CLASS OF 1864

Dr. Alfred Owen Hitchcock died of pneumonia January 20 at his home in Fitchburg, Mass.

He was born in Ashby, Mass., May 16, 1842, his parents being Dr. Alfred and Fidelia Dorcas (Clark) Hitchcock. His father was an eminent physician and surgeon in Fitchburg.

He prepared for college at Kimball Union Academy. He entered Dartmouth in 1859. leaving at the close of his freshman year to return in 1861 with the class of 1864. At the close of the fall term of 1862 he again left college to enter the army.

In December, 1862, he enlisted in Company A, 53d Massachusetts Volunteers, serving at Port Hudson and at the siege of Vicksburg. He was wounded in the right eye at the charge at Port Hudson on June 14, 1863, and was discharged shortly afterward.

He re-enlisted in October, 1863, when he was commissioned second lieutenant in Company F, Fifty-seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers, serving at the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Petersburg Crater, Weldon Railroad, Poplar Grove Church, and at Petersburg for the second time. He received rapid promotion after his second enlistment; to first lieutenant, and then to captain, serving as aide-de-camp and provost marshal on the staff of Major General Nelson A. Miles.

At the close of the war he was brevetted major for gallant and meritorious services, and he served by special order of the War Department one year after the close of the war. While on the staff of General Miles, he was located at Fortress Monroe, Va., where he had Jefferson Davis in charge after his arrest.

When he completed his war service he took up the study of medicine, and was graduated from the Harvard Medical School in the class of 1870, and since 1873 had practiced medicine and surgery in Fitchburg. For twenty years he was county physician at the South Fitchburg House of Correction. He was many years a member of the city board of health, serving as its chairman. He also was Fitchburg city physician, and he served for a term of years as a member of the board of United States pension examiners.

Leaving college in 1862 as he did, to serve his country with a gallant record, the trustees, regarding his honorable service, granted him a degree, and he was recorded as a member of the class of 1864. The General Catalogue of 1910-1911 upon page 828, under the head of "Additions to Alumni List," gives this assignment.

Dr. Hitchcock was married June 14, 1871, to Miss Georgia S. Bemis of Huntington, Mass., who, with one son, Alfred Owen Hitchcock, Junior, survives him. Another son, Edward, died August 22, 1914.