Wicked Local
During the virtual meeting of the Concord Select Board Feb. 22, the Board unanimously approved the installation of the George W. Dugan tablet at the base of Concord's Civil War Monument.
According to Concord resident and historian Rick Frese, it will be embedded in the existing pavers and cobblestones.
Cemetery Supervisor Tish Hopkins and Frese have collaborated on this project, an initiative that dates back to Frese’s initial petition to the Select Board in August 2014.
Hopkins and the bronze company designed the tablet and Frese wrote the inscription.
Who is George Dugan?
Almost two years into the war, on Feb. 16, 1863, an advertisement appeared in the Boston Journal recruiting “good men of African descent” to join the newly formed 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first Black regiment in the Civil War, according to Frese. Four days later, a 44-year-old Concord farmer and widower, George Washington Dugan, traveled to the 54th’s recruiting station located at the corner of Cambridge and Russell streets across from where Government Center is located today.