Ronald White, guest author, describes how, in his final decades, Chamberlain served as the surveyor of the port in Portland, a position that allowed him to continue writing and speaking while undergoing repeated surgeries for his Petersburg wound. Even in

Ronald White, guest author, describes how, in his final decades, Chamberlain served as the surveyor of the port in Portland, a position that allowed him to continue writing and speaking while undergoing repeated surgeries for his Petersburg wound. Even in his 80s, his intellectual curiosity remained boundless; he traveled to Egypt and the Holy Land, reading the Bible in Greek and the Quran in Arabic each evening. He endured profound personal losses, including his wife Fanny and his brother Tom, yet he remained active in civic roles for the blind and Bible societies. Prevented by failing health from attending the 50th Gettysburg reunion in 1913, he died at home in 1914. He is widely remembered as the final casualty of the Civil War because his death was the direct result of the wound he received five decades earlier. He is buried in Brunswick's Pine Grove Cemetery near his beloved Bowdoin. On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (8)
1903