Somerset Club reacts to Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment marching past its headquarters.

According to local lore, the curtains of the clubhouse are drawn so that members do not have to witness as members of the regiment march past. The action was supposedly taken because many of the club’s members held Confederate sympathies. Doubts are later case on the story, however, since two of Robert Gould Shaw’s uncles are members of the club at the time and the story is later refuted in a history of the club published in 1951.