Wells A. Bingham

From East Haddam, with his brother John he enlisted in Company H, 16th Connecticut Infantry on 7 August 1862 at 16 years old.

He was in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam.

He mustered out of the service on 8 July 1865 in Hartford.

He was educated at Kimbal Union Academy in Meriden, NH and at Dartmouth. He had a wallpaper business with an office in Manhattan and a plant in Penn Yan, NY. He committed suicide at his home by inhaling gas, citing business worries. He left a widow with two sons and a daughter. He had been a resident of Bloomfield for about 30 years.

Basic information from Ingersoll1. Thanks to John Banks for placing Wells at Antietam and the picture here, from a pair of photographs, sourced from the Military and Historical Image Bank. Further details from his death notice [pdf] in the New York Times of 17 August 1904.

In March 2015 the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford acquired the Bingham Family Civil War Memorial Secretary (c.1876), "an extraordinary folk art triumph that abstracts traditional forms of 19th Century furniture with Civil War-era imagery and text executed in bone, horn and abalone" [pictures from Hyperallergic]

1846; East Haddam

08/16/1904; Bloomfield, NJ