Several of the companies constituting the Thirty-ninth, had left their respective towns under the belief that they were to join the Thirty-fifth, but that organization and also the Thirty-eighth were so far completed, that the numerals "39" became the designation of the regiment, whose story is progressing here. Lynnfield had been a rendezvous, already, for the Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-second and Twenty-third regiments and, however satisfactory it may have proved for those bodies, it was clearly inadequate to the demands of the several thousand men to congregate here during July and August. Placed on a branch railroad, it was difficult of access and did not have space for the formation of a regimental line; so rapidly did the volunteers report, they found only scant comforts in their rendezvous. While only thirteen miles from Boston and being nearer still to Lynn, the rush of recruits to the rendezvous sadly tried the resources of the commissary, and made many a boy wish he were elsewhere. Says one observer, "No preparation had been made for our reception; finally however, tents were found for a portion of the |