Walter Elliott Smith

A 19 year old factory mechanic in East Berlin, CT, he enlisted as a Private in Company G, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 30 July 1862.

He was wounded in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862:

... and when the order for the bayonet charge came he had risen to one knee. At this moment a bullet struck his companion who fell dead across Smith’s lap. Then Smith, too, was wounded. He found the blood spurting from his lips ... Smith made up his mind he would get out of there. How Mr. Smith managed to get out of that field and back across the stone bridge again without being further wounded he does not know. His wound he found was not very serious and resulted from a lead slug passing under his lip and into his teeth. These were knocked loose, but after Mr. Smith had picked the pieces of lead out he pushed his teeth back and they grew back in again.

He was admitted to a US Army hospital in Frederick, MD on 5 December 1862 for "debility" and was there to 2 March 1863, when he was transferred to the Convalescent Camp in Alexandria, VA.

He was captured at Plymouth, NC on 20 April 1864, a prisoner at Andersonville, GA, and paroled on 10 December 1864. He was discharged on 27 May 1865.

He was a machinist living with his parents in the Southington neighborhood of Berlin, CT in 1870. By 1920 he was a salesman for a babbitt metal company, a widower who lived with his sisters Harriet (Hattie) and Emma in Hartford.

Service information from Ingersoll1 and the Record.2 His experience at Antietam quoted from his recollection in the Hartford Daily Times of 17 September 1915; thanks to John Banks. Frederick detail from the Patient List.3 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860, 1870, and 1920. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Mary Agnes Mahala Shepard (1859-1889) in December 1882 in Ashland, KY, and they had two daughters.

11/13/1932; Berlin, CT

09/13/1932; Hartford County, CT; burial in Wilcox Cemetery, Berlin, CT