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Federal (USV)

Private

Silas Wright Howard

(1841 - 1928)

Home State: Vermont

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 2nd United States Sharpshooters

Before Antietam

Age 20, from Royalton, VT, he enlisted as a Private in Company E, 2nd US Sharpshooters on 26 September 1861.

On the Campaign

He was with his Company in action in Miller's Cornfield at Antietam on 17 September 1862:

Silas W. Howard, of Company E, received several gunshot wounds, one through his chest, and notwithstanding he did not expect to survive, took out the fire block of his Sharps rifle throwing it far away so no rebel could find it to make use of the rifle against us.

The rest of the War

He was treated at the field hospital at Smoketown, MD and was discharged for wounds on 5 March 1863.

After the War

In 1900 he was a farmer in Royalton, Windsor County, VT. By 1910 he was farming nearby in Randolph, Orange County.

References & notes

Service information from Peck1 and Ledoux.2 The quote above from Stevens.3 Hospital detail from Nelson.4 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1900 and 1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Eldora H Rand (1848-1937) in November 1876 and they had 7 children.

Birth

10/17/1841; Potsdam, NY

Death

10/10/1928; burial in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Royalton, VT

Notes

1 Peck, Theodore S., Adjutant General, and The Vermont Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers and Lists of Vermonters who Served in the Army and Navy of the United States During the War of the Rebellion 1861-66, Montpelier: Press of the Watchman Publishing Co., 1892, pg. 613 [AotW citation 25041]

2 Ledoux, Tom, Vermont in the Civil War, Published 1996, first accessed 01 January 2004, <http://www.vermontcivilwar.org/index.php>, Source page: /get.php?input=19957 [AotW citation 25044]

3 Stevens, Charles Augustus, Berdan's United States Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865, St. Paul (MN): The Price-McGill Company, 1892, pg. 203 [AotW citation 25043]

4 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pg. 255 [AotW citation 25042]

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