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Federal (USV)

Private

William H. Blanchard

(1839 - 1903)

Home State: Michigan

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 7th Michigan Infantry

Before Antietam

Age 21, from Oakland County, MI, he enlisted on 8 August 1861 in Oxford and mustered as a Private in Company H, Seventh Michigan Infantry on 22 August.

On the Campaign

He was wounded by a gunshot across his face through his cheeks and upper jaw in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He was treated in a field hospital then admitted to US Army General Hospital #1 in Frederick, MD on 23 (or 25) September 1862. His wounds healed by 1 January 1863 and on 3 January he had rudimentary plastic surgery to reduce facial deformity. The result was said to be "very satisfactory" and he was discharged in Frederick for disability on 10 January and left the hospital on 26 February 1863.

After the War

He was granted a disability pension in May 1865 and in July 1865 a pension examiner noted he was "restricted to a soft diet and was badly disfigured. His disability was rated total and permanent." In 1880 he was a laborer in Orion, MI, and he lived there to at least 1900.

References & notes

His service basics from the State of Michigan.1 Wound and hospital details from the Patient List 2 and the MSHWR.3 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1880-1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Lilla/Lillie Griggs (1846-1892) in October 1870.

Birth

10/1839 in NY

Death

01/17/1903; Orion, MI; burial in Evergreen Cemetery, Lake Orion, MI

Notes

1 State of Michigan, Office of the Adjutant General, and George H. Brown, Adjutant General; George H. Turner, Asst. AG, compiler, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865, 46 volumes, Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. & Everard, 1904-1915, Vol. 7, pp. 11 - 24 [AotW citation 12027]

2 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 #4.531 [AotW citation 31426]

3 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, 1870-1883, Volume 2, Part 1, p. 373 [AotW citation 31427]

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