A Salem, NH born shoemaker, MELVIN LOWELL, the son of Robert and Hannah (Emerson) Lowell, was 23 years, 6 months old when he signed up with the 15th Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers, on September 10th, 1862. This was his second enlistment, having previously served in Co. H, 1st New Hampshire Infantry, from April 21st to August 9th, 1861.
   Mustered into Company K as a private on October 16th, 1862, Melvin and company (there were 28 other Salem men in this company) left New Hampshire on the 13th of November for New York, where they encamped for nearly a month before being shipped south to Louisiana. The regiment would be engaged in a dozen battles in the Port Hudson area, from May to July 1863.
   Melvin would become one of many within the regiment to fall ill with disease during his service. When the unit began its trip back home in July 1863, many of the sick did not complete the full journey and were left behind in hospitals along the route north. Melvin did survive the trek, and returned home to Salem in very poor condition. He was unable to attend the mustering out ceremony in Concord on August 13th, '63, and would perish from chronic diarrhea on the 22nd. He was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery, Salem.   
   

Melvin's stone was one of many that the Gilman Sleeper Camp No. 60 has cleaned. Of all of the Civil War veterans buried in this cemetery, this marker is in the most need of repair. His parents' stones are also broken and lie flat nearby.
   The "GAR 1861 - 1865" marker was apparently destroyed by a mower very recently, found broken and bent near his stone.

ISAAC NEWTON CLUFF was born in Salem, New Hampshire on 17 March 1839, a son of Ezekiel and Sally (Hawkins) Cluff. In the 1860 census, he was living with his older brother Benjamin, both of them employed as shoemakers.

23-year old Isaac signed up for nine months with the 15th Infantry, on 11 Sept. 1862, and was mustered in as a private on 16 Oct. 1862.

​The Fifteenth New Hampshire was sent south to Louisiana, where many men in the regiment were overcome with illness. While en route back home, thirty soldiers of the 15th NH were put ashore at Memphis, TN, too sick to continue their voyage north. Isaac would succumb to disease at the Washington General Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, on 2 Aug. 1863. It is not clear where he was buried, but his name (and that of his brother Benjamin, who died in '62) are memorialized on the family stone of their parents in Pine Grove Cemetery, Salem.