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Federal (USV)

Corporal

Michael Keefe

(c. 1841 - 1862)

Home State: New York

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 51st New York Infantry

Before Antietam

Age 20, he enlisted in Worcester on 20 September 1861 and mustered as Corporal, Company I, 51st New York Infantry on 9 October 1861.

On the Campaign

He was killed in action at the Lower Antietam bridge at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was reinterred from his original burial near the Burnside Bridge on the Antietam battlefield to the National Cemetery during or before 1867.

References & notes

Basic information from the Antietam Cemetery History1. Service from the Adjutant General.2 His initial grave location and other details from Frassanito.3 His gravesite is on Findagrave.

More on the Web

His was one of the graves near Burnside's Bridge photographed by Alexander Gardner on 21 September 1862 (from the Library of Congress). His was one of at least 9 graves for men of the 51st NY; 4 identified. He is the one buried under the dark headboard 8 graves to the right of the live soldier posing in that picture.

Birth

c. 1841

Death

09/17/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD

Notes

1   Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869  [AotW citation 3703]

2   State of New York, Adjutant-General, Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of New York [year]: Registers of the [units], 43 Volumes, Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1893-1905, For the Year 1900, Ser. No. 25, pg. 115  [AotW citation 21839]

3   Frassanito, William A., Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978, pg. 240  [AotW citation 21840]