‘Ritchie’ Lynch was born in October 1846 in Galway, Ireland. While his family was more fortunate than most, with his father having steady work as a shipwright, the lure and talk of America was never far away. The Lynches made the decision to emigrate in 1851 in the wake of the Potato Famine that had ravaged the country since the time of Ritchie’s birth. After a short but messy period getting their bearings in Boston, his father found work on the docks of Portland, Maine, where they became part of a small but thriving Irish community.

Young Ritchie started his education in a publicly-funded schoolhouse, where he showed promise in maths and languages. While Irish was generally the language spoken at home, he soon learned to fit in on the streets and in the classroom, and when speaking in English, he cultured an unmistakably Mainer accent.

At the age of 10, his father was retrenched and the family moved north to Brunswick, chasing work offered by a friend of the family. This was a difficult transition for Ritchie, having lost his support network, and it was definitely more difficult being Irish and Catholic in this part of Maine. Dealing with various gangs on the streets of Brunswick bred some reservation and toughness, making him increasingly slow to open up, and absorbed by his love of books and music.

The precarious family situation meant that Ritchie had to leave school at the age of 14, obtaining work as a railway hand in 1860, learning much about steam trains whilst on the job. Nevertheless, he maintained his bookish leaning and felt cheated by his inability to receive the kind of education offered at institutions such as nearby Bowdoin College. As a result, he grew into a young man who carried both romantic ideals about education and equality, as well as a pragmatic drive to ‘play the game’ and improve his situation by any means.

Fed on a steady diet of heroic tales from the ongoing conflict to the south, Ritchie enlisted with the Union Army on his 18th birthday in October 1864, and had only been added to the strength of the regiment a couple of weeks before their journey through the Tunnel of Light. As a result, despite being level-headed and hard-working by nature, he’s still a bit of an unknown quantity in the regiment, and his Catholic upbringing in Puritanical Maine taught him to approach most new situations with caution.

However, he has already found himself to be in more comfortable company when spending time with the abolitionists in the regiment, and has also felt drawn to the Irishmen of the 44th New York since arriving in Valdennia. Likewise, O’Donald’s men have taken on the young Ritchie as one of their own, and he has dropped his guard considerably in recent times. A talented fiddler, storyteller, and fond of card and dice games, he definitely has a more light-hearted side and a desire for companionship, making him one of the more approachable men amongst the recent recruits to the 35th.