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Federal (USV)

Private

George Washington Pancoast

(1841 - 1912)

Home State: New York

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 83rd New York Infantry (9th Militia)

Before Antietam

Age 20, an assistant bookkeeper at a bank in New York City, he enlisted there to serve three years and mustered in as Private, Company F, 9th New York Militia (83rd Infantry) on 27 May 1861.

On the Campaign

He was wounded by gunshots to his left forearm near the elbow, the bone broken, and to his left knee in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was treated at a field hospital near the battlefield by regimental Assistant Surgeon Howard Pinckney who took off the head and one inch of his radius (lower arm bone) on 18 September. He was admitted to a US Army General Hospital in Frederick, MD on 26 September, but the end of his radius necrosed (died), and his arm had to be amputated on 10 October 1862. He was discharged for disability on 23 December 1862 at Frederick.

After the War

He returned to live and work in New York City but beginning in 1868 he commuted from Bloomfield, Essex County, NJ - he lived there for most of the rest of his life. He had resumed his career as a bank bookkeeper in the City, first at the Commonwealth Bank then the Sixth National Bank of New York, and was successively promoted over the years to Cashier of the Sixth National in 1887.

References & notes

Basic service from State of New York.1 Wound and hospital information from Nelson2 and the Patient List.3 Surgical details from the MSHWR.4 Personal details from family genealogists and a bio sketch in the Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark ... (Vol. 1, 1898), as Pancost. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Sarah J Terwilliger (1845-1914) in 1863 and they had 3 children. She and her daughters were members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. He married again, Harriett B Friend (1859-1909) in July 1908.

Thanks to great-great-grandson Scott McGurk for the prompt to look into his ancestor and for an excellent post-war photograph of him.

More on the Web

A piece of his left radius bone is probably still in the collection (Specimen #772) of the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM), Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC.

Birth

04/17/1841; New York City, NY

Death

01/10/1912; Glen Ridge, NJ; burial in Bloomfield Cemetery, Bloomfield Township, NJ

Notes

1   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, Issue 30 (for 1901)  [AotW citation 7424]

2   Nelson, John H., As Grain Falls Before the Reaper: The Federal Hospital Sites and Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Hagerstown: John H. Nelson, 2004, pg. 345  [AotW citation 26993]

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 #4.581  [AotW citation 26994]

4   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. 856  [AotW citation 26995]