A Contraband Story

Contraband with the 13th MA.

On July 1, 1863, Edgar Parker, Assistant Surgeon of the 13th Massachusetts, was seriously wounded on the steps of Christ Lutheran Church in Gettysburg during its use as a hospital for the wounded of the First Corps 2nd Division.

When he returned home to Massachusetts to recuperate, Parker brought a black servant who may have been helping take care of him in Gettysburg.  Listed in Parker’s household in the 1865 census for Framingham Massachusetts is 14-year-old Wilson Baylies, a Black servant born in Virginia.  

A photograph, probably taken in the fall of 1861 or 1862, shows two boys among a group of contraband who served with the 13th Massachusetts.  It’s interesting to conjecture whether Wilson might be one of the boys.

Beginning in 1872, Wilson Baylies appears in the Charlestown, Massachusetts City Directory on his own as a hairdresser.  His death certificate the next year gives his occupation as barber at 120 Elm Street, Charlestown. The cause of death, “spinal disease,” might indicate spinal meningitis.  He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Everett, Massachusetts.  He was only 22 years old.

Edgar Parker never fully recovered. When his health failed, he abandoned medicine and became a well-known portrait painter until his death in 1911.