Subterranean Celebrity: Frederick W.C. Blake
The Eastern Cemetery in Portland, Maine holds the memories of around 7,000 persons. Some of them are known; some are not. As we uncover stories of their lives, we share them through our e-newsletter. Sometimes the tidbits are not of life, but only of the artifact that remains. These are our subterranean celebrities.
Blake marble head stone.
There are at least 29 known Civil War veterans buried in the Eastern Cemetery including Frederick W.C. Blake. His eroded marble headstone rests against the iron pipes that surround his family's plot in section B, row 3, plot 16, and a weathered inscription reveals that he was part of the Maine 16th Regiment's Company F. The Maine 16th Regiment was mustered in 1862–1865 and its members were part of battles such as those at Antietam, Maryland; Gettysburg; and Petersburg, Virginia. Remaining members were moved to the 20th Regiment, but Mr. Blake was not one of them. Although he had only been enlisted since September 12, 1863, he died in Campbell General Hospital in Washington, DC on February 2, 1864 as a single man at age 38.
FREDERICK W.C. BLAKE
Co. F
16th Me. Regt.
DIED
Campbell Hospital
Washington, D.C.
Feb. 2, 1864
AEt. 38.
Frederick W.C. Blake's stone was conserved in July 2017. The previous repair of sloppy adhesive had failed. It was removed and re-attached with white mortar that matches the now-clean marble stone. The stone was also cleaned and reset with its foot stone. His stone is just one of a group of other Blakes enclosed in an iron fenced area with granite posts.
Blake's head stone clamped and braced while it sets up after conservation.
More images of the before, during and after conservation of Frederick W.C. Blake's grave markers (in larger sizes available for download) are available on our Flickr site.
This information was first published in the January 2011 issue of Spirits Alive eNews. It will be updated here as more information is available, but my contain information that is not quite right or needs to be corrected. Text may have been edited to make sense for this page as opposed to the eNews issue it had been a part of.
Further Reading
Frederick W.C. Blake is also noted in our list of Veterans.
Sources: familysearch.org Maine in the Civil War, The Sixteenth Maine Regiment in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865 by Abner Ralph Small, and mrlincolnswhitehouse.org.
Last update: September 2026