William L. S. Tabor

He pulled the shell chute away to protect the men below him.

William L. S. Tabor was born at Methuen, Massachusetts, on 2 June 1843. By 1862 he lived at Hampstead, New Hampshire. He enlisted in Company K of the 15th New Hampshire Infantry, a regiment raised for nine months' service, and trained at Concord before travelling south by rail and ship. The regiment reached New Orleans late in December.

In 1863 Tabor served with the Army of the Gulf during the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana. The Confederate stronghold helped control movement along the Mississippi. After costly assaults failed, Union troops dug approach trenches toward the defensive works. Formerly enslaved men who had reached Union lines helped with the dangerous labour of extending those trenches.

Tabor was protecting men working close beneath the Confederate parapet when the defenders devised a way to roll short-fused shells down a wooden trough into the Union position. He climbed onto the sandbags, exposed to sharpshooters only a short distance away, and slipped a rope around the projecting trough. Pulling it down disrupted the device and sent the next shell back toward the defenders.

His Medal of Honor citation recognizes the voluntary exposure to nearby enemy fire and the protection he gave his comrades. It states that he rendered "valuable services for the protection of his comrades," a concise official account of the intervention described in his later recollection (https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/william-l-tabor). His own account was preserved in Deeds of Valor and is reproduced by the Derry Museum of History.

Port Hudson surrendered on 9 July. The 15th New Hampshire returned home and mustered out at Concord in August 1863. Tabor enlisted again in September 1864, this time with Company K of the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery. He served in the defences of Washington until his discharge in June 1865.

After the war he returned to Hampstead and later moved to Derry. He worked as custodian of the Benjamin Adams Memorial Building, helped the library housed there, served as a volunteer fireman and worked at his son's diner. He also belonged to the Grand Army of the Republic. His gallantry award came in 1896, more than thirty years after Port Hudson. He died at Derry on 15 December 1921 and was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery.