Location: Town Hall Plaza, Warren
Coordinates: 42°12’46.9″N 72°11’36.9″W
Date dedicated: July 4, 1891
Design/Sculptor/Manufacturer: Design and manufacture by Everson & Co. of Rutland, Vermont; statue by Finn Haakon Frolich
Warren’s Civil War monument was built through the efforts of the local Clara Barton Post #65 of the Grand Army of the Republic. Organizing began in 1880 and came to fruition in 1890 with the completion of fundraising and the selection of Everson & Co. as the contractor. The post’s monument committee was chaired by George Bliss, a veteran of the 34th Massachusetts Infantry.[1]
The monument was dedicated on the Fourth of July 1891 in connection with the town’s 150th anniversary celebrations. After a procession and brief outdoor remarks, attendees went over to the Town Hall where additional remarks were made, songs were sung, and the speaker of the day, Col. William S. B. Hopkins of Worcester addressed the assembly.[2] A prominent attorney, Hopkins had served as commanding officer of the 31st Massachusetts Infantry. He emphasized the role of the average “citizen-soldier” as vital and something unique to the recent war. “The great principle,” he asserted, “for which these men gave their labor and their lives was nationality.”[3]
The sculpture atop the monument was sculpted by Finn Haakon Frolich and copies of this particular sculpture were also used for the monuments in Dudley, Attleboro, and the imposing Webster monument. See Webster’s page for more information on Frolich’s unusual and interesting career. The Warren copy of the infantryman is considerably earlier than the other three monuments, although it may not be the original version of this particular statue.
The primary inscription reads, “Erected by the town of Warren to the memory of her soldiers and sailors who served in the War of the Rebellion. 1861—1865.”
The monument lists the names of 127 men who served in the war and, of particular significance, also one woman nurse, Carrie E. Cutter. This makes Warren one of only two Massachusetts town monuments that list the name of a nurse—the other being Kingston on the South Shore.
Cutter was the daughter of the regimental surgeon of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry which began its service in operations along the North Carolina coast. She accompanied her father and treated men of the regiment after their first engagement at Roanoke Island. She soon fell ill and succumbed to spotted fever. The regimental historian of the 21st Massachusetts speaks in the highest terms of her work during the campaign and describes the sadness in the regiment at her passing. She was interred, by special permission of the War Department, in the soldiers’ cemetery in Newbern, North Carolina.[4]
[1] “The Warren Soldiers’ Monument,” Springfield Republican, November 1, 1890, 8.
[2] “Warren Soldiers’ Monument Successfully Dedicated Yesterday,” Springfield Republican, July 5, 1891, 7.
[3] “Warren’s Roll of Honor,” Worcester Sunday Spy, July 5, 1891, 7.
[4] “Dead in the Sands of the Sea—The Story of Carrie Cutter,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine, August 2, 2022; and Charles F. Walcott, History of the Twenty-First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1882), 82-83.