Caroline, the youngest Washburn daughter, was described by Martha as “a round-faced good natured girl, said to resemble Cadwallader.” Like her brother William she grew up knowing little of the poverty and hardship which the older children had experienced. By the time she was ten (1843) brother Israel had established a thriving law practice in Orono, and had already launched his political career serving in the State Legislature. Algernon Sidney was a banker in Hallowell doing well enough financially to extend traveling loans to his brothers. Elihu had a lucrative law practice in Galena, Ill.; Cadwallader had set up a law office in Mineral Point; Charles was in school at Gorham, and Samuel was sailing as second mate on the Boston to Liverpool route. Money was sent home in generous amounts by the four older and prospering brothers. Nevertheless, Caroline’s education began like all the others in the little one-room district school and continued at Waterville Liberal Institute and Gorham Seminary.
Brother Israel proved to be the matchmaker for Caroline as well as for Mary. When she was visiting in Orono he introduced her to Freeland Holmes of Foxcroft, Maine. The handsome young man was a graduate of Bowdoin College, and Medical School, Washington, D.C. acquaintance blossomed into romance and in June 1857 they were married in the Washburn parlor in Livermore. Caroline and Freeland settled down in Foxcroft where he had started a medical practice. A daughter, Fanny, arrived in 1859. Life was good. With three brothers in Congress Caroline was very much aware of the storm clouds gathering on the national scene, but it all seemed far away from Foxcroft and the busy routine of a doctor’s home. In 1861 when Israel became Governor of Maine no fears of the future clouded her mind. She felt only pride in his political achievements. Then suddenly the storm of war broke upon the nation. In April President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Cadwallader entered the service as Colonel of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry; Samuel was a Captain in the Navy. From then on the crisis was real, even in Foxcroft, Maine.
When war’s full fury struck in 1862 Freeland enlisted as surgeon in the Sixth Regiment of Maine Volunteers. Caroline was expecting their second child. Two tender letters to “Dearest Carrie” are all that bear witness to the fifteen months he spent in the service of the Union. The second child was a year-old toddler when Caroline received the news that every waiting woman in wartime fears. Freeland died at Germantown, Virginia, June 23, 1863.
A widow at thirty, Caroline, with her two little children, went back to her old home in Livermore to be with her aged father in his blindness. After his death in 1876, she made her home with Cadwallader in Wisconsin for a short time. She spent the last forty years of her life in Minneapolis near her two children and brother William. She died in 1920, the last of her generation.
