The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

The three articles that comprise this book tell different stories about the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, which played an important role as an arms manufacturer during the American Civil War.  Together, they make up a kind of composite of the Northern Civil War experience in the small, but dynamic, universe of a factory town.  We meet Nathan P. Ames and James T. Ames, brothers who founded the firm, the younger burdened with the responsibility to continue the company after the tragic and grisly death of the older brother.

We meet two workers in the factory, one of whom, Charles Tracy, was a machinist who left his position to join the army, and came home without a leg—and was awarded the Medal of Honor.  He was cared for by Clara Barton, and comforted by President Abraham Lincoln in the hospital ward.  The other man, Melzar Mosman, just a boy of nineteen, worked in the foundry department of the factory, forging canon.  He also left to join the army, but after the war would become celebrated for forging bronze statuary, including a number of Civil War monuments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqueline T. Lynch
• Release date: Sep 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497708419

Jacqueline T. Lynch

Jacqueline T. Lynch has published articles and short fiction in regional and national publications, several plays, some award winners, one of which has been translated into Dutch and produced in the Netherlands.   Her several books, fiction and nonfiction, are available in eBook and print online.  She has recently published the first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth – Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.  She writes a syndicated newspaper column on classic films: Silver Screen, Golden Years, and also writes three blogs: Another Old Movie Blog (http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com)  A blog on classic films. New England Travels (http://newenglandtravels.blogspot.com)  A blog on historical and cultural sites in New England. Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. (http://annblythactresssingerstar.blogspot.com) website: www.JacquelineTLynch.com Etsy shop: LynchTwinsPublishing --  https://www.etsy.com/shop/LynchTwinsPublishing?ref=search_shop_redirect

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Top cover photos by J.T. Lynch, bottom cover photo from the Edward Bellamy Memorial Association collection.

To Mrs. Joyce Caldwell, Mr. Walter Stachura, Mr. Stephen R. Jendrysik, and in memory of

Mrs. Phyllis E. Goodrich, all former teachers at Chicopee Comprehensive High School,

Chicopee, Massachusetts, who helped me to become a writer.

FOREWORD

The three articles that comprise this book tell different stories about the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, which played an important role as an arms manufacturer during the American Civil War.  Together, they make up a kind of composite of the Northern Civil War experience in the small, but dynamic, universe of a factory town.  We meet Nathan P. Ames and James T. Ames, brothers who founded the firm, the younger burdened with the responsibility to continue the company after the tragic and grisly death of the older brother.

We meet two workers in the factory, one of whom, Charles Tracy, was a machinist who left his position to join the army, and came home without a leg—and was awarded the Medal of Honor.  He was cared for by Clara Barton, and comforted by President Abraham Lincoln on a visit to the hospital ward.  The other man, Melzar Mosman, just a boy of nineteen, worked in the foundry department forging canon.  He also left to join the army, but after the war would become celebrated for forging bronze statuary, including a number of Civil War monuments.

We meet the townspeople of Chicopee, the minister who hid slaves on the local Underground Railroad, and the high school principal, who purchased a military substitute to fight in his place.  Later, he would become Governor of Massachusetts and the successful defense lawyer of the infamous Lizzie Borden.

I’m currently working on a full-length book about Melzar Mosman and his work.  The Ames Company chapter and the short chapter here on Mosman were both previously published in my collection of essays on New England history titled, States of Mind: New England.  An earlier version of the Ames Company chapter was also previously published in North and South Magazine, June 2006.  Material from first chapter, A Trio of Union Men from the Ames Company, was originally presented in a talk before the Chicopee Historical Society.

A TRIO OF UNION MEN FROM THE AMES COMPANY

Three men, who may not have met each other, all worked at the same factory in the North during the Civil War.  One was a machinist, who left to join the army and would return an amputee—and a hero.  One was an apprentice in the foundry division, the son of a noted craftsman in that factory.  He worked under his father’s supervision, but he also quit his job to join the army.  After the war, his skill as a craftsman and a sculptor far surpassed his father’s reputation, and he would strike out and found his own successful company.

The third man owned the factory.  He was James Tyler Ames, of the Ames Manufacturing Company, that made cannon, small arms, and was most famous for the Ames Sword.  The town was Chicopee, Massachusetts, and the lives and adventures of these three men, the coincidences and ironies that linked them, would tell the northern Civil War experience in microcosm. 

The first two men were Charles Tracy, the machinist who would fight in many major Civil War battles, whose military career would be ended by amputation at City Point Hospital, Virginia, during the Siege of Petersburg.  Both Clara Barton and President Abraham Lincoln sought to console and cheer him at his bedside.  He would later be awarded the Medal of Honor.

The second man was Melzar Mosman, the nineteen-year-old boy who left his father’s bronze foundry department at the Ames Company—where they were busy forging cannon—to go for a soldier.  Mosman later went on to become famous in his field as a sculptor and castor of bronze statuary which he learned at his father’s knee, so to speak, at the Ames Company.

Mr. Tracy also worked for a time at the