Marcello B Milliken was born in Maine in 1840. He evidently came to Minnesota with his parents, Isaac and Betsy. Their farm was located in Milton township, Dodge County. The 1860 Agricultural Census showed that they had 35 improved acres and 140 unimproved acres. They had 2 horses, 2 milk cows, 3 beef cattle and 13 pigs. Their grain was 200 bushels of wheat, 150 of rye and 300 bushels of corn. The cash value was $1000. His family also included Charles (born in 1838), George (born in 1842 and who enlisted in Company I, First Minnesota) and Clifton (born in 1845). By 1860, Marcello had left the family and was working as a farm hand on William Stoddard's farm in Wilson township, Winona County. With the first call to arms Marcello, age 21, and his brother, George, age 19, enlisted in the First Minnesota Infantry on Apr 29, 1861. Marcello entered Company F while George ended up in Company I. According to James Wright, who served as the 1st Sergeant in Company F, Marcello quickly became one of "the large men of the regiment and was well known by the entire regiment." He acquired the nickname of "Dixie" and answered to that as easily as Marcello. In 1911, Wright wrote about the life of the men of Company F, during the war, and told a wonderful story about Marcello. "Illustrative of life in front of Yorktown, I will relate an incident of one of the 'boys in blue' of Company F who was familiarly known as Dixie. The regiment had spent the night on picket; it had rained incessantly; and we were wet to the skin and chilled to the bone. When relieved in the morning, we had returned to our comfortless camp at the rear-presenting much of the appearance and about as animated as a lot of rained-on fowls. Like all perpetually-hungry soldiers, we at once made preparations for cooking and devouring our rations." "Dixie was observed sitting with his back against an old pine stump, his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands. He was gazing with a woebegone expression at his haversack, which lay open between his feet, disclosing its contents in anything but a desirable condition to a hungry man. The water had in some way gotten into his rations. The hardtack was softened by the moisture; the coffee, which had been in an envelope, was loose and adhering to the pork and wet crackers; while sugar and salt had experienced dissolution and vanished. Dixie's 'bonnie suit of blue' was the worse for wear, wet and stained with mud from the trenches, while his face bore evidence of fatigue and suffering." "What is the matter, Dixie?" ask a sergeant "I - I wish I was in my father's barn," said Dixie, with tears in his eyes and voice. "Well suppose you were, what then?" "I'd go to the house darned quick," replied Dixie with a mournful smile and a quivering lip. "I relate this incident with no other emotion than those of deep respect for his genuine human feelings, so quaintly expressed. The writer himself suffering too keenly from homesickness and the discomforts of the situation to do otherwise than sympathize with his discouraged mood. Many a man who was as brave as a lion in battle-as he stood by a smokey campfire of wet, green pine wood that sizzled and sputtered in the falling rain; or wet, cold, tired and hungry, as he spread his blanket on the damp ground-longed for the accommodations of his father's barn, whether he expressed his feelings in words or not. Let no one think of Dixie as a puerile specimen of a soldier boy. He was not. On the contrary, he was a tall, handsome fellow, and usually in excellent spirits. He proved his soldierly qualities on all of the Penninsula battlefields and met a gallant death at Antietam in Maryland." Later in life, when Pvt Edwin Season, of Co F, was then 84, he recalled: "On the morning of the seventeenth [October17, 1862] we waded the Antietam River getting our feet wet, later marching to the front. We passed throgh where there were dead and wounded. In passing an open wood we met the enemy. There was a battery on a hill to the right of us [that] began firing. We were ordered to fall back. We were all scattered and it was every man for himself. As I passed over a plowed field going up a steep hill, M. B. Milican was ahead of me. He was shot. The balls were hitting all around us. The regiment was soon together again falling farther back." Late in his life, Dan Bond recalled Marcello's death in a slightly different way saying that, at the battle of Antietam, Marcello was in the front ranks when the First Minnesota was attacked. The regiment fell back to a fence and turned to fire on the rebels. When the rebels fired back, Marcello was killed. He was left on the field, by his comrades, but they returned several days later to bury him. His body was later interred in the Antietam National Cemetery, Section 5, Lot A, Grave 5. His brother, George, survived the battle at Antietam, but lost a leg at Gettysburg and was subsequently discharged for disability. Sources: 1857 Mn census; MHS No More Gallant a Deed, James Wright, Minn Hist Soc, 2001, p 113-114. History of Company F, James Wright, unpublished transcript, p 357. 1860 MN census; MHS Recollections of Edwin Season, March 16, 1922. Recollections of Dan Bond; MHS Family Tree Maker, CD351, Roll of Honor:Civil War Union Soldiers, Volume XV. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
