Comrade Fletcher was a native of Augusta, Maine, and was at the time of his death 50 years old. When 22 years of age, he enlisted as a musician in Col. O. O. Howard’s Third Main Regiment, and received his disability by overwork on his instrument, while marching through Baltimore in May, 1861. Col. Howard ordered the band to play with full strength of wind, and the two mile’s march between the depots and through the mobs, with the consequent excitement, occasioned a tedious and painful difficulty, through which he has lived and toiled for bread ever since. About two years ago he was finally granted a small pension, for which the writer made application for him in the year 1878. This had lightened his burdens in a small degree, but he has received his final discharge and gone to the general roll call above, whither the old veterans are rapidly marching. In 1876, he and his wife made professions of religion, and hand in hand entered into full membership in the Baptist Church of Blair of which he has been, up to the time of his death, a steady, faithful and consistent member. He leaves a wife and three children, two daughters and a son, to mourn his loss. He will be buried Sunday from the house at 11 o’clock by the Masonic Fraternity of which he was a member.

~~~Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library~~~