A 15-Year-Old Civil War Soldier

His Insanity was Inherited

Season Two of Company D is sponsored in part by:

Ep11: Granville M. Holt

Show Transcript

Two strangers came to Bath, Maine, in the summer of 1863 to complete a transaction.

One of them would go home. The other would go to war.

They managed their business through a broker, arranging for one of them to replace the other in the U.S. Army, a common practice during the American Civil War.

The final paperwork was completed at the provost marshal’s office in Bath, where the draft was administered and substitutes processed. In 1863, that office was run by Captain Samuel F. Hersey, a former Maine legislator who later served in Congress.

The man who was being replaced was Noah Mayo, a 31-year-old unmarried ship joiner from Bath, caring for his elderly parents. Drafted in July 1863, Mayo chose not to serve. Instead, he agreed to pay several hundred dollars—between $300 and $500—to have someone else take his place.

That someone was Granville Moses Holt.

Granville arrived in Bath with his father, Reverend Dudley B. Holt, a Methodist minister in Leeds, Maine. His father signed the necessary paperwork, endorsing his son and giving permission for his enlistment.

Granville passed his physical and was enlisted in the service. There was nothing unusual about the process. More than 100,000 men served as substitutes during the American Civil War. Thousands of them were from Maine.

There was just one problem.

Granville Holt was 15 years old. The legal minimum age for enlistment was eighteen. Older teenagers sometimes slipped through, but 15 was rare, making Granville one of the youngest Civil War soldiers in Maine history.

No one stopped it. The enlistment went through because Granville’s father signed a legal document attesting that his son was eighteen.

Granville Moses Holt joined the U.S. Army as a substitute and became a private in Company D of the Third Maine Infantry.

A boy soldier.

About to go to war.

INTRODUCTION

Hello, and welcome to Season Two of Company D, a narrative history podcast about the soldiers of Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment.

This is a history podcast about real people. Not the grand strategy of the Civil War, or the politics behind it—but the men and families who lived through it, and how the war shaped their lives.

Why Company D?

For me, it’s personal. My great-great-grandfather served as a corporal in Company D, and he left behind a diary of his experiences—one that has become the foundation of this podcast.

One regiment. One company. Countless stories.

I’m your host, George F. Snell III. Because two is a company and three is a podcast.

This is the story of Granville Moses Holt, one of the youngest Civil War soldiers in Maine history.

His life would begin with violence and end the same way.

Granville was raised in a family led by a devout Methodist preacher, moving from town to town across central Maine—North Paris, Poland, Monmouth, Leeds, North Auburn—never staying long before being uprooted again.

But the Holts carried something with them. They sometimes referred to it as melancholy or eccentric behavior.

Sometimes, it was something darker.

There had been suicides and attempts in the family, along with violence that was harder to explain.

Years later, when the family illness finally caught up with Granville, his wife would describe what happened in the simplest terms she could:

His insanity was inherited.

CHAPTER ONE: SON OF A PREACHER MAN

Granville Moses Holt was born on a farm in Norway, Maine, in 1848—the second of six children of Dudley B. Holt and his wife, Susan M. Ridlon.

He came from a family steeped in service.

His ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War. His grandfather, Darius Holt, was a veteran of the War of 1812. At the Battle of Stony Creek in Upper Canada, Darius was wounded in the head—likely by a bullet or shrapnel—and lived the rest of his life with a silver plate in his skull.

For his service, Darius received a land grant in Norway and built a farm in the northern part of town, in an area known as Fuller’s Corner. By the time Granville was a boy, the area was filled with Holt farms: his grandfather’s, his father’s, his uncles’.

His grandfather died in 1854. Granville was six years old.

That same year, his father left farming behind and entered the Methodist ministry. For the next decade, Dudley Holt rode the circuit across central Maine, taking two-year pastorates in towns like North Paris, Poland, Monmouth, Leeds, and North Auburn.

He preached discipline. In 1856, he wrote: “I have long been of the opinion that the strength of the church consists not in her numbers, nor her wealth, but in her purity.”

He was a firm believer in temperance, condemning alcohol as a force that destroyed families and reduced men to misery. In Mechanic Falls, he helped lead efforts to shut down taverns and ban the sale of liquor.

He preached the responsibility of parents to raise morally upright children. And like many Methodists in Maine, he was fervently anti-slavery. He demanded a great deal from his congregation… and from his family.

But despite his rigid moral code, Reverend Holt fell short in one important way.

Truthfulness.

CHAPTER TWO: OFF TO WAR, SON

When the Civil War began in 1861, the Holts were living in Leeds, Maine, where Reverend Dudley B. Holt served as pastor of the local Methodist church. Others in the family went to war.

Reverend Holt’s brother Thomas enlisted in 1861 with the 12th Maine Infantry. Another brother, Darius, followed in 1863, joining the 30th Maine. But Reverend Holt didn’t go with them.

He may have felt he had already served his country as a militia man during the Aroostook War in 1839, or that his absence would bring hardship to his wife and children. He was forty-three years old—still within the legal age—but his health was poor. Years of rheumatism and neuralgia had left him in constant pain.

“For ten years, I was unable to raise my right hand to the back of my head,” he later wrote. When the weather changed, his nerves and joints became so inflamed with pain that he couldn’t dress himself. At times, Reverend Holt relied on morphine injections to get through it.

He had his reasons for staying home. But he sent his sons.

In 1861, his oldest, James, enlisted in the 12th Maine Infantry. He was just 16, two years under the legal age. As he would later, Reverend Holt signed the consent form himself, stating that James was eighteen.

James went to war as a boy soldier. Two years later, Granville would follow him, one year younger than his brother.

By 1863, both of Reverend Holt’s oldest sons were in the army.

Teenagers, serving in a war that their father had avoided.

CHAPTER THREE: THE SICKNESS OF WAR

In 1863, Granville Holt was 15 years old, but stood 5 feet 8 inches tall. He had brown hair, hazel eyes, and a light complexion. He looked like a soldier, even though he was a schoolboy.

After enlisting as a substitute, he was sent to Portland, Maine, where he appeared on a roll of drafted men and substitutes on August 26, 1863. There, he was processed, equipped, and within weeks was in Virginia.

Granville was one of 42 new recruits who joined Company D on November 1, 1863. The average age of the men around him was 28. Nearly twice his age. These were not the volunteers of 1861. They were draftees and substitutes, men who had been compelled to serve or paid to take another’s place.

Men like John and Frank Shorey. Like Henry Huntress.

Granville was joining a hardened group of veterans—soldiers who four months earlier lost nearly one-third of their regiment at Gettysburg. Soldiers who often didn’t welcome the men sent to replace their fallen comrades. Even the young soldiers were no longer young. David Ring, who enlisted at 17, was now a sergeant at 19, and Charles F. Snell, who had joined at 18, was 20 and a corporal.

The fall of 1863 was a season of long, cold marches. At Mine Run on November 30, the Third Maine prepared for a frontal assault on Confederate fortifications. The attack was called off, but the regiment suffered 32 casualties.

By December, they settled into winter quarters at Brandy Station, Virginia. That’s when the war began to take a toll on Granville. By March, he was absent from the rolls, sick, and hospitalized.

He was suffering from orchitis, a painful inflammation often caused by infection.

His condition was transferred to Armory Square General Hospital in Washington, D.C., one of the Union Army’s largest and most advanced medical facilities.

Granville would never rejoin the Third Maine in the field. When the regiment’s term of service ended in 1864, Granville was transferred on paper to Company D of the Seventeenth Maine Infantry while still hospitalized.

During his long illness, he developed from typhoid fever, which progressed into pneumonia. Eventually, he was sent north to Cony General Hospital in Augusta, Maine.  He nearly a year, Granville Holt’s war was fought in a hospital bed, not on the battlefield.

He finally returned to duty on February 22, 1865, joining the Seventeenth Maine for the final months of the war. He returned as a corporal. Soon, he was promoted to sergeant, a boy who had barely seen combat now in charge of veterans much older than him.

In June, Granville was transferred to the First Maine Heavy Artillery, but soon reassigned to non-commissioned staff in Washington, D.C. There, he was promoted to Master Sergeant. He mustered out of service in September 1865.

He was just 17 years old.

CHAPTER FOUR: BROTHERS IN ARMS

Granville’s older brother James went to war before him. By the summer of 1862, he was stationed with the 12^th Maine Infantry Regiment in New Orleans and across Louisiana. In a letter to his nine-year-old sister, Annie, he sounded like a boy unaware of his circumstances.

“You mustn’t think I’ve forgotten you, dearest, for James will love his Annie best of all, and for proof of which, I send you this pretty picture.”

James sent her a map of New Orleans, marking the  U.S. Mint, where his regiment was stationed. He gave her updates on their uncles. Darius was well. Uncle Tom was recovering from an illness.

“My health,” he told her, “is tip-top.”

But in private, his disposition was more circumspect. “Feel bad,” he wrote in his diary in February of 1864. “If I was home now and knew all I now do, I would never enlist as I know I’m not fit to be a soldier.”

Days later, a man in his company died of measles. “Unlike us, he was prepared to die,” James wrote. “We all ought to learn from this how near is death, and the importance of preparation to meet our God. Yet we pass these things by unheeded.”

James faced his own death months later. On September 19, 1864, the 12^th Maine fought at the Battle of Winchester. Ordered forward as skirmishers, they drove enemy troops across an open field and into the woods. Then, without stopping, they fixed bayonets and charged.

In their haste, they exposed their left flank. They were caught in a crossfire of Rebel artillery and lost more than a quarter of the regiment. James was among the wounded. He was carried to a regimental hospital behind the front line, but the surgeons couldn’t save him.

His body was shipped north and buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Mechanic Falls.

He was just 18 years old.

CHAPTER FIVE: SWEET HOME CHICAGO

After the war, Granville returned to his father’s household, emptier now without his older brother, James.

Reverend Holt was serving as pastor in Poland, Maine. Granville tried to settle into life there, likely working as a laborer or helping his father at the church. At some point, he bought a small house in Canaan, Maine, perhaps hoping to start farming.

But in 1873, the house burned down in an accidental fire. The following year, at 26, he left Maine for Chicago.

The city was still recovering from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed 17,000 buildings. When Granville arrived in 1874, Chicago was rapidly rebuilding, with new construction everywhere. Brick and stone replacing wood, businesses returning in droves, and the population exploding.

Chicago was gritty, loud, and chaotic, but filled with opportunity.

Granville found work as a clerk and lived in a room on  Wabash Avenue in the heart of the city, likely in a boarding house with other young men flocking to Chicago.

But while Granville was building a new life in the Midwest, trouble found his family back in Maine. The Holts had settled in Mechanic Falls. Reverend Holt had left the ministry, briefly running a grocery store, before becoming an overseer at the local paper mill.

In the winter of 1876, a smallpox outbreak struck Mechanic Falls. Schools closed. Churches shut their doors. Red warning flags were tied to the front doors of homes where the sick resided. The streets were deserted. Even the church bells stopped ringing.

Twenty-nine cases of smallpox were reported. Town officials established a pest house to quarantine and care for the sick. Among the dead was Granville’s sister, Lizzie, a schoolteacher. Dead at 26.

CHAPTER SIX: THE WOMAN AVENGER

Granville met Charlotte W. Cushing in the early 1880s. She was unlike anyone he had ever known.

She was the daughter of a flamboyant steamboat captain from Boston who made his name running Confederate blockades during the war. Her father died of typhoid fever in 1862 when she was ten, leaving the family nearly destitute in New Orleans. After the war, they moved north to Illinois, where Charlotte and her brother kept the family afloat.

By the time she met Granville, Charlotte had already lived through more than most.

She had married in 1875, but left her husband five years later after discovering his affair.

Granville and Charlotte were married on April 12, 1882, in the living room of her family home on South Leavitt Street in Chicago. It was, by any measure, an unlikely match.

Granville was a large, stocky man, gruff and straightforward. He would later become the manager of the sporting goods department at Montgomery Ward & Company, where he bought fishing rods, hunting rifles, and other outdoor gear.

Charlotte was something else entirely.

Petite, sharp, and relentless, she became a leading advocate for women and children in Chicago. As the first agent and secretary of the Protective Agency for Women and Children, she helped hundreds of women navigate abusive marriages, exploitative labor, and a legal system stacked against them.

“The first day I went to a justice court I was horrified at the language heard there and made up my mind that I would never, if I could help it, permit a woman or girl to go into a court alone again,” she said in 1889.

The work made her a public figure, and a controversial one. In 1889, the agency handled 139 cases, including wage disputes, domestic violence, and fraud.

Not everyone saw her as a hero.

One client accused her of exploitation and theft, claiming Charlotte had taken her belongings and left her destitute. Charlotte denied the charges, insisting she had only tried to recover a debt. The controversy followed her—but so did the praise.

She moved in the same circles as Jane Addams, a radical social worker and women’s suffrage proponent who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to ever win the award.

She decided she could better help her clients as a lawyer. So, she studied law at Higgins and Parker’s law offices and passed the Illinois Bar on March 28, 1893. She opened her own law office in the Chicago Opera House.

She became a prolific public speaker, filling lecture halls in the city. Her speeches were described as “electric” and “spicy.”

While his wife made headlines, Granville faded into the background, focused on his career at Montgomery Ward. But he often attended her events, supporting her work, but preferring to stay out of the public eye.

They had no children, likely a consequence of Granville’s wartime illnesses, but they helped raise Charlotte’s niece and nephew after her sister’s death in 1897.

For a time, the marriage worked.

But then Granville began to change. Slowly at first, and then in a sudden burst of violence that would end their relationship forever.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE LEAD UP

In the years before the incident, Charlotte found herself drawn again and again to the same kinds of cases: Violence and madness.

One of them started with a divorce.

In 1888, a sensational divorce case unfolded in Chicago between millionaire banker Stephen W. Rawson and his wife, America L. Rawson. The proceedings were filled with accusations of infidelity and attempts to destroy Mrs. Rawson’s reputation.

On the morning of June 1, Mrs. Rawson lost control. As the courtroom opened, she pulled out a revolver and started firing at her husband’s lawyer, Henry C. Whitney. Whitney dove under a desk, but she was hit twice. He survived, and the case became a national sensation.

Charlotte and the PAWC stepped in to assist Mrs. Rawson at her 1889 trial for shooting Whitney. Mrs. Rawson’s defense argued she had been “temporarily insane” during the shooting. The jury agreed, and she was acquitted.

Not long after, Charlotte was part of an investigation into the Dunning Poorhouse and Insane Asylum and the treatment of patients, particularly women and children.

The investigation revealed overcrowded wards infested with vermin and widespread corruption and mismanagement. The judge overseeing the case called Dunning “a tomb for the living.”

Charlotte helped expose the neglect and abuse and ushered in much-needed reforms. In her work, Charlotte came face to face with violence and insanity and the harm they caused when they took hold.

And then she began to see it at home. In the late 1890s, Charlotte noticed changes in Granville. Her once gregarious and big-hearted husband started to withdraw. He fell into long, dark depressions that could last for days. And then, just as suddenly, he would seem fine. She began to believe he would recover.

Until he didn’t.

CHAPTER EIGHT: ALL IN THE FAMILY

The darkness in the Holt family didn’t begin with Granville. It had been there for years.

During the war, his cousin, Charles, just 16, became so distraught at being kept from enlisting that he tried to cut his own throat. When that failed, he tried to drown himself in a river. Charles spent time in an insane asylum.

In 1879, Granville’s uncle Thomas S. Holt wandered from home during one of his spells. He was found drowned in a canal in Mechanic Falls. The family believed it was a suicide.

Another cousin, Oliver, vanished for days after being admitted to a hospital in Portland. When he was found, he had no memory of where he had been. His doctor said he was suffering from a mental disorder.

Then in 1894, Granville’s sister, Annie, went into the family barn, tied a rope around a beam, and hanged herself. She was 39 years old.

The pattern was becoming difficult to ignore, and then a case came that would bring it all into the open.

On May 21, 1896, Granville’s cousin, Joseph Holt, a mill worker in Mechanic Falls, stabbed his eight-month-old baby to death and then tried to kill himself by slashing his own throat. He lived.

Joseph’s murder trial became a sensation across New England. Newspapers called it  “HOLT’S FEARFUL DEED.” Locals called him Crazy Joe. His defense argued that insanity ran in the Holt family—and had for generations.

The pattern of Holt family eccentricities, suicides, and attempted suicides was repeatedly brought up in court. Joseph was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to ten years in state prison.

Not long after, people began to notice changes in Granville. His bosses at Montgomery Ward were so concerned about what they saw that they recommended Granville take an extended vacation away from work.

On the night of June 20, 1899, Granville left work and told his co-workers that he would be gone for two weeks. When he got home, he was agitated. He told Charlotte he was a “sinner” for falsifying their tax returns, and they both should be punished.

Granville pulled out a revolver, but Charlotte was able to take it from him. He seemed to calm down, but then rushed into the bedroom to pack. Charlotte followed him, and somehow he managed to get a hold of the gun again.

But this time, he didn’t threaten Charlotte. He pressed the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger.

Charlotte screamed and fainted in the next room, where neighbors found her.

Granville Moses Holt was dead. The boy soldier of Company D was 51. The darkness that had stalked his family over the years had finally come for him, too.

CHAPTER NINE: RECOVERY

Her husband’s suicide caused Charlotte to retreat from the public eye. As the years passed, she became less active in the PAWC and avoided the limelight. Her fire and passion were tempered by the death of Granville.

Charlotte didn’t blame Granville for what happened to him. She blamed his death on the insanity he inherited from his family.

Charlotte decided she could no longer remain in Chicago. She settled her affairs, sold her house, and moved to Los Angeles in 1902.

She continued her lectures and even remarried, though the marriage was brief and ended in separation. She lived with her niece and nephew for a time. She became more active later in life, holding speeches and lectures. She ended up collecting a widow’s pension under Granville’s name.

Charlotte died in 1931 at age 79. By then, much of her pioneering work—her advocacy, her cases, her voice—had faded from memory. She had spent her life confronting violence, injustice, and insanity in the lives of others.

In the end, it found its way into her home.

This episode of Company D deals with mental illness and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, you’re not alone. Help is available. In the United States, you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, to speak with someone right now. If you’re outside the U.S., please check your local resources.

This episode of Company D was made possible with the generous help of Robert Koss and Karyn Brown, who shared documents and other Holt family history with us.

We also want to take a moment to thank our Patron Sponsors, whose support has helped make this season of Company D possible. A special acknowledgment goes out to: Pritesh Ghandi, Trapper Markelz, Jeff Parent, Alex Mueller, Michael Scelfo, Erik Snell, Andy Polansky, Mike McGrail, Scott O’Donnell, Lisa Furnald, Jay Hanley, Art Trapotsis, and Jeff Govoni.

You can find photographs, maps, images, and rare historical documents related to this episode on our website: companydpodcast.com. You can also find bonus material and other information about Company D on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, YouTube, and TikTok. If you have questions or comments about the show, you can reach us at companydpodcast (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

Join us again soon for another episode of Company D.

I’m your host, George F. Snell III. Thank you for listening, and remember: Women’s rights are human rights.

(The photographs of the Holt family are courtesy of the private family collections of Robert Koss and Karyn Brown).