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1st Maine Cavalry Regiment

American Civil War cavalry unit

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ4596450 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment was a volunteer United States cavalry unit from Maine used during the American Civil War.

Service history

The regiment was organized in Augusta, Maine, on October 31, 1861, and served for three years. The original members were detached from the regiment on September 15, 1864, when their service was up, and mustered out back in Portland on November 25. Later recruits, along with the Maine men of the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry (men recruited in the Augusta, Maine area between January and March 1864 and consolidated into seven companies) and those who chose to reenlist, were retained in the regiment. The regiment was split into three battalions of four companies each. One battalion was made up of former 1st District men and the other two were a mix of 1st Maine veterans and DC men. These three battalions continued until the regiment's mustering out at Petersburg, Virginia, on August 1, 1865.

Initial organization in 1861

Maine had responded to Lincoln and Congress's April 25, 1861, call for ten regiments of infantry of which eight had been organized and left the state by the end of August. That month the federal government had put out a call to Maine for five more regiments of infantry, six batteries of light artillery, a company of sharpshooters, and a regiment of cavalry to serve three years.

This cavalry regiment was intentionally raised at large from all counties of Maine and organized into twelve companies.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1st Maine Cavalry Regiment” as american Civil War cavalry unit. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1861, 1864, 1865—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1861-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Maine, Cavalry and Regiment can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american Civil War cavalry unit. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4596450. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1861, 1864 and 1865.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1st Maine Cavalry Regiment”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment primary sources, 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment archive and Maine research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1st Maine Cavalry Regiment”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1st Maine Cavalry Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.