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Federal (USV)

Captain

Robert Merkle

(1830 - 1862)

Home State: New York

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 20th New York Infantry

Before Antietam

He enrolled at age age 29 on 3 May 1861 at New York and mustered in as Second Lieutenant, Company H on 6 May 6. Promoted to First Lieutenant on 1 September, and to Captain, Company C, on 11 July 1862.

On the Campaign

He was mortally wounded in action in 17 September at Antietam.

The rest of the War

He died at a hospital in Hagerstown, MD on 26 September 1862. He was initially buried in a plot near the Alms House in Hagerstown. He was reinterred at the new Antietam National Cemetery in 1866-67.

References & notes

Service dates from Phisterer1, with burial information from the Antietam Cemetery History2, which has him (probably) as Lt. Meckback. Death details from an article in the Hagerstown Herald of Freedom & Torch Light of 10 October 1862. Further information from Jeffrey I. Richman's research on soldiers buried in Greenwood, which says Captain Merkle is instead buried there in Section 115, Lot 13536 (Soldiers' Lot), Grave 7. His stone there is on Findagrave.

Birth

1830 in GERMANY

Death

09/26/1862; Hagerstown, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD

Notes

1   Phisterer, Frederick, New York in the War of the Rebellion, 6 volumes, Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, 1909-12, Vol. 3, pg. 1966  [AotW citation 4411]

2   Antietam National Cemetery, Board of Trustees, History of Antietam National Cemetery, Baltimore: John W. Woods, Steam Printer, 1869  [AotW citation 3914]