Not everyone can claim that they were born in Purgatory, but Andrew Tozier could, on February 11, 1838. Purgatory is a town near the Monmouth-Litchfield line in central Maine and is neither a heaven or a hell - like most towns, just somewhere in between. But during his life, Andrew Tozier would see more than his fair share of the landscape bordering Hell, even if it was all man-made. In fact, he would become one of the most interesting and least noted figures of the American Civil War. Tozier’s family moved from Purgatory to the Plymouth, Maine area in 1848 when he was a mere ten years old. His father, was an abusive alcoholic who wrought his anger upon his children. We do not know exactly at what age Andrew ran away from home, but it is likely he was quite young. The fifth of seven children, his absence meant one less mouth to feed at the Tozier homestead, but it also meant that young Andrew was now penniless, and on his own in a largely agrarian state, with no real prospects and no plan for the future. In that, he wasn’t alone. In the 1850s before the advent of the American Civil War, there were large numbers of ‘homeless’ men moving from place to place in search of work, food, and warmth in the winter. Tozier likely took a common route - he may have made his way to the coast and became a sailor. He may have been a day laborer or worked from season to season, depending on the harvest. He may have found work in the lumber trade. Whatever he did, he was surely uneducated beyond a basic grammar school experience and he was certainly a wanderer, growing up rather quickly on his own, away from any home. We do know that he reconnected with the Tozier clan in 1861 when he returned to their Plymouth home. Lincoln had called the banners and it was time for twenty-seven year old Andrew Tozier to settle into a trade, of sorts. He signed up to fight for the Union, enlisting in Company F of the 2nd Maine Infantry. In those days, local groups of men could form units and fight together within the larger companies in the army.So it was in Maine, like it was everywhere else. Andrew would have received the basic training and drill that any of the soldiers of the newly formed Army would have received. In the early days of the war, the number of battles were few and far between, but the 2nd Maine saw action in one of the early ones. Andrew Tozier was in the thick of the Battle of Gaines Mill, also known as the Battle of Chickahominy River. In Hanover County, Virginia, on June 27,1862, General Lee made the largest advance of the confederate side thus far in the war, pushing the Union troops back over the Chickahominy River in retreat. Tozier was wounded in the battle almost a year to his date of enlistment, losing his middle finger to a minie ball, breaking one rib, and receiving what must have been a lifelong ailment for him - a bullet in his left ankle that went in but never came out. Captured as a prisoner of war by the South, he recuperated in two different Confederate prisons in Richmond. He was used to hard living and managed to heal while incarcerated. He was eventually paroled and allowed to return to the north, this time with Company I of the 20th Maine. In the early part of the war, nearly every soldier was inexperienced. A soldier like Tozier, already wounded, imprisoned, battle-scarred and now back to fight again, would likely have had some gravitas with the newer recruits as someone with at least a modicum of knowledge of how to fight.His experience in battle, brief though it was, set him apart from the rest of the men. It must have been an odd thing for him to experience - the respect and admiration of other soldiers for an ill-educated rambler from central Maine. The whole unit was a little like him -it was made up of men from other units, leftovers, remnants and the odd new recruit. That’s how Tozier got in to the 20th Maine. Their leader was a scholar, an unlikely military strategist who knew his