I often told my wife I was born to be unlucky. I'm the youngest of five children and I was named after a Maine state legislature who died the same year of my birth. I grew up on the family farm in Brewer, Maine, with four older siblings - Lawrence, Horace, Sae and John. I suppose I was my mother's favorite child even though my brothers called me the "little rogue". I have regular chest ailments that keep me down a lot but it seems to be a problem for every Chamberlain too.
As a teenager I took a job as a clerk in Frank Sabine's general store in Bangor. It was decent work but I get restless quite easily, so when Lawrence went to war in '62, I followed. I rose from private to captain in no time and I was there when my brother became a hero at Gettysburg. By the end of the war I was lieutenent colonel under Colonel Ellis Spear.
After the war I went to New York to go into business and I nursed my brother John through his illness. In 1870, I married Delia, whom I could pour out all of my problems and she listened with kindness and understanding. I was not the best husband I should have been to her and we lived through long separations because of my own foolishness. My last years were rough for everyone around me, especially myself. My patient wife nursed me through bout after bout of bronchitis but I did not survive it. I died early in the morning of August 12, 1896, on my sister-in-law's birthday and the day after the 29th anniversary of John's death.
