Civil War Identification Tag. Maine--Bethel. McClellan. Maier-Stahl 1A. Frank Needham, Company E, 27th Regiment, Maine Volunteers. Brass. Extremely Fine.
30 mm. Pierced for suspension. The back is inscribed FRANK NEEDHAM / CO. E. / 27TH.. REG. / ME. VOL. / BETHEL, ME. Frank E. Needham of Bethel, Maine, was born to Captain John Needham and Almira Bryant Mills on April 15, 1844. He enlisted on October 15, 1862, as a private and was mustered into E Company of the Maine 27th Infantry Regiment. Needham served for the required nine months with the 27th Infantry, whose primary assignment was protecting Washington, D.C. The 27th did little to no fighting during its nine-month tenure, yet lost 22 men due to accidents and disease. An interesting story surrounds the 27th Maine Infantry. Many of its members received the Medal of Honor for staying to defend Washington, D.C. On the request of President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sent letters on June 28, 1863 to the commanding officers of the 25th and 27th Maine regiments, asking for them to remain beyond their contracted service due to the invasion of Pennsylvania by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Declined first by the 25th Maine, the 27th was then asked, and over 300 men volunteered to remain beyond their service time in the defenses of Washington during what became the Gettysburg Campaign. When Colonel Wentworth delivered the message to Secretary Stanton, he was informed that, "Medals of Honor would be given to that portion of the regiment that volunteered to remain." With the battle soon over, they left Washington for home on July 4, reuniting with the rest of the regiment in Portland for their mustering out on July 17, 1863. Following the end of the War, when the promise to award medals to the volunteers was fulfilled, there was a lack of an agreeable list of those who stayed behind in Washington. This resulted in some 864 medals being made, and it was left up to Wentworth to distribute them to those members he remembered staying behind with him. These medals were later purged by Congress in 1917, as the actions of the regiment did not meet the criteria for receiving such a medal. After his discharge, Frank Needham returned to Bethel, Maine where he married Mary Abigail Stowell and worked in a variety of fields including railroad work and telegraphy. He died in Bethel at age 65 in late January 1910.