Henry Clay Henries was born on May 8, 1820, in Maine. He married Abbie A. Paine on November 7, 1842, and they had at least two children: Adelade, born around 1844; Emma, born on May 21, 1849. They lived in Groton, Massachusetts, and Henries worked as a trader. By 1850, he owned $2,000 of real estate. They moved to Bangor, Maine, in the 1850s, and he worked as a milliner and fancy goods merchant there. He took out a $2,000 mortgage for a storefront in 1857. He supported the Whig Party, and he attended the party’s county convention in 1854. They probably moved to Lincoln, Maine, in the late 1850s, and he worked as a Methodist minister there. By 1860, he owned $3,000 of real estate and $1,000 of personal property.  

 

In April 1861, he delivered a speech at a “Great Union Meeting.” The attendees “hoisted the stars and stripes amidst great enthusiasm, music…and the ringing of the church bells. The Douglas Democratic and the Republican flags, used in the last campaign, were thrown out together upon the same flagstaff.” In September 1861, he received a commission as a chaplain in the 8^th Maine Infantry. He resigned in November 1861 “on account of ill health,” but he returned to the Union army as a hospital chaplain in early 1862. He was assigned to the general hospital in Annapolis, Maryland, and he helped organize a “library for sick soldiers” there. He also organized debating clubs and religious societies at the hospital. A contemporary writer described him as a “good, large-hearted Methodist” and an “active, energetic man.”

 

He fell ill in early 1865, and he died of typhoid fever in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 30, 1865.

 

Image: Henry C. Henries (J. W. Hurn, photographer, Hospital Chaplain Henry Clay Henries, 8th Maine Infantry Regiment and U.S. Volunteers Infantry Regiment in uniform / J. W. Hurn, No. Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States, available from https://www.loc.gov/item/2021630842)

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