US Navy 30-Pounder Parrott Rifles in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine
US Navy 30-Pounder Parrott Rifles Numbers 385 and 350 flank a monument in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine
Two US Navy 30-Pounder Parrott Rifles, Numbers 350 and 385, flank a monument in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
Many thanks to friend-of-the-page Lee James Thieman for sending these photos!
The two 30-Pounders are:
US Navy 30-Pounder Parrott Number 350 manufactured by West Point Foundry in 1864. Weight as manufactured is 3,470 pounds.
US Navy 30-Pounder Parrott Number 385 manufactured by West Point Foundry in 1864. Weight as manufactured is 3,460 pounds.
Number 385 has no known sea service. Number 350 was mounted aboard USS Yucca, a steamer purchased into service in 1864 which commissioned just days before the end of the American Civil War. She carried the 30-Pounder and a 12-Pounder boat howitzer. To quote her DANFS entry: “Yucca saw no combat in that or any other conflict. Her period of active service covered only three years, most of which she spent on the Gulf Station. By 1868, she had moved to Portsmouth, N.H., where she was placed in ordinary.”
The two 30-Pounders flank a monument dedicated “In Memory of the Soldiers and Sailors who Died that the Country Might Live, 1861-1865.” The monument was placed in 1893. A circa 1895 photo on the State of Maine’s website shows veterans posing around the monument.
According to Bureau of Ordnance records, the two 30-Pounders were donated by the Navy to the C.P. Chandler Post, Number 154, of the Grand Army of the Republic in August of 1902.
Photo of the Dover-Foxcroft Monument by Lee James Thieman
6th Maine Regiment Reunion circa 1895 - Maine.gov
Circa 1920 postcard showing the monument and the two 30-Pounders - Maine.gov
