Sumner Paine Commissioned as Second Lieutenant

Thursday, April 23, 1863

Eighteen-year old Sumner Paine, great-grandson of Declaration of Independence signer Robert Treat Paine and cousin of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was commissioned as a second lieutenant from civilian life.¹

References:
¹Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2005), 228. George A. Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1861 - 1865 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1906), 235.