Calvin Humphrey Blanchard

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

06/27/1845; Fulton, OH

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