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(c. 1826 - 1862)
Home State: Connecticut
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 34 year old cordwainer (shoemaker) in Hartford, CT and he enlisted as a Private in Company I, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 1 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was mortally wounded by gunshots to his left thigh, the bone broken, and in his groin in action on the Otto farm at Antietam on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was treated at a field hospital at Porterstown near the battlefield, then admitted to the hospital in the German Reformed (now Christ Reformed) Church in the town of Sharpsburg on 5 October. He died there of his wounds on 16 November 1862 and was originally buried near the church, but was reinterred in the National Cemetery in about 1867.
References & notes
His service from Ingersoll1 and the Record,2 both say he died on 17 September. Wound and hospital details from Nelson,3 quoting from Surgeon E.M. McDowell's Casebook. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Charlotte T. Parker (1828-1909) in January 1848 and they had a son Horace Edward Lay (1851-1928).
More on the Web
See much more about Lay, his death, and his widow in a fine post by John Banks on his blog.
Birth
c. 1826
Death
11/16/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, MD
1 Ingersoll, Colin Macrae, Adjutant-General, Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations in the Service of the United States, 1861-1865, Hartford: Brown & Gross, 1869, pp. 660 - 663 [AotW citation 5597]
2 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. 636 [AotW citation 27281]
3 Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pp. 62, 285 [AotW citation 27282]