Mary Elizabeth Shriver Sheahan

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.