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(1833 - 1891)
Home State: Ohio
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 8th Ohio Infantry
Before Antietam
Not quite 18 years old, he sailed for America from Belfast in April 1851 and settled in Ashland County, OH in September of that year. He moved to Lodi, Medina County in 1855 and was a farmer there. In April 1861, at age 28, he enlisted for 3 months' service in Company K, 8th Ohio Infantry. He reenlisted with the regiment for 3 years on 5 June 1861.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Antietam:
... in a charge [on the Sunken Road] ... by a ramrod which transfixed the right thigh in the upper third.
The rest of the War
He was probably treated at a field hospital near the battlefield, then admitted to the US Army "New Church" hospital in Frederick, MD on 1 October 1862. He was transferred to another hospital on 24 January 1863 and discharged 3 May 1863 at Frederick on a Surgeon's Certificate of disability.
After the War
He was granted a Federal pension of as much as $250 per year and for "several years" was unable to walk without crutches. He was a census enumerator in Ohio in 1870 and in April 1871 was appointed to the position of clerk in the Pension Office, US Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. At that time "[h]is health was good, but there was a slight lameness from anchyloses of the hip-joint." He attended the Regimental Reunion at Gettysburg in September 1887 and worked in the Pension Office to at least 1889.
References & notes
Service information from Sawyer1 and the State Roster.2 Wound and hospital details from the Patient List 3 and the Photographs,4 source also of an excellent 1871 picture of his scars, online via Flickr from the National Museum of Health and Medicine. His occupation from the Register of the Department of the Interior (1889). Personal details from Perrin, Battle, and Goodspeed's History of Medina County and Ohio (1881). His middle name from a death notice snippet hosted online [pdf] by the Congressional Cemetery. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Lucinda Merryfield (1823-1868) in 1853 and they had daughters Ellen and Effie.
Birth
06/22/1833; County Down, IRELAND
Death
03/04/1891; Washington, DC; burial in Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC
1 Sawyer, Franklin, and George A. Groot, editor, A Military History of the 8th Regiment Ohio Vol. Inf'y, Cleveland: Fairbanks & Co., Printers, 1881, pp. 236 - 240 [AotW citation 14859]
2 State of Ohio, Roster Commission, Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, 12 Volumes, Akron: The Werner Company, 1893-95, Vol. II, pg. 261 [AotW citation 22043]
3 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 #266 [AotW citation 22044]
4 Otis, George Alexander (curator), and John H. Brinton (collecter), William Bell (photographer), Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens, 8 Volumes, Washington DC: US Army, Office of the Surgeon General, 1865, Vol. 7, Plate #302 [AotW citation 22045]