Connor, of Fairfield, was a comparatively large man. The average Maine soldier in the Civil War weighed less than 150 lbs. Connor, over six feet tall, weighed more than 200 lbs. At the age of 22, he enlisted in the 7th Maine Infantry in 1861, after graduating from Tufts College. He rapidly rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In December of 1863 Connor was appointed Colonel of the 19th Maine Infantry Regiment.

Speaking to his fellow officers after the War, Connor recalled how he was wounded in the battle of The Wilderness.

“Captain Banes, the Adjutant General of the Brigade, was with me when the firing broke out. I said to him there was no time to wait for orders; that I would change my front to meet the enemy …. As soon as my front was clear I began a fire by file and the noise of it swelled to a continuous sound like the roll of a drum. All at once something like a sledge hammer hit me in the thigh and felled me to the ground in the road. Captain Nehemiah Smith put me on a blanket and I was carried to the rear. I weighed about two hundred pounds and the way was rough, so that a good many men took a hand in carrying me to the Brock Road,” Connor recounted.

He was taken to Fredericksburg along with hundreds of other wounded and dying men; some badly burned due to brush fires that had broken out in the thick underbrush of the Wilderness.

Via: Maine State Archives