Flag placed on the grave of Pvt. George W. Gould for Memorial Day 2026

In 2016—ten Memorial Days ago—I launched the Resurrecting Lost Voices website to honor Private George W. Gould, an ordinary soldier from Leicester, Massachusetts who went on sacrifice it all at just thirty-one years old on the Cold Harbor battlefield in 1864, one of hundreds of thousands of others who gave their lives to save the Union and end human chattel slavery.

I had had the good fortune to come across a collection of his previously unpublished letters, and while digitizing and transcribing these was moved by the eloquence and intellectual sophistication of this otherwise unremarkable farm boy from Western Mass who left his young wife Mira and three little girls to go off and fight for the Union with the 25^th Massachusetts Volunteers. Tragically, his wife died of typhoid fever while he was deployed many hundreds of miles from home, and his young children sent to stay with in-laws he did not much care for.

He writes home surprisingly articulate letters about his religious convictions, his patriotism, and his grief at the loss of Mira: “It is now about three weeks since she died and I can’t realize that I shall see her no more but if I should live to get home and see the vacant chair and the three little motherless children I shall then realize my great loss.” When the time comes, George agonizes over reenlistment but finally goes ahead, likely motivated not only by patriotism but by the month-long furlough home to see his family, as well as the reenlistment bonus that would go a long way towards caring for the children. When he returns to the front, there is one letter full of foreboding, and then the final correspondence I have is not from George but from his commissary sergeant, delivering the sad news to his mother that he was killed in action. George was dead; the three little girls now orphans.

George began his service at a training camp in New Bern, North Carolina, and ended it in the dirt at Cold Harbor, Virginia. I first read his letters shortly after I returned from visiting the extant trenches at New Bern from the battle that handed that geography over to the Union. Fittingly, I visited Cold Harbor for the first time just weeks ago. I cried the very first time I read that letter reporting his death. There are times I still choke up when considering his loss of Mira.

Laminate tag I attach to flags and wreaths to encourage those who pass by to read his story.

Historian Stan Prager, visiting the grave for Memorial Day 2026.

George’s story is, of course, only one tiny tale in a grand constellation of other stories by many hundreds of  thousands of others, but viewing the life and death through the lens of a single soldier who was there personalizes it, and better helps you understand the Civil War experience, more than 160 years after Appomattox.

Once I read George’s letters, I set out to learn more about him. I located his grave, studied his service records, probed his genealogy, and even came across a plaque commemorating his death along with others from his hometown. I decided to honor him further by adopting his gravesite, visiting it several times a year to place flags on it and, in December, laying a wreath there for “Wreaths Across America.”  I have always felt that in honoring him so, I can likewise honor all those who died for our country.

Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day, established in 1868 to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers. Therefore, I thought it fitting to launch this website on Memorial Day 2016 and—a decade later—to take a moment on Memorial Day 2026 to offer another huzzah to Private George W. Gould!

Grave of George W. Gould, Memorial Day 2016, at launch of this website