Woodbury Lord was born around 1840 in South Berwick, Maine. In April of 1861, now a resident of Somersworth, NH, he enlisted in the 2nd New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. This 3 month enlistment was canceled, however, as the Army was in need of 3 year enlistments. Lord then re-enlisted for a 3 year term on May 27, 1861 and was mustered on June 5, 1861.

​

After a few weeks of training, Company H, 2nd New Hampshire Regiment was sent to Washington, D.C. With word of an upcoming conflict with the Confederate Army, the Regiment marched first to Centerville, VA, then to Manassas on July 21, 1861, to take part in the first battle of Bull Run. 

 

Hearing the roar of cannon to their front, the Regiment marched to the base of a hill when Confederate artillery opened fire. The men found cover in a wooded area, but when the Rebel infantry arrived, the 2nd New Hampshire men came out of the woods and opened fire, but the range of their smoothbore muskets fell short. Advancing again, they began giving and taking casualties, and for some time engaged their enemy in a back and forth fight.

 

Before long, the Confederates withdrew. The New Hampshire men wondered if the fight was over and they had been victorious, but they stood their ground waiting for orders. They were unaware that the Confederates had been reinforced and Confederate General Beauregard was taking the time to reorganize his soldiers to renew the fight. The Confederates renewed the fight with vengeance, taking the Union Army by surprise.

 

The soldiers of the 2nd New Hampshire held fast as they watched their comrades from other regiments withdrawing from the field, with many running in disorder. Renewing the fight, the 2nd NH Regiment held strong until they received orders to withdraw. At this time, PVT Lord was struck by a bullet that hit his right knee. The regiment withdrew, leaving him and many others behind.

 

The next day, PVT Lord was found alive by Rebel soldiers and put on a train as a prisoner of war, headed for a Confederate prison in Richmond.  Life in the prison was extremely difficult. Prisoners were subjected to excessive heat during the summer due to the boarded up windows and winter cold without adequate blankets. Disease and lack of food took the lives of many.

 

PVT Lord was finally paroled by his Confederate captors in May of 1862 after nearly a year in prison. Parole was different from a prisoner exchange. Exchanges “allowed” soldiers to return to their regiments to fight, whereas parole was a “gentleman’s agreement" to return home to sit out the war, which is what Lord did. 

 

Unfortunately, life back home in Somersworth life was not what Woodbury had left behind. Somersworth had depended upon the textile mills for work, but with the coming of the war, the flow of cotton from the south had ceased, and the Somersworth mills had not received any government contracts. Work was hard to find and the community Lord returned to was, like much of the country, suffering from economic hardship. Lord, like so many other men, spent some of his idle time in local saloons.

 

On one of these nights, in March of 1863, Lord began arguing with Lorenzo Hanscom, who was a known Confederate sympathizer. Their argument turned into a fight, and while Lord knocked Lorenzo to the ground, Hanscom responded with a knife, stabbing Lord in the stomach, thus ending the fight. While a local newspaper account on March 26, 1863 tells us Lorenzo was arrested, there is no further mention of what happened to him. Lord's wound, on the other hand, became infected, and he died from his wounds on March 20, 1863.

 

Woodbury Lord had done his duty by enlisting to serve his state and country at a time when armed conflict was unavoidable. He fought with honor, was wounded, and survived nearly a year in a Confederate prison, only to return home to be killed by a Rebel sympathizer in his own backyard. He was 23 years old at the time of his death.