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(1827 - 1862)
Home State: Ohio
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 8th Ohio Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 33 year old farm worker at Wakeman in Huron County, OH. He enlisted as a Corporal in Company D, 8th Ohio Infantry on 4 June 1861.
On the Campaign
He was killed in action on 16 September 1862 at Antietam. He was bearing the colors when "cut in two" by a piece of shell during an artillery exchange very early that morning.
The rest of the War
He was reinterred from his original burial on the Antietam battlefield to the Antietam National Cemetery in about 1867.
References & notes
Basic information from State of Ohio,1 which has his death on 17 September. His death detail from Galwey2 and Colonel Sawyer's Official Report. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. Burial detail from the History.3 It is likely that he is the "Corp. W. Farmer," shown as being from Co. D, 8th Connecticut Infantry on a stone at the National Cemetery. Ingersoll's Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations (1869) has no one named Farmer in that Company or Regiment.
2024 update: he has a new, corrected stone in Antietam National Cemetery.
He married Antoinette Johnson (1831-1905) in Wakeman, OH on 3 March 1852 and they had two sons, Thomas Jefferson (1852-1924) and Charles Whitney Farmer (1860-1937). Antoinette was granted a widow's pension in November 1862.
Birth
06/26/1827; Binghamton, NY
Death
09/16/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD
1 State of Ohio, Roster Commission, Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, 12 Volumes, Akron: The Werner Company, 1893-95, Vol. 2, pp. 244 - 249 [AotW citation 14727]
2 Galwey, Thomas Francis, and W.S. Nye, editor, The Valiant Hours, Harrisburg (PA): The Stackpole Company, 1961, pg. 37 [AotW citation 14736]
3 Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869, p. 59 [AotW citation 30466]