site logo
S.C. Hodgeman

S.C. Hodgeman

Federal (USV)

Lieutenant

Samuel Chase Hodgman

(1831 - 1900)

Home State: Michigan

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 7th Michigan Infantry

Before Antietam

A shoemaker from Climax, he enlisted in Company I, Seventh Michigan Infantry as First Sergeant on 28 June 1861. He gave his age as 30. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant and First Lieutenant (to date from 25 August) on 2 September 1862.

On the Campaign

He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam. On the 18th he wrote his brother ...

I have at last been in a fight & a tough one too. I bear the marks of it - in the shape of a ball hole through my left leg about four or five inches above my knee and a good hard rap from a piece of shell on the inside of the calf of my right. Neither of the wounds are serious but they interfere materially with locomotion for the present. We had 29 men when we went into action and have heard from 20 of them who are wounded. I have heard of but two who have come out safe. George Travis [d. 9/29/62] had his leg broken. I helped him behind a stump & have not since heard from him - It is now nearly noon of the 18th. Albert [E. Brimmer, d. 1862] got a ball through his breast crosswise, not very bad. Lieut [Elhanan] Phetteplace was shot through the thigh. I got hit by the shell in the first of the firing which seemed to be mainly directed at our Company and the one on the right of it, probably with the design of capturing the colors which were between us. I endeavored to rally our men around them twice and was then wounded and had to skedaddle to the rear.

I walked about two miles and [there] found a hospital and had my wound dressed. It pains me considerably to day so much so that I shall not try to write much more. The details of the battle you will get in the papers much better than I could give them...

The rest of the War

He was appointed Acting Adjutant on 28 April 1863, and commissioned Captain 22 June 1863. He resigned and was honorably discharged on a Surgeon's Certificate of disability 1 March 1864.

After the War

He married in Sandusky, OH in 1864, and later lived in Cleveland. By 1879 he was in Traverse City, MI, working as a surveyor and in 1881 he went to Utah and worked on the Rio Grande Western Railroad. He moved to Florida in 1885, helped build a church in Haines City, and was ordained an Episcopal minister on 27 December 1894.

References & notes

Service data from the Adjutant General1, who lists him as Samuel C. Hodgeman. His photograph from one in the Archives of Michigan, found online through the Seeking Michigan portal2. Further information from family genealogists. The quote above from a letter in a collection of his in the Waldo Library, Western Michigan University.

Birth

02/14/1831; Charlestown, NH

Death

04/01/1900; Haines City, FL; burial in Forest Hill Cemetery, Haines City, FL

Notes

1   State of Michigan, Office of the Adjutant General, and George H. Brown, Adjutant General; George H. Turner, Asst. AG, compiler, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865, 46 volumes, Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. & Everard, 1904-1915, Vol. 7, pg. 53  [AotW citation 12004]

2   State of Michigan, Library and Archives, Seeking Michigan, Published 2008, first accessed 28 February 2010, <http://seekingmichigan.org/>, Source page: /cdm/singleitem/collection/p4006coll3/id/712/rec/6  [AotW citation 12005]