The 29th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment was raised during the invasion of Maryland after the Union defeat at the Second Manassas. The unit, a nine month regiment, was assembled and trained in Freehold near a battlefield fought over during the Revolutionary War at Monmouth. The unit was one of eleven New Jersey regiments raised after Lincoln’s call for three hundred thousand additional men to meet this new emergency. New Jersey regiments 21 through 31 were all nine-month units raised at this time.
The regiment was mustered into service on September 20, 1862 at Camp Vrendedenburgh in Freehold, just as reports were published in the local papers of the deadly struggle at Antietam in Maryland. With the need for men being overwhelming, the unit headed towards Washington with less than its full complement of men. 866 men and 39 officers were en route on September 28. When it joined the Army of the Potomac, it was assigned to a New Jersey Brigade made up of the the 21st, 24th, and 31st all nine month regiments.
The 29th saw its first combat at Fredericksburg in December, 1862, but it did not participate in any of the assaults on the heights that took so many lives in other units. Instead, It guarded supplies and did not lose any men in the fighting there.
After this, the regiment saw fighting at Chancellorsville in May of 1863. Similar to Fredericksburg, the unit did not engage in heavy combat. The unit lost seven men as casualties there.
After Chancellorsville, the 29th’s term of service ended and the regiment marched to Washington and boarded trains to New Jersey, there it was mustered out on the 28th of June.
The regiment did not put up any monument on any battlefield of the Civil War in the decades following its service, nor did its men organize a monument in their home county. Sixty years after the war, a local committee was appointed to create a memorial to the regiment after most of the unit’s men were dead or in their eighties or nineties. The monument was unveiled on May 30, 1925 during Memorial Day ceremonies at a Red Bank cemetery.
The monument is next to the administration building at Fairview Cemetery in Red Bank, N.J. It is along Route 35, just north of its intersection with Oak Hill Rd.
The monument was nicely decorated for Veterans Day when I visited it on November 11, 2023.
All color photos were taken by Pat Young. To see more sites Pat visited CLICK HERE for Google Earth view.
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