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Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery Park
Little is known about the life of GAR Cemetery Park’s sole Medal of Honor recipient, but the story of the act that earned him his Medal of Honor is remarkable.
Frank Bois was born on September 13th, 1841 in Quebec, Canada. How and when he came to the United States is unclear, but he enlisted in the Union army, and then was transferred into the US Navy in 1862. He was stationed on the USS Cincinnati I, one of the several gunboats the Union Army was preparing to help take the Mississippi River, the center of which was occupied by a significant Confederate blockade. Vicksburg, which was on the northern end of the Confederacy’s Mississippi River blockade, was a vital supply center for the Confederacy, making it an ideal target for the Union. In May of 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered an assault on Vicksburg, with General William T. Sherman’s men leading the siege.
Illustration of the Siege of Vicksburg.
Image property of the Library of Congress.
On May 27th, the USS Cincinnati joined the fight, attempting to take out some of the northern Confederate blockade. Frank Bois was a Quartermaster, which placed him in charge of the acquisition and storage of supplies for his unit. Upon engaging with the Confederate gunboats, the USS Cincinnati was hit incredibly hard by enemy fire. Many members of the ship’s crew were injured or killed, and the ship took significant damage, causing it to begin to sink. As the USS Cincinnati's situation grew more dire, Frank Bois managed to attach the ship’s flag to its last remaining mast. His actions are described by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society as follows:
“Engaging the enemy in a fierce battle, the Cincinnati, amidst an incessant fire of shot and shell, continued to fire her guns to the last, though so penetrated by enemy shellfire that her fate was sealed. Conspicuously cool in making signals throughout the battle, Bois, after all the Cincinnati's staffs had been shot away, succeeded in nailing the flag to the stump of the forestaff to enable this proud ship to go down, ‘with her colors nailed to the mast.’”
Illustration of the USS Cincinnati after it sunk at Vicksburg.
Harper's Weekly, June 20th, 1863.
The Battle of Vicksburg, though it was a brutally long siege, ended in a critical Union victory. A total of 4,910 Union soldiers died in this battle, 40 of which were aboard the USS Cincinnati. It is thanks to Frank Bois’ cool head and luck that he survived the sinking gunboat and lived long enough to be awarded a Naval Medal of honor and eventually move to Seattle. It appears he moved here some time before 1900, but his circumstances for coming here and what his life was like here are unknown, other that it appears that he was never married, and once went on a roundtrip leisure steam liner cruise to Nome, Alaska, in 1901. He died in Seattle at 81 years old.
Frank Bois’s story is a reminder that despite the battles of the Civil War feeling so distant to us today both in geography and time, the people who survived them lived where we do today, giving us an unexpected connection to the conflict that shaped this nation forever.