Spencer Hobbs Memorial

Location: Holten Richmond Middle School 55 Conant Street Danvers Massachusetts

(See Note 1) Spanish-American memorial to 21-year-old bugler Spencer S. Hobbs (1876-1898) stands at the flag pole in front of what was built as the Junior High School on Conant Street, now renovated as our Middle School. Young Hobbs was a Danvers native and a piano tuner who volunteered to serve with Danvers’s Company K Militia. While at a staging camp in Georgia, Hobbs contracted typhoid fever and died in service. His body was transported back to Danvers, where a military funeral was conducted. Hobbs was laid to rest in Walnut Grove Cemetery after the firing of three volleys and the playing of “Taps,” a bugle call Hobbs himself had often sounded during his service.

In 1930 Danvers Town Meeting appropriated money for a memorial of concrete and granite dust with an attached bronze tablet. The tablet reads:

"To the Memory of Spencer Hobbs
Bugler Company K Eight Regiment Massachusetts Infantry 
United States Volunteers 
Who Made the Supreme Sacrifice
In the Spanish American War at
Chickamauga Park Georgia
August 19th, 1898
An Ideal Soldier - A Real Patriot
Never faltering in his duty to
His Country
This tablet dedicated by the citizens of Danvers September 7th, 1930."

Note 1: An excerpt from "Memorial Day In Danvers: By Richard B. Trask