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Federal (USV)

Private

Reuben Yerger

(1830 - 1898)

Home State: Pennsylvania

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 11th Pennsylvania Infantry

Before Antietam

From Greensburg, age 31, he mustered as Private, Company I, 11th Pennsylvania Infantry on 20 September 1861. He was wounded at Rappahannock Station, VA on 21 August and again at Second Bull on on 30 August 1862.

On the Campaign

He was wounded by gunshot to his right thigh in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was treated for a flesh wound at a field hospital near the battlefield for 9 days, then sent to a US Army hospital in Chambersburg, PA. His wound had healed but he still had pain in his hip when he was sent to the Broad & Cherry Streets Hospital in Philadelphia on 12 December 1862. Surgeons there determined that the "neck" of his thigh bone had been broken by the gunshot. He was discharged for disability on 27 April 1863.

After the War

He requested an increase in his pension in April 1880, by which time his leg had atrophied and he could not work, or even sit in a chair, and could walk only with a cane. He was living in Greenburg at the veteran's census of 1883.

References & notes

Basic information from Bates.1 Medical details from the MSHWR.2 His gravesite is on Findagrave.

Birth

06/11/1830

Death

10/10/1898; burial in New Hanover Lutheran Cemetery, Gilbertsville, PA

Notes

1   Bates, Samuel Penniman, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, Harrisburg: State of Pennsylvania, 1868-1871  [AotW citation 11121]

2   Barnes, Joseph K., and US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 6 books, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870, Volume 2, Part 3, pg. 74  [AotW citation 21365]