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the cargo, it can be packed in the vessel, and kept for months, with proper care.
The offer was accepted, and a vessel was chartered to take the ice to
Fortress Monroe.
The occupants of Quincy Market, of whom
Hiscock &
Winslow and
Harrison Bird were a committee, contributed a large quantity of fresh provisions, which were preserved on the ice, and sent in the ship.
On the 1st of May, the bodies of
Luther C. Ladd,
Addison O. Whitney, and
Sumner H. Needham, who were killed in
Baltimore on the 19th of April, reached
Boston.
Even then the names of the dead were not positively known.
The bodies were properly received, and placed in the receiving-vault at
King's Chapel.
That same afternoon, the
Governor wrote to
Colonel Jones, of the Sixth Regiment,—
Mr. Merrill S. Wright arrived at Boston this afternoon in charge of the bodies of three Massachusetts soldiers who fell at Baltimore.
They were received by me at the depot, and were conveyed, under an appropriate escort, to the King's Chapel, where they are deposited until they can be finally interred with appropriate funeral honors.
Whenever you can obtain the finite and absolutely certain information concerning the names of the three dead, I desire you to inform me. I understand them to be James Keenan, of Stoneham; Edward Coburn, of Lowell; and S. Henry Needham, of Lawrence: but I desire to obtain final and official information as to the correctness of my present understanding.
He also wrote to
Mr. Sargent,
Mayor of
Lowell,—
I met these relics of our brave and patriotic soldiers at the Worcester Railroad Depot, accompanied by my military staff and the Executive Council, where we took them in charge, and, under the escort of the corps of “Independent Cadets,” bore them through our streets, thronged by sympathizing citizens, and placed them in the “Vassall” tomb, beneath the ancient King's Chapel, at the corner of Tremont and School Streets. There they remain, subject to the orders of those friends who have the right to decide their final disposition.
But it would be most grateful to the Executive Department, in co-operation with those nearest to the lamented dead, to assist in the last funeral honors to their memory; and I should be pleased to meet you, and the Mayor of Lawrence, and the Selectmen of Stoneham, as soon as you may convene them, at the State House, to consider the arrangements suitable to this occasion.
