BYFIELD — The Museum of Old Newbury presents “Mementos of War: Civil War Captain William White Dorr Remembered” on Thursday at The Governor’s Academy.
The program, featuring four guest speakers and a first-time public display of Civil War era artifacts, begins at 7 p.m. in the Frost Building.
The display includes a collection of letters and and other memorabilia from a Salisbury native, the Rev. Benjamin Dorr, and his eldest son, Civil War Capt. William White Dorr.
The historic items were discovered 25 years ago in an archival storage room at the academy, which is co-sponsoring the program. The collection also includes personal and military keepsakes, battlefield sketches, botanical mementos and images.
Benjamin Dorr served during the Civil War as rector of Philadelphia’s Christ Church, known as “The Nation’s Church.” William White Dorr was a Union soldier killed at Spotsylvania.
The exhibit also features pieces of the captain’s uniform and soldier’s kit, and assorted other items belonging to Benjamin Dorr and his wife, Esther Kettell Odin Dorr.
The guest speakers include Charles E. Dorr of Madison, Georgia, who descends from Benjamin Dorr’s youngest son and whose benefaction to the academy funded the preservation of its Dorr Collection.
The other speakers are former Maine state Sen. Everett “Brownie” Carson, who descended from one of Benjamin Dorr’s daughters; Sharon Slater, a historian and archivist at the academy; and Bill Quigley, an academy historian who recovered what one reviewer describes as “an unknown but riveting story of the Civil War” – the story told in his book “Pure Heart: The Faith of a Father and Son in the War for a More Perfect Union” (Kent State University Press, 2016).
Registration for this free in-person event is required at www.NewburyHistory.org. Light refreshments will be served, and parking will be available across the road.
