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(1844 - 1924)
Home State: Connecticut
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was living with his family in Middletown, CT, a 15 year old "Polisher w/Hoes [?]." On 8 August 1862 he enlisted at age 17 as a Private in Company A, 16th Connecticut Infantry.
On the Campaign
He was wounded by a gunshot to his left shoulder, his clavicle (collarbone) broken, in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was probably first treated at a field hospital near the battlefield then was admitted to US Army General Hospital #3 in the Presbyterian Church in Frederick, MD on 1 October 1862. Part or all of his clavicle was removed and he was discharged for wounds on 12 January 1863 with partial disability of his left arm.
After the War
In 1870 he was a blacksmith at Haddam, CT. By 1910 he had retired and was in Cleveland, OH with his 2nd wife and 2 step-children.
References & notes
Service information from the Record.1 Wound and hospital details from the MSHWR2 and the Patient List.3 Personal details from family genealogists, notably Bezaleel Thayer's Memorial of the Thayer Name (1900), and the US Census of 1860 (as H. Merwin Thayer), 1870, and 1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Adeline C. Rich (1842-1921) in Febrruary 1864 in Haddam, CT and they had a son, William Dean Thayer (1866-1956). He married again, Elizabeth E Bailey Gracey (1863-1928) in 1906.
Birth
10/09/1844; Middletown, CT
Death
01/19/1924; Lakewood, OH; burial in Calvary Cemetery, Cleveland, OH
1 State of Connecticut, Adjutant General's Office, and AGs Smith, Camp, and Barbour, and AAG White, Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, Hartford: Press of the Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Company, 1889, pg. 621 [AotW citation 27002]
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, Part II, Volume II, pg. 480 [AotW citation 27003]
3 National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and Terry Reimer, Frederick Patient List, Published 2018, first accessed 17 September 2018, <http://www.civilwarmed.org/explore/primary-sources/databases/frederickpatient/>, Source page: patient #303 [AotW citation 27004]