LEWISTON – Jeff Bolduc knows more than most about his great-great-grandfather. George Pray was a solider, then a prisoner. A father, a husband. A philanthropist. A traveling magician of some renown. And he was resourceful.

During his year in a Civil War prison, while thousands of men died around him from disease and too little food, Pray entertained others by juggling potatoes – then ate the potatoes.

Bolduc started looking into Pray’s past, looking into the man he was, a few years ago. He traced him to an unmarked grave at Riverside Cemetery.

The “unmarked” part bothered Bolduc.

“He gave money to insane asylums and orphanages. He was way ahead of his time. That wasn’t a common practice back then,” said Bolduc, 60, who lives in Woolwich. “I became very proud to be a part of him.”

More than a century after his grandmother’s grandfather died, Bolduc bought him a headstone.

The flat granite stone notes Pray’s service with Company D in the 16th Maine Infantry, his 1834 birth and 1903 death, and his occupation, “Magician.” In the corner of the stone is an etching of the only known photo of Pray, a medium-sized man in a sharp tuxedo next to a cloth-covered table filled with glass balls and metal rods, tools of the magician’s trade.

“Probably the family couldn’t afford it 105 years ago. I made the sacrifice 105 years later,” Bolduc said.

Bolduc’s great-uncle studied the family’s genealogy and found what there was to find about Pray.

Born in Waterville, he joined the Union Army in August 1863, taking another man’s place in exchange for $300. A year later, that next June, Pray was captured during the Battle of Cold Harbor and sent to Andersonville prison in Georgia. According to the National Park Service, conditions were so awful that almost 13,000 Union soldiers – one third of them – died there in a 14-month span.

After he came home in 1865, Pray had three children with his wife, Alice. He traveled the United States, Canada and Mexico as a performing magician, eventually making a home in Lewiston.

“I was asked if I had any magic in my background. I don’t,” said Bolduc, a retired broadcaster.

After a long career, Pray died of stomach and lung cancer in 1903. He was buried in a patch of grass on a sloping hill that overlooks the Androscoggin River. His wife and children were buried in different cemeteries in Lewiston and Auburn.

His great-great-grandson visits the man he affectionately calls “Grandpa” when he can.

“I hope that if he does know this, he’s as proud of me as I am of him,” Bolduc said. “The good that he did, he deserved a stone.”