William Stringer
William Stringer was born about April 1800. His gravestone at South Carver gives his age at death as seventy-eight years and six months. His memorial gives his birthplace as Kingston upon Hull, the port city on the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. He married Elizabeth Ladner, whose memorial gives her birthplace as Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The couple raised a large family on the island. Their children, as their memorials give them, were William H., born about 1824, Louisa Matilda, James Henry, born 28 September 1833, Archibald, born about 1836, Elizabeth Jane, Sophia Adeline, Joseph Francis, born 22 May 1841, John Andrew, Edmond William, born 10 March 1845, Mary Ann, John T., born 29 April 1850, and Letitia. A family account gives October 1854 as the year William and Elizabeth brought seven of their children down from Prince Edward Island to Massachusetts. They settled at South Carver, the cranberry and iron-furnace town in Plymouth County, north of Wareham.
When the Civil War began in April 1861, James and Joseph were among the Carver men who answered Lincoln's first call. They went out with Company K of the 3d Massachusetts militia, the old Carver company, for three months of duty at Fortress Monroe and Hampton in Virginia, and came home in July. That autumn both enlisted for three years in Company C of the 18th Massachusetts Infantry. Their brother Archibald, called Archy, joined Company G of the same regiment from Wareham. By the next year a fourth son, John A., was serving nine months in Company B of the 3d.
The 18th went to Virginia with the Army of the Potomac. In the spring of 1862 it lay before Yorktown, where the Union army besieged the Confederate lines on the Peninsula. James, a corporal, died at Camp Winfield Scott before Yorktown on 29 April 1862, of typhoid fever. He was twenty-eight. His body was sent home to Carver and buried there. His stone gives his parents' names: "Died at Yorktown VA serving his Country April 29, 1862: JAMES H. son of William & Elizabeth STRINGER Aged 28 yrs. 7 m's & 1 d's."
Four months later the regiment fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run, near Manassas in northern Virginia, a heavy Union defeat at the end of August 1862. Joseph and Archy were both killed there. Company C went into the fight with thirty-seven men, left the field with fourteen and came back to camp with ten. Its orderly sergeant, Bartlett Shaw of Carver, was killed in the same fight. Of the twenty-one Carver men who died in the war, five died at Second Bull Run.
On 13 September the Middleboro Gazette printed the 18th's losses, with "Archy Stringer, Wareham" and "Corporal Joseph Stringer" among the killed. Its Carver column said the town had "suffered terribly in the late battles." On Sunday 2 November the family held the funeral of the two brothers at the Methodist Church in Carver, and the church was full. In April 1863 the paper printed a ballad on the three brothers, written by John Maxim, who had fought in their company and been found wounded on the field the morning after the battle. It ends with a verse to William and Elizabeth themselves.
In December 1863 their son Edmond William married Victoria Josephine Westgate at South Carver. On 23 June 1865, two months after the war ended, their youngest son, John T., died at South Carver at fifteen.
William died on 31 October 1878, aged seventy-eight years and six months. He is buried at Union Cemetery in South Carver, near his son James. Elizabeth outlived him by four years.
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Cite: Heirology, "William Stringer (1800-1878)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-stringer-1800-1878-e5949d.