Published by the Memorial association, Boston, 1906. Owner inscription, front page, in ink: “Nat^l [?] Wales / 1^st Sergeant, Co. “G”/ (Color Company)/ 24^th Mass. Infantry / Major Commdg. / 35^th Mass. Infantry / 1^st Div. 9^th Army A.Corps.” 61 pp., frontispiece. In brown lea., 6.75” x 9.5, marbled eps, raised bands, gilt cover lettering. Exhibits light wear at the extremities, and along spine. Else GV.

A resident of Dorchester, MA, 20 year-old Nathaniel Wales enlisted as 1^st Sergeant and was mustered into Co. “G”, 24^th Mass. Infantry, 9/12/1861. Discharged for promotion he was commissioned into the 32^nd Mass, 7/16/1862, to the 32^nd Mass., and transferred into Field & Staff, 35^th Mass. Infantry, 8/21/ 1862. He was WIA at Antietam, 9/17/1862, and captured near Fauquier White Sulfur Springs, VA. Paroled and exchanged, 2/21/1863, he returned to duty. Along the way he was promoted 1^st Lieut., 7/12/1862 (As of Co. A. 32^nd MA Inf.), then to Adjutant, Field and Staff, 35^th MA Infantry. Then to Major,4/25/ 1863, Lieut. Col. by Brevet, 3/13/1865, and to Col. by Brevet, 3/13/1865.

Serving as 32nd Mass, “A” Company commander, Wales was wounded at Antietam, after which this regiment participated in all the major campaigns and battles of the Army of the Potomac, including Gettysburg.  During service it lost 144 men killed or mortally wounded and 146 by disease for a total of 289.

Wales transferred to 35^th MA Field & staff shortly before the unit was ordered West, participating in the Siege of Vicksburg & Jackson, MI, and the Siege of Knoxville, TN in the fall of 1863. After which the regiment returned east, to engage in Grant’s Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg. Following the Grand Review it was mustered out, June 27, 1863. During service it lost 139 men killed or mortally wounded, and 134 by disease for a total of 249.

General Thomas G. Stevenson was a pre-war Massachusetts militia commander wo raised the 24^th Massachusetts Infantry, which was attached to Burnside’s 1862 Carolina expedition. Remaining in the in the Southeastern theater he was present at the initial reduction of Morris Island, SC. Assigned to command a division of Burnsides 9^th Corps during the initial phases of Grant’s 1864 “Overland” campaign, on the morning of May 10, 1864, at the Wilderness, Stevenson was killed by a sharpshooter.

Excellent memento of Stevenson, ID’D to an exemplary young Massachusetts soldier officer, a Color sergeant who rose from color sergeant to regimental commanding major and would receive a brevet to colonel by age 25.  [JP/LD][ph:L]

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