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J.A. Clark
(1841 - 1862)
Home State: Michigan
Command Billet: Company Officer
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 7th Michigan Infantry
Before Antietam
From a farming family of Monroe County, he enlisted as a Sergeant in Company D, Seventh Infantry, on 19 June 1861. He was commissioned Second Lieutenant on 18 March 1862 and promoted to 1st Lieutenant on 22 April. He first saw action on the Peninsula Campaign, but was home ill in July and August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was killed in action near the West Woods on the morning of 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was buried on the field, and his grave was part of a photograph taken on 19 September 1862 by Alexander Gardner. Frederick A. Nims, a boyhood chum and neighbor of John Clark accompanied the body back to Monroe. Nims, a Sergeant in Co. C, 5th Michigan Cavalry at that time, eventually became a Lieutenant and served as aide-de-camp to General Custer (also from Monroe).
References & notes
His service history is from the Descriptive Roll Seventh Michigan Infantry, an extract of which was posted along with his photograph at Seeking Michigan1, from the Library of Michigan and Archives of Michigan. Further details from Frassanito2. Thanks to Brian James Egen for corrections to his birthplace and cemetery data, as well as the information about Sergeant Nims.
Birth
1841; Monroe, MI
Death
09/17/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Woodland Cemetery, Monroe, MI
1 State of Michigan, Library and Archives, Seeking Michigan, Published 2008, first accessed 28 February 2010, <http://seekingmichigan.org/>, Source page: /u?/p4006coll3,446 [AotW citation 1086]
2 The original portrait photograph used here was likely taken while the Lieutenant was home in late summer 1862. It is from the collection of the Monroe County Historical Commission.
Frassanito, William A., Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America's Bloodiest Day, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978, pp. 178-185 [AotW citation 1087]
