Company D
Company D brings the American Civil War to life through the eyes of citizen-soldiers. One Regiment. One Company. Countless stories of courage, sacrifice, and betrayal—exposing the human toll of a war that transformed the United States.
Episodes
Before Season Two begins, a quick update on the origins of Company D and what comes next.
To help support research, archival work, and production for the new season, we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign. If you’d like to help bring more of these forgotten Civil War stories to life:
One Regiment. One Company. Countless Stories.
On the rainy evening of September 27, 1882, an elderly miser named Joseph H. Higgins was ambushed at the doorway to his isolated cabin in Bath, Maine. He was robbed and left for dead, lingering several days before succumbing. His murder remains unsolved. In our final episode of Season One, Company D uses modern technology to try to do the impossible: solve a 143-year-old murder mystery.
A cantankerous old man, rumored to be a wealthy miser, and who has strained relations with his dysfunctional family, is found battered and bloody on the floor of his isolated house in Bath, Maine. The old man’s wallet is missing, his locked valise is opened and empty, and the premises have been cleared of all the cash he allegedly hoarded inside. What happened to Corporal Joseph Emery Purrington’s elderly father on the rai...
Josiah A. Temple became a substitute for Captain William Watson of Company D after he quit service and was then drafted. Watson paid Temple to take his place. Temple joined the Seventeenth Maine Infantry and set out on a life filled with contradictions. He was a lawyer who defrauded his clients. He was a politician who lied. He was a moral reformer accused of abusing women. Temple was a troubled personality, losing nearly ...
Josiah Temple became the paid substitute for former Company D Captain William Watson. Taking money to fight for another man became symbolic of the life Temple would lead. He became a lawyer, politician, and temperance advocate, but beneath the surface, he was a con man and a crook. He was forced to move repeatedly as his legal and ethical lapses hounded him, until he ended up in Minnesota as a candidate for the state Supre...
More than 700,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. This episode follows how the death of a single soldier, Private Gustavus Pratt, altered the course of one family: the Pratts of Richmond, Maine.
It is the story of a grief-stricken father marching straight into disaster, a widow who slips into a life of lies and betrayal, and a younger brother’s brutal path toward redemption.
Private Gustavus Pratt died of typhoid fever on June 25, 1862. He was 32 years old. His death did not end with him.
It tore a hole through his family, through the mind of his wife, the faith of his father, and the life of his brother. “The Awful Hole Left by Gustavus Pratt” is the story of how the loss of one ordinary soldier during the American Civil War set off a chain reaction of grief, madness, and ruin within a single ...
They were teenagers when they enlisted, young soldiers whose ambition and courage propelled them into the leadership ranks of Company D as the American Civil War consumed older men around them. Jeremiah Wakefield and David Ring rose together, shared similar family histories, and committed to three more years of service. But in May 1864, during the savage fighting at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, their paths diverged: on...
More than one in five Civil War soldiers were teenagers. In Company D, two of them, 18-year-old David Ring and 19-year-old Jeremiah Wakefield, rose quickly through the ranks on ambition and grit. But the war would claim one before he ever saw twenty-one. The full episode premieres on December 17.
On July 4, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee vanished from the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland. No discharge. No death record. No trace. His disappearance shattered his family: his wife, Cornelia, and their infant daughter slid into poverty, denied a widow’s pension because no one could prove Leonard was gone. More than 163 years later, this episode of Company D follows the trail he left behind and uncovers the my...
On May 5, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee checked into U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, sick but expected to recover. Two months later, after writing his wife on July 4, he vanished. No death record. No discharge. No trace. Ep06 — “Leonard Peaslee Is Gone” follows the 163-year mystery of a Union private who simply disappeared. And maybe, just maybe, we find him. The full episode premieres on December 3.
Shot four times in battle, Henry H. Shaw of Maine refused to quit. A decorated hero of the Third Maine Infantry, he marched not home but South—into the heart of Reconstruction. In Tarboro, North Carolina, he became a postmaster, a reformer, and the unlikely founder of Princeville—the first incorporated Black town in America. Discover forgotten history on Company D.
Henry Harrison Shaw survived four Confederate bullets during the war. But when the guns fell silent, the Union veteran did something few could fathom—he went South. To Tarboro, North Carolina.
Once branded a Yankee invader, Shaw reinvented himself as a Southern gentleman. Yet his greatest legacy came not from battle, but from what he built in peace: selling his riverside land to former slaves who would found Princeville...
William Hogan Higgins had an oversized ego and an outsized personality. Traits that won him loyal followers but also many enemies, including the Governor of Maine. His rocky tenure with Company D of the Third Maine ended with a bullet wound to the leg, followed by a special assignment: adjutant at one of the most notorious Union prisons in the Civil War. A bombastic bully has his day on Company D.
Every company has one. The bully, the know-it-all, the man who can’t help but take over a room. For Company D, it was William Hogan Higgins. He threatened Maine’s governor. He browbeat his own nephew to get a promotion. And he dared anyone to question his claim to be the best sergeant in the regiment. His story arrives on October 29.
James Kennerson leaves Maine for Alabama—and within months is forced into marriage and then enlists with the Confederacy, fighting against his two brothers in Union blue. Brother against brother isn’t a slogan here; it’s the Kennersons’ life, and the Civil War runs straight through their front door. Loyalty, betrayal, and hard-won forgiveness take center stage in this episode of Company D.
Two brothers from Maine. One fought for the U.S. Army. The other joined the Confederacy. One wore blue and fought to keep the nation together. The other donned gray and battled to split the country in half. Albion Kennerson vs. James Kennerson. Brother vs. brother. This is the Civil War at its most personal. The full episode drops on October 15.
Leadership under fire. Mutiny at his back. The slaughter of the Battle of Gettysburg was ahead. Lieutenant Woodbury Hall marched his men into hell. Was he a failure or a commander forged by chaos? Step inside his story on Company D.
His men despised him. They called Lieutenant Woodbury Hall "incompetent" and "obnoxious." Even his own uncle tried to drive him out. Yet at Gettysburg — the Civil War’s turning point — Hall led his company through fire. Join us for our second episode coming on October 1.
He was listed as missing. Then declared killed. Then reported wounded and captured. For more than 160 years, the final fate of Captain Alfred S. Merrill has remained a mystery. In the debut episode of Company D, we uncover the truth in “The Mystery of the Missing Captain.” Visit us at the Company D website.
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