If you have ever been to the Arlington Hill Cemetery, especially as a young kid, you undoubtedly sat on the old cannon or stuck your head inside the barrel.  This relic of the past has quite a story of how it came to sit on it's perch overlooking the graves of our departed heroes.  In 1896 the A. Lincoln Post of the GAR decided to purchase the cannon as a memorial to it's Civil War veterans who were buried in the cemetery.  The big gun was ordered through the Brooklyn Navy Yard and arrived by train in Bangor in April of 1897.  According to the Advance, it was 13.5 feet long, three feet wide at the breech, had an eleven inch bore, and weighed almost eight tons.  One hundred cannon balls were also included.  Total shipping weight was 29,000 pounds and the freight from the Navy Yard was $53.  Mr. E.C. Sutherby and a Mr. Morton were contracted to place the memorial in it's final resting place.  You'll have to get the book to find out how this eight ton cannon made it's journey from the local rail yard, down a dirt road and up a fairly steep hill to it's position of honor among our war heroes.  It was dedicated on Decoration Day of 1897.