05/25/2026
On Memorial Day. . . We honor all those who have died serving in the U. S. military
Lt. Huntington Frothingham Wolcott-One man lost in the Civil War
“Dear Mama, you must let me go.” These were the words that Huntington Frothingham Wolcott wrote to his stepmother when he asked to join the Union Army. Although his family may have tried to dissuade him, Wolcott enlisted in 1865 at age nineteen and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry.
Born in 1846 to J. Huntington Wolcott and Cornelia Frothingham, he split his childhood between Boston and Milton, living at the family’s city home and country estate near the Blue Hills. His father had made a fortune in Massachusetts textile mills, and many noted the contrast between Wolcott’s privileged background and the soldier’s life he chose.
By early March, his regiment was engaged in heavy fighting with General Philip Sheridan’s cavalry in Virginia, helping force Confederate troops from Petersburg and Richmond, pursuing Robert E. Lee, and witnessing the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.
In May, Wolcott, his regiment, and 80,000 Union soldiers marched in Washington, DC, in the Grand Parade before cheering crowds, knowing they would soon be discharged and returned home. The next day, Wolcott fell ill with malarial fever, likely contracted while fighting in Virginia’s tidewater swamps. He was taken home to Milton, where he died on June 9, 1865.
Wolcott was one of many Union soldiers—and of many others throughout our history—whose fate is summed up by the words on his gravestone at Mount Auburn Cemetery: “He died for his country.”
Image: Lt. Huntington Frothingham Wolcott by William Morris Hunt, 1867
Image Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
