victory. He is listed in the 1860 census as a shoe manufacturer, a designation suggesting more entrepreneurship than the more common shoemaker. He lived in North Easton, probably along Main Street and had $500 of real property and $1,000 of personal property. His Second Lieutenant Monroe Williams was born and raised in a house still standing at 175 Main Street. Other homes of men of this regiment still stand as well, silent and forgotten monuments to these brave men.

The first commander of the Seventh was Darius Couch (pronounced Coach), he had graduated thirteenth in a class of 59 at West Point in 1846 and served in the Mexican War and Second Seminole War as an artillery officer. In 1854 he led a scientific expedition to Mexico. His health was never strong after his return from Mexico and rather than continue to serve on the frontier he left the service. He had married a Taunton girl and, after a brief career in business in New York, he took an executive position in his father-in-law's  Taunton Copper Company in 1858. Despite being a Democrat who had not voted in the 1860 election, when war broke out, Couch offered his military expertise to Governor Andrew.

 Darius Couch

The Seventh Massachusetts was mustered into service on June 15, 1861 and went into a training camp at the Bristol County Agricultural Society's fairgrounds about a mile from Taunton Green. Along with the 39 men in Company C there were a few Easton men in Company H. Like the units that formed in Boston, the people of Taunton did their best to support the regiment. Couch paraded his troops on Main Street on June 28th, and the men were the guests of the city at a 4th of July celebration at the Green.

The reality that the unit would soon be called to the front caused Eastoners Thomas McNamara, William O'Rourke, Charles E. Williams, and Philip Fay to seek their discharge. One of the men actually left on Independence Day. On July 12, the regiment shipped out by train for Washington, D. C.. As they marched to the train "a huge crowd of friends and relatives cheered their passage." The regiment took the train as far as Groton, Connecticut where it switched to a ship for New York. From New York it was back on the train to Washington.The men spent their first night in the city sleeping under the unfinished dome of the Capitol before being ordered to a camp in Georgetown. The unit would spend much of its first year  in garrison duty defending Washington.