For a Better Union: The Story of Captain William C. Dermody
At the center of a grassy triangle on 48th Ave. and 216th St. stands a stone monument dedicated to abolitionist and Union soldier Captain William C. Dermody (1830-1864), the first Baysider to lose his life in the Civil War.
The Dermody family immigrated to the United States from Nova Scotia, Canada, in the early 19th century. They welcomed William into the world on April 16, 1830. He began his career operating a stagecoach line in Bayside, but found a calling in the rapidly growing abolitionist movement.
In 1861, Dermody answered Lincoln's call for volunteer soldiers at the start of the Civil War. He began his service with the 67th New York Infantry in Company K, the first regiment of Long Island, which organized in Brooklyn and left for Washington, D.C., by August's end. By 1862, Dermody attained the rank of captain. The regiment, now part of the Army of the Potomac, saw action in many major battles throughout the war, from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg to the Wilderness Campaign. The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse raged from May 9 to May 21, 1864. May 12 saw a ferocious 20 hours of constant combat known as the "Bloody Angle," in which the 34-year-old Dermody was mortally wounded, one of more than 30,000 casualties. The battle proved inconclusive.
In 1866, Dermody's sister Mrs. James O’Donnell dedicated a portion of her family's land to honor her fallen brother. She and a group of her fellow citizens held a memorial ceremony in which a Union veteran and his Confederate counterpart each planted a tree: a maple to represent the North and a sycamore for the South. The trees were to grow together as a symbol of the communal hope for a better union.
The trees failed to thrive, and the site degraded until a group of Baysiders rededicated the site and replanted the trees. In 1935, they unveiled the stone boulder with the inscription "For A Better Union" that stands to this day. On March 15, 1937, the city officially named the site for Captain William C. Dermody, and it became Captain Dermody Triangle in 1997 under NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern. In 1973, the founder of the Bayside Historical Society, Joseph H. Brown, initiated a rededication of the site, and since then, BHS has returned every Memorial Day to honor Bayside’s fallen soldiers.
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