Location: Memorial Park adjacent to Congregational Church, 488 College Highway, Southwick
Coordinates: 42°03’17.8″N 72°46’10.4″W
Date dedicated: c. 1935
Architect/design: Unknown
After World War I, it became common for towns that had not built any sort of war memorial to construct one of the “honor roll” variety with multiple plaques, thus honoring their soldiers from several different wars. While these are not, strictly speaking, Civil War monuments, they will be included here if a town has no separate Civil War monument and the memorial includes a list of those who served and/or died in the Civil War.
The central portion of Southwick’s war memorial was constructed about 1935 to honor Southwick’s service members from the Revolution through World War I. The granite and bronze honor roll replaced a temporary wooden one that had been built nearby in 1919 to honor World War I veterans.[1] There was nothing of a memorial nature in the town for the Civil War prior to this honor roll. It has been expanded multiple times, most recently in 2016 to include 30 veterans who served in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan.[2]
The memorial lists 109 men from Southwick who served in the Civil War. The first to volunteer from this small agricultural town was Marshall Barden, a 37 year-old cooper who enlisted on June 21, 1861 with the 10th Massachusetts Infantry. This regiment was the first formed in western Massachusetts. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia on May 31, 1862. A group of 17 from this town served in Company F of the 27th Massachusetts Infantry and another 20 in Company E of the 46th Massachusetts Infantry. Both were western Massachusetts regiments (the latter almost entirely from Hampden County). The 27th Massachusetts served in North Carolina and later saw hard combat in some of the major campaigns in Virginia (5 out of the 11 men from Hardwick who died in the war served with the 27th Massachusetts).[3]
[1] David Lee Hamberg, Southwick Revisited (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 2021), 12.
[2] Hope E. Tremblay, “Southwick to Dedicate New Wing of War Memorial…” MassLive.com, November 10, 2016.
[3] Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War (Norwood, MA: Norwood Press, 1932), v. 3.