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P. Collins

P. Collins

Federal (USA)

Lieutenant

Patrick Collins

(1833 - 1879)

Home State: Ohio

Command Billet: Company Commander

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 14th United States Infantry, First Battalion

Before Antietam

He enlisted in the US Army on 14 February on general service, then was Private, Corporal, and Sergeant, Company I, 2nd US Cavalry before his discharge on 23 July 1861. He had been discharged to accept a commission as 2nd Lieutenant, 14th US Infantry, to date from 14 May. He was promoted to First Lieutenant on 24 October 1861.

On the Campaign

He commanded Company C, 1st Battalion of the 14th at Antietam.

The rest of the War

He was promoted to Captain on 22 July 1865. He was honored by brevets, to Captain (30 Aug 62) for 2nd Bull Run and Major (17 Sep 62) for Antietam.

After the War

He continued in Regular Army service and was transferred to the 32nd Infantry on 21 September 1866, and to the 21st US Infantry on 19 April 1869. He served at Fort Vancouver and then to Fort Boise, Idaho Territory in 1865-66. He was then in Oregon, Arizona and California, and finally back to Fort Boise in 1876, by then commanding Company A of the 21st Infantry. He died at Boise Barracks, Idaho Territory after being struck in the head in a accident in an ambulance wagon with runaway horses.

References & notes

Service information from Heitman1, with details from Reese2. The photograph above is from a group photo of officers of the 14th US Infantry in camp near Alexandria, VA in March 1862 (USAMHI and Library of Congress). His gravesite is on Findagrave. He married Mary Leddy in Cincinnati, OH in April 1863. By 1877 they had had 5 boys and two girls. All 5 boys died in childhood, 4 of them of scarlet fever in one week in January that year.

More on the Web

See also a very fine page for him on WikiTree by Susan Forman. There's also a collection of artifacts of his at the Idaho State Historical Society [online].

Birth

03/17/1833; County Tipperary, IRELAND

Death

11/11/1879; Boise, ID; burial in Fort Boise Military Cemetery, Boise, ID

Notes

1   Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pp. 317 - 318  [AotW citation 14655]

2   Reese, Timothy J., Sykes' Regular Infantry Division, 1861-1864: A History of Regular United States Infantry Operations in the Civil War's Eastern Theater, Jefferson (NC): McFarland&Company, Inc., 1990  [AotW citation 14656]