Maine Troops at Camp Cameron

Early in my research I read about how busy the Boston area was with troop movements. I think it was in the book "Hardtack and Coffee." It mentioned how in the early days of the war, when Washington was desperate for troops it seemed like you could see troops in Boston every day. First were the troops who were training in the area, secondly were the troops marching into Boston to take either a train or a steamer south. The author mentioned how this was not just Massachusetts troops but how troops from northern New England would often take a train into Boston and need to either transfer to another train in the city or a ship in the harbor. This made me think that not all the troops might be able to schedule that on the same day and some may have slept at Camp Cameron. I quickly found out of state troops staying at Faneuil Hall or on Boston Common. I knew Faneuil Hall was often used by local troops and could run out of room. Boston Common is much bigger but what if they arrived on a day with three feet of snow on the ground or below zero temperatures. Camp Cameron and Camp Meigs seemed like the most likely places to turn to. It took a long time but I have found one time when this happened.
According to the Dec. 18, 1861 Boston Evening Transcript 221 recruits from the state of Maine spent the night at Camp Cameron. They shared the camp with the Mass. 28th, Co H of the 29th and Co. E of the 32nd under the command of Capt. Brady.
Since the Maine troops consisted of 99 men from the Maine 2nd,  96 from the 5th, and 19 from the 6th they most likely were replacement troops for those regiments. Since these numbers do not add up to 211 and the next evenings paper reports that Capt. Brady arrived in New York with 250 men I would guess that some rounding may have happened to arrive at a nice round 250 but that at least six more men from other regiments or officers also were present.

Dan Sullivan