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[338] on the same footing as regards State aid as the families of volunteers. 1864. August 20th, Voted, ‘to raise and appropriate one hundred and twenty-five dollars each for thirty-four men to complete the town's quota, and that it be paid in gold or its equivalent.’ Easthampton furnished two hundred men for the war, which was a surplus of eighteen over and above all demands. Five were commissioned officers.1 The whole amount of money appropriated and expended by the town on account of the war, exclusive of State aid, was thirty thousand three hundred and sixty-seven dollars ($30,367.00). The amount of money raised and expended by the town during the war for State aid to soldiers' families, and which was afterwards repaid by the Commonwealth, was as follows: In 1861, $256.40; in 1862, $1,600.05; in 1863, $1,847.34; in 1864, $1,601.24; in 1865, $1,400.00. Total amount, $6,705.03. The sympathies of the ladies of Easthampton were early in the war enlisted in favor of the soldiers. ‘Individuals, neighborhoods, sewing societies, and town societies, one and all were engaged in the work of providing comforts for the absent.’ The children of the Sunday schools also gave liberally of their small means for the same purpose. It appears from the brief records of one ladies' society, called ‘The Society to Aid the Sick and Wounded Soldiers,’ that as early as 1861 a box valued with its contents at one hundred and fifty dollars was sent to the sick and wounded in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1863 contributions were taken up in the churches, and there was ‘received from girls in the factories’ upwards of two hundred dollars, which were expended in purchasing materials to make into clothing, that filled four large boxes. The same year
1 Major George C. Strong, U. S. A., and Major-General of Volunteers, who was killed in the attack upon Fort Wagner, South Carolina, Feb. 1863, was a native of Easthampton. His name with other of Easthampton men, who fell in the war, is inscribed on a marble tablet ‘in the Soldiers' Memorial Tower’ of the splendid town hall, erected in 1868-69 at a cost of sixty-five thousand dollars.
1871. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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