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Federal (USV)

Corporal

Calvin Humphrey Blanchard

(1845 - 1946)

Home State: Pennsylvania

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 111th Pennsylvania Infantry

Before Antietam

He "ran away from home" at age 16 and mustered into service in Company D, 111th Pennsylvania Infantry on 14 January 1862, and was appointed Corporal, date not given. He was wounded in action at Cedar Mountain, VA on 9 August 1862.

On the Campaign

As he told it later:

[I] Ran away from the Hospital before my wound had healed. Joined my Reg. on the Battlefield of South Mountain on the night of Sept. 14. Was wounded [in the right thigh] near the Stone Church (Dunkard Church) at Antietam Sept 14 [17] 1862. Reported mortally wounded, laid all night on the Battlefield. When on the morning of the 18th I was taken to the field Hospital where I remained until November.

The rest of the War

He was visited at the Smoketown Hospital by President Lincoln on his battlefield visit in October.

[In November] I again ran away and hoofed it on the Towpath of the Canal to Harpers Ferry and joined my regiment.
He was the "Color bearer of his Regiment in Campaign from Chattanooga to the Sea." He was promoted to Sergeant on 25 June 1865 and mustered out with his Company on 19 July 1865.

After the War

He was living in Oakland, CA in 1938, where he was a member of the Lyon Post #8, Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). He attended the Gettysburg 75th anniversary reunion in July 1938 and the GAR National encampment in Springfield, IL in 1940, then Commander of the California/Nevada Department, GAR. He died in 1946 about one week shy of 101 years old.

References & notes

Basic information from Bates1. His words above from a questionnaire he returned prior to the 1937 (75th) Anniversary of the battle of Antietam, now in a collection online from the Western Maryland Regional Library/WHILBR. Details from an announcement in the Warren (PA) Times Mirror of 1 July 1938. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

Thanks to descendant Kathy Erlandson for sending along a clipping from the Illinois State Journal of 10 September 1940, which depicts Blanchard in his GAR uniform that year and talks about his meeting with President Lincoln after Antietam.

Birth

06/27/1845; Fulton, OH

Death

06/21/1946; Oakland, CA; burial in Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, CA

Notes

1   Bates, Samuel Penniman, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, Harrisburg: State of Pennsylvania, 1868-1871  [AotW citation 10937]