GRAY, Maine -- On a windswept hill ringed by rolling countryside is a graveyard, the resting place of 178 Union soldiers - and one lonely Confederate . . . [1]
With that opening, Elizabeth H. Holland began her 1981 New York Times article about the unknown soldier who lies buried in a small town cemetery in Cumberland County, Maine.[2**]
He is known only as "The Stranger".
The story begins with a death - but not his.
164 years ago, Charles H. Colley - the 28-year-old son Amos and Sarah Colley - was one of about 200 other men from Gray who enlisted to fight in the Civil War. [1**]
A year later - on September 20, 1862 - Lt. Colley, Company B, 10th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, died in an Alexandria, Virginia hospital from sepsis of a wound he suffered on August 9th at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. [3]
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| Currier and Ives depiction of the charge of Crawford’s Brigade and Colley's 10th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. (Image Source: Library of Congress.) |
His parents, notified by the War Department, sent money for their son's body to be embalmed and shipped home.
The casket arrived. Because Amos and Sarah wanted one last look at their son, the sealed box was opened. Instead of their son, they found a stranger - a young man in a Confederate uniform.
He may have had a similar name; he may have died near the Colley in that Alexandria hospital. But, whatever happened, he was there, hundreds of miles from Southern soil, and only God knew how far he was from his home.
The people of Grey, Maine had no responsibility for this young man's remains. They could have rejected the notion of burying him alongside their own. Instead, the town donated a plot and buried the unknown Confederate soldier in the Gray Village Cemetery.
After the mix-up, Colley’s body was supposedly identified and returned to Gray. [***] He was laid to rest in the same cemetery, about 100 feet from the unidentified soldier's resting place.[1]
After the war, a group of the townspeople felt the unknown Confederate soldier deserved more than just a barren grave. The Ladies of Gray took up a collection for a tombstone like the ones above their own dead boys.
But they did not have the stone inscribed with an impersonal "Unknown" or "Unidentified". They, instead, chose the term - "Stranger" - that carried a sense of connection, an implied possibility of an unfamiliar person who could become known. It made his marker a bit more personal.
Stranger
A soldier of the late war
died 1862
Erected by the Ladies of Gray
Since 1956, that white marble headstone was flanked each Memorial Day by an American flag on one side and on the other by the Confederacy's Stars and Bars - sent yearly by The Daughters of the Confederacy and other people who heard and were moved by the story. [1]
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray. [4**]
[***] Post Script: The story of the Confederate Stranger buried in Gray Village Cemetery has been told countless times, across many internet sites. The story usually ends with the return of Lt. Colley’s body some weeks later, to be buried nearby.
It seems that the Colley story may NOT have really ended the way.
New evidence casts doubt on whether Colley’s body ever made it back to his hometown, and it raises the possibility that there may actually be two mystery graves in Gray, Maine!
“The story that I learned growing up was that his body was eventually returned to Gray,” said Mark Faunce of Limington, who grew up in Gray and is Colley’s second cousin four times removed.Faunce uncovered the new evidence after seeing a photo of Colley’s grave on Facebook - but it was not in Gray, Maine!
The grave was in the Alexandria National Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia - where he died.
Faunce decided he'd better do some more family research.
What Faunce found surprised him.There was a record of Colley’s burial at the Alexandria National Cemetery – along with a picture of a headstone planted there. Records indicate that Colley has rested there since the day he died.
The new twist piqued the interest of Debi Curry, a city employee in Gray, Maine. She contacted the cemetery in Alexandria in an effort to clear up the discrepancy.
Cemetery officials searched for evidence that Colley was disinterred and sent home to Gray, but they found none. Curry now believes that Colley's body remains in Virginia.
Perhaps when the second casket arrived home for burial, it was never checked. Or, maybe the local headstone was erected as a memorial to the soldier who never came home, and the story morphed over the years to include a burial that never happened.
If so, who is buried in Colley’s grave in Gray?
Even more thought provoking, how many other Civil War soldier's graves throughout the North and South contain 'strangers'? Since families "paid" for embalming and shipping, how many of them were scammed and buried someone - or something - else?
Without further information, what truly happened - both with Colley and others - may never be known.
Of course, the headstone in Virginia could also mark an empty grave.
“One of them,” Faunce said, "is wrong." [5]
The Civil War was a patchwork of torn loyalties, whispered dreams, and strange events—those forgotten moments, people, and stories that shaped a nation. This was one of them.
Mac
═══ ⚔ 𝑻𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒔 ⚑ ═══
If you enjoyed this story, here's another strange [but gruesome] tale from the Civil War: "In Cold Blood"
Works Cited
[1] Holland, Elizabeth H. "The grave of an unknown soldier - May 25, 1981". UPI Archives - UPI.com. Retrieved January 13, 2025. (** A town of 1,500 people, Gray sent proportionately more of its native sons to fight in the Civil War than any other Maine community.)
[2] Bennett, Troy R. "Thanks to you, another Confederate gravesite is confirmed in Maine". Bangor Daily News - July 1, 2020. Retrieved January 16, 2025. (**Maine - a hotbed of abolitionism before and during the Civil War - actually has eight Confederates buried there - including a second alleged “unknown.")
[3] "The Ladies of Gray, Maine, Bury an Unknown Confederate Soldier". New England Historical Society.com. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
[4] Finch, Francis Miles (1867). "The Blue And The Gray". All Poetry.com. Retrieved January 16, 2025. (**These are the last six lines in the first stanza of Finch's poem - published in 1867. The poem is perhaps the most touching and expressive of all the "reconciliation poems" written after the war. It depicts the fallen soldiers from both sides as being united in death. It was inspired by this brief news item, which appeared in the New York Tribune: "The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.")
[5] Byrne, Matt. "Gray's Civil War Grave Mystery Grows". Portland Press Herald - April 20, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2025.
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