On a stone column just yards from Main Street in North Adams, Massachusetts, is a bronze plaque that commemorates the site known in 1861 as Camp Johnson. The flat piece of ground on Marshall Street, next to the newly built Arnold Print Works, was named after Sylvander Johnson, one of the unit’s main and proudest benefactors.
Johnson, a local industrialist and chairman of the town committee, had supported the group of men, formerly called the Greylock Infantry, a militia unit, which now bore the name Johnson Grays, another honorific given to Sylvander.
The camp became the training center for the area’s newest recruits in what would be called the “War between the States.” Camp Johnson became the site for countless flag raisings, close-order-drills, and military formations. The drills were often led by Captain Elisha Smart, the unit’s commander.
The formations and marches delighted enthusiastic, area citizens as the men paraded down nearby streets.
The local “Grays” became part of a larger unit, Company B of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and not long after its formation was rushed to Washington, D. C., to protect the Capital and subsequently fought in numerous campaigns until the War’s end in 1865.
The Women’s Relief Corps, closely associated with the Grand Army of the Republic commissioned the plaque in honor of the Johnson Greys in 1909.
The plaque reads:
The Johnson Grays
The First Volunteer Company
From North Adams
In the Civil War
Camped on These Grounds
And in June 1861
Became Co. B 10th Regiment
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
This tablet erected by
C D Sanford Women’s Relief Corps
June 1909
The plaque, rededicate in 2009, rests on a stone pillar at the courtyard gate of the former Arnold Print Works, a new textile mill at the time that help provide Union uniforms during the War. Years later the area became the grounds for Sprague Electric Co. and today is the site for MASS Museum of Contemporary Art.
Of note: Captain Smart was killed at the Battle of Fair Oaks and by the War’s end, the regiment’s casualties totaled 130 killed and over 300 wounded.
Photo Credit: 2025, Dan Morgan Photography