Doctor John Paris SheahanVeteran

The story of this husband and wife is a happy one to emerge from the tragic events of the Civil War. In June 1863, while John’s Maine cavalry unit

was in the vicinity of Westminster, he met Lizzie Shriver, daughter of Francis Shriver, and a young woman about five years his senior. The couple began corresponding and became seriously attached in a short period of time. Meanwhile, John resigned from his cavalry unit and received a commission as a 1st lieutenant in the 31st Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

While his regiment fought with General Ulysses Grant’s Union Army in Virginia

during the fierce battles of the spring and summer of 1864, Lizzie sent him letters and

packages. In one of the letters he wrote his parents in Maine, he announced that he

and Lizzie were engaged and she had promised to wait for him.

Late in July while the Union Army was entrenched around Petersburg, Virginia, John was captured at the Battle of the Crater and spent seven months as a prisoner of war in South Carolina before escaping or being released early in 1865 as the war drew to a close. That August he returned to Westminster and married Lizzie at the Church of the Ascension. The couple left for Maine where John enrolled at Maine Medical College with the intent of becoming a doctor. After graduating with a medical degree in 1867, he practiced medicine briefly in Canada, then returned to Westminster and continued to practice medicine. The young couple appeared in the 1870 Westminster census.

In 1874 John, Lizzie, and their two young sons moved from Westminster to Washington County in northern Maine to be near John’s aging parents. They left behind an infant daughter buried in Westminster Cemetery. The family was living in Maine when Lizzie died in 1892. John apparently sent her body to Westminster for burial near her family and their daughter. Two years later he was laid to rest beside her.

Doctor John Parris Sheahan was born on September 28, 1842 in Dennysville, Maine. He attended Washington Academy and enlisted in the Union Army on August 23, 1862 as a Private in Company. K of the First Maine Cavalry and was mustered into the army the same day. Sheahan was promoted to Second Lieutenant on March 11, 1864 and moved to Company E, 31st Maine Infantry. Captured on May 6, 1864 at Petersburg, Virginia, he was imprisoned at Macon, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina before escaping from Camp Asylum at Columbia, South Carolina on March 15, 1865 and making his way back to Union lines. Sheahan was mustered out of the army on July 15, 1865 and shortly after leaving military service married Mary Elizabeth Shriver Sheahan on August 16, 1865. The couple had two children, Eleanor and William. Sheahan returned to Maine to attend medical School at Bowdoin College in Brunswick and upon graduation in 1867, the family moved to Fredericton Junction, New Brunswick, and Doctor Sheahan began the practice of medicine. In 1869 the Shehans moved to Westminster but returned to Dennysville, Maine in 1874, where Doctor Sheahan lived for the remainder of his life. Doctor Sheahan died suddenly of heart failure induced by Bright’s disease in Boston, Massachusetts on March 18, 1894.