Memorial Gift to College Library

Through Col. C. L. Peirson '53, $861.50 has been turned over to the University Corporation for the benefit of the College Library. The money is the balance of a fund for a memorial to the twentieth Massachusetts regiment of volunteer infantry, which served through the civil war, and in whose ranks were a number of Harvard graduates.

The original fund was used to furnish one of the alcoves in the Boston Public Library, to place one of the St. Gaudens lions on the stairway of that building, and to establish there a fund of $5000 for the purchase of books of a military or patriotic character. The residue has now been turned over to the Corporation with the request that $500 be used to establish a fund to be known as the fund of the twentieth Massachusetts regiment.

The fund will be allowed to accumulate until it reaches the sum of $1000, when its income is to be used for the purchase for the College Library of books of a military or patriotic character. The rest of the money over and above $500 will be spent from time to time in buying books of a like character. All the volumes acquired will have a special bookplate.

The regiment was mustered into the service of the United States July 18, 1861. It was engaged in the following battles: Ball's Bluff, Fair Oaks, Seven Days' Battles, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville. Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, the battles in the neighborhood of Petersburg, the fighting leading up to the surrender at Appomattox, and in many other smaller engagements.