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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Tombstone Tuesday ~ James Franklin McQuesten

 This gravestone was photographed at the Litchfield, New Hampshire Presbyterian Church cemetery.

McQUESTEN

James F. McQuesten
Native of Litchfield, NH
and Capt. in the US Army,
born 1835
Graduated West Point 1861
Fell at the Battle of Winchester,
 Sept. 19, 1864



You can see in the photograph of the back of the church, when an addition was built onto the building, the sidewalk to the rear door had to snake around this obelisk to Captain James Frankin McQuesten.    He was the son of Henry McQuesten (1804 - 1861) and Elizabeth Wingate Chase (1801 - 1886).  James was married to Marcia McQuesten, the daughter of Edward McQuesten and Harriet Colby.

James entered the US Military Academy at West Point in 1855.  He was a member of the class of 1861.  This year there were two classes, one in May and one in June because Lincoln needed officers for the Civil War.  This class year included General George Armstrong Custer and many civil war officers for the North and for the South.  You can read about this remarkable group of young men in the book The Class of 1861: Custer, Ames and Their Classmates after West Point, by Ralph Kirshner,  Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo


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