Ira Gardner was born in Patten, Maine. The record states the event occurred “about 1843.” The Patten into which he was born was very much a frontier town, located as it was on the northern fringes of Penobscot County. The town itself was incorporated in 1841. Its first church opened its doors that same year, and in 1848 Patten Academy was established to educate its children. Ira would have been one of its first students.At the time of the Civil War the majority of Patten’s men were employed as farmers or lumbermen. The farmers cultivated potatoes commercially and drove them long distances to market. The lumbermen devoted themselves to harvesting the mature growths of timber that dominated the region. As the majority of Maine’s sawmills were located significantly downstream on the Penobscot River, the town’s convenient access to the East Branch of that same waterway, made Patten a major center for originating log drives.When the village of Patten decided to organize an Independent Rifle Company in 1858, Ira, who was only fifteen years old at the time, joined the unit. The tiny militia group drilled every week, especially when the weather was favorable and the “blackflies were scarce.” Gardner quickly discovered that he fancied the “soldier’s life” and his enthusiasm soon occasioned a promotion to orderly sergeant. Ira “studied Infantry Tactics” and would later find the “experience and knowledge to be of great value” in his military career.When Civil War came to the country in April of 1861, Abraham Lincoln made his first call for seventy-five thousand volunteers. Maine’s Governor, Israel Washburn, immediately sent out a plea for volunteers. Due to Patten’s geographic isolation, located more than one hundred miles north of Bangor, the notification took two days to reach the town. By the time the men of the settlement responded, the rolls had been filled, long before the men could reach the rendezvous point at Bangor.When the second call was made in July, the town’s militia company quickly departed for the front. These volunteers would become Company B of the 8th Maine Infantry. As Ira was an only son, he was “not allowed to go with them.” His parents said he was needed around the home to help with planting, harvests, and daily chores.Ira persisted though and continued to nag his parents. “As a boy eighteen years of age with a large share of my comrades at the front, my presence at home became to my parents so uncomfortable that by the month of December they consented for me to enlist and I did so.” Ira’s life would be forever changed.