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Hanse Robinson Kelloch Gravestone Son of Matthew Kelloch & Mary/Margaret Robinson, Great great-great-grandfather of webmaster Ken Kalloch

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Gravestone of Hanse Kelloch United States Daughters of 1812 Grave Honoring June 21, 2008 USS Enterprize Chapter National Society United States Daughters of 1812 Honors Soldier/Mariner HANSE KALLOCH ca. 1776-1866

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Hanse Kelloch Written by Marilyn Morrison for  Daughters of 1812 Grave Dedication Hanse Kelloch, son of Revolutionary War veteran Matthew Kelloch, was born about 1776 in St. George, Maine.  He and Sarah H. Phinney of East Machias were married in Thomaston on June 7, 1814.  Hanse was serving at that time as a coast guardsman in the militia.  The War of 1812 was in its last full year. From his military record, we know that Hanse Kelloch had blue eyes, light hair, a fair complexion and stood 5 feet 9 inches tall (tallish stature for those days). During the War of 1812, Hanse served as an enrolled volunteer in the Massachusetts Militia, Captain Kenney’s company, St. George, Maine.  Called out with his company several times to defend against threatened British landings and attack by ships of war and privateer raiders, Private Hanse Kelloch’s most memorable and rewarding service probably came in the last two months of the war. On December 1, 1814, Hanse sailed as a crew member on the armed schooner Fame, Milliken, newly fitted out as a privateer.  The objective was interdiction of vessels supplying Castine, Maine, from Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Castine had been captured by the British in September. In a heavy snowstorm off Mount Desert Island, the Fame’s manned tender cut out a valuable prize, the schooner Industry, from a British supply convoy.  On January 2, 1815, the Fame brought the Industry in to Rockland.  After vessel and cargo were sold at auction in Boston and the captors’ shares apportioned. “...each of the privates received some $400 or $500. . .“ It must have seemed a fortune to newlyweds Hanse and Sarah. Hanse and Sara had eleven known children, nine sons and two daughters, all born in Knox County.  At a time when most families in coastal Maine looked to farming and the sea for their livelihoods, the Kellochs were no exception.  Exceptional perhaps was the human price paid in exchange: four sons lost at sea and a fifth dead of a shipboard accident. Hanse Kelloch seems to have been an ardent unionist.  During the Civil War, the St. George Baptist Church took a special interest in his views and manner of expressing them.  Hanse, then in his eighties, was excluded from membership for “public railing.”  He was a Republican, of the party of Lincoln, with a son in the Union army.  Causes of the North-South conflict were several and complex, but many churches did not support the waging of civil war, for any reason.  Hanse evidently stood on constitutional principle. Hanse’s gravestone tells us he was 90 when he left Sarah a widow in December 1866.  The war had ended the year before, and Hanse had lived to see his cause prevail.  He is buried within sight and sound of the church that excluded him.  His gravestone counsels, “The Constitution it must and shall be preserved.”  Hanse still speaks his convictions to the congregation. Epilogue. Wife Sarah, about 15 years younger than Hanse, outlived him by 19 years and is buried in Astoria, Oregon.  She died there September 25, 1885, at the age of 94.  While in her eighties, she had journeyed from Maine to Oregon to live with her daughter Eliza and son-in-law Capt. Henry A. Snow, a master mariner from Thomaston who had become a Columbia River pilot. Some time before her death in 1926, Eliza Snow, daughter of Sarah and War of 1812 veteran Hanse Kelloch, became a member of the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. ID Number 123414. Eliza’ s DAR patriot was her paternal grandfather Matthew Kelloch - son of colonial settlers; boy witness to the capture of Louisbourg during King George’s War; militia ranger in the French and Indian War; father of ten; soldier and sailor of the American Revolution; farmer; bear hunter; patriot.

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The back of Hanse's stone reads:
"The Constitution it must and shall be preserved"