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J. Doolittle
(1840 - 1862)
Home State: Connecticut
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 8th Connecticut Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 20 year old working in his father Abisha's [shoe?] manufacturing business in Middletown, CT. He served in Rifle Company B of the Third Connecticut Infantry, a three-month unit, from May to August 1861, then mustered as a Private in Company K, 8th Connecticut Infantry on 1 October 1861.
On the Campaign
He was mortally wounded in the knee in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam.
The rest of the War
He was probably treated initially at a field hospital on the Rohrbach farm near the Antietam, but was transferred to the German Reformed Church in the town of Sharpsburg by 6 October, when his surgeon E. M. McDowell noted:
Skin about to slough under the pressure of the fragment at the outer side of the knee. Skin at the opposite side of the knee beginning to look mahogany today for the first, indicating that the synovial cavity will by and by open on that side. Prognosis-no hope except by amputating soon.The next evening, he consulted with "[Dr. Gurdon?] Buck of NY" who thought there was
No chance without an operation and symptoms such as to deter any but the boldest from operating.The next morning Dr. McDowell recorded
Symptoms too bad for an operation. Must therefore wait & see him die.Which he did at 7 am on 10 October 1862 .
References & notes
His service from Ingersoll1 with wound detail from Major Ward's after-action report. The quotes above from the casebook of Surgeon E. M. McDowell, published by Nelson.2 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph at the Middlesex County Historical Society, shared online by John Banks.
Birth
04/19/1840; Middletown, CT
Death
10/10/1862; Sharpsburg, MD; burial in Miner Cemetery, Middletown, CT
1 Ingersoll, Colin Macrae, Adjutant-General, Catalogue of Connecticut Volunteer Organizations in the Service of the United States, 1861-1865, Hartford: Brown & Gross, 1869, pp. 53, 391 [AotW citation 12410]
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, pp. 58-59 [AotW citation 30660]