Location: Provincetown Cemetery, 24 Cemetery Road
Coordinates: 42°03’18.6″N 70°11’13.9″W
Date dedicated: 1867
Architect/Sculptor/Manufacturer: Unknown
Number of names: 19 men lost in war

The town erected this marble obelisk in the Provincetown Cemetery in 1867. Three hundred men from Provincetown served in the United States Army and Navy during the war. Nineteen of them were killed or died from disease in the line of duty. One notable casualty was Josiah C. Freeman who perished manning his gun as his ship the USS Cumberland sank while battling the famous ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads in March of 1862. The local GAR post was named in his honor. Among the notable veterans from Provincetown who survived the war was Lt. Rawlins T. Atkins who first volunteered as a private in the 1st Massachusetts Infantry in 1861, then recruited a company for the 56th Massachusetts Infantry in 1864 (the core of which came from Provincetown). Provincetown’s ability to exceed its quota of soldiers was largely credited to Lt. Atkins’s efforts. As 43 Provincetown men went off to war in January 1864, a local paper boasted “not one man bought in Boston.”[1]

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[1] Stauffer Miller, Cape Cod and the Civil War, (2010).